If there's any double-dipping, I'll be downloading the tracks. I won't stand for that shit. Having said that, if there's a US-only special edition available, I might ask one of our lovely US-based people here to pick me up a copy and Paypal the money over to 'em.

As an aside, the Beatles came very close to "reforming" in the 70s without Paul. IIRC the line-up was John, George, Ringo, Billy Preston and Klaus Voorman - they got together to do one song on one of the solo albums and nearly ended up teaming up. I supposed that'd be more like Velvet Revolver than the present GN'R, though.

Wonder if the worldwide release date will be November 24th or December 1st.

Oh, and I think it was inevitable that the album would go to Best Buy over Wal-Mart. Can you honestly imagine Axl allowing his magnum opus, 15 years in the making, to be bowdlerized by Wal-Mart? After all that he's been through to complete the thing?

I actually think the leaks over the past few years might've had an impact in this matter. I mean, I could imagine Better was going to be the first single, but after the leaks it was overfamiliar to the public (yeah, I know relatively speaking not that many people have heard it, but there's been a bit of buzzkill). Likewise Chinese Democracy or TWAT. And as a result, we might end up in the extraordinary situation of having Axl's flamenco pornfunk odyssey being the first single off his comeback album. Weird.