Yeah it's interesting, I think he said once or at least it was said somewhere about him, that he learned to sing high in church or a religious school setting or something and he would mess around with the high part from the bass section and watch other people get in trouble for messing it up.

So the high voice is a skill he seems to have had since very young.

But it's interesting that he seemed to do it clean in the early 80s, then the raspy stuff in the 1990s, from early 200x I think is when the super high range stuff seemed to be featured (the opening jungle scream, the twat scream, the irs scream, the mac daddy screams etc) - to my untrained ear I'd say there was some technique associated with that stuff - like Axl had maybe learned to push his voice to the max to see where it goes. This is the same type of voice he did for ac/dc - it's kind of scream centred and raspy and very high but also musical.

It seemed to stop working for a time somewhere around late 2016 or early 2017 there were times he'd go for it and it would crack slightly, and then he soon swapped to the mickey style voice again that uses the high range but without as much grit. Since about 2019 or so he's sort of had a hybrid scream - it's somewhere in between the 200x scream and the mickey. Did it a lot on shadow of your love live in the middle part and in a few other places. It seemed a good compromise in that it has the agressive raspy character of the older scream but seemed more vocally possible in the way of the mickey voice. I've been wondering if he invented this as a thing to try out or if it's actually that he's doing the 200x scream but that's just what comes out at this age or after this much vocal use...etc.

I might be full of shit. I would love him to discuss the 'behind the scenes' of what he goes through vocally one day. One thing is obvious to me is that as much as we give him shit around here at times - I think he really has been trying his damndest. These songs are extremely hard to sing and a number of them seem to have been written to push him to his limits at the time. Like most people can't sing this range AT ALL let alone with the kinda rasp and timbre he had in his prime. Then he's done it for decades and in all states of health and obviously at times pushed himself past what's in his best interests.

So i mean i get why people are disappointed as we'd all love prime Axl to come out, even Axl i bet, but I feel he deserves some slack as well, he's not trying to piss people off it's just kinda an impossible mission at this point to sing like we need him to.

Yeah it would be interesting.

I always think the whole thing would be different if Robin had not originally been the lead guy. Not saying he can never do a lead some of his stuff suits the new songs well. But he never had the chops to be lead player on the old material.

I would have put him in the Izzy role....that is Rhythm player who contributes new material, sure give him the odd lead line on the CD songs, but like Richard his main role is to be the rhythm guy. Then hire a monster player to be Slash and give that guy EVERY lead. Like a buckethead (although his image was an issue), a bumble, or maybe someone with more of a blues-shred background like Doug Aldrich. Slash's role is to be the guitar hero of the group...so it just works better having 1 dude in that role not splitting it into 2/3.

That's absolute madness.

Yeah it's interesting how the songs change like that. Like a lot of the added solos I like such as having two solos and an outro in IRS and what you said about the title track.

But some of the final versions just feel sort of not quite right. Madagascar is like that to me - it's not even that I mind Axl's character voice in it (although I know some do) - there's just something about it that doesn't quite capture how cool the song would be live on a good night. It's sort of there on the record but something is off. It's like the studio version needed an outro or something to me but then the song worked as is live so I can't really say lol.

Another example is catcher, and I'm not even shitting on bumble cos I don't mind (and kinda like) his take on the solo how he did the brain may melodies but in more of the shreddy style the rest of the record has....so it's not that...but there's something off about the whole song...like the mix or something. Like the demo there's so much feeling coming from the piano and Axl's voice...then somehow I dunno if it's a retake or just burried under so much new stuff but something about the mood of the whole song is different in the final. It's still one of my fav songs of course...but it's interesting how it changed. 

There's some weird type of magic in recording I think. In my own hobby stuff i've experienced versions of the same thing, like sometimes something that wasn't right just somehow is right even if it could officially be done better, and sometimes you can just never quite hit what you are aiming for no matter what you throw at it. It's strange.

There must be a lot of them out there i think.

Like people who were originally "left wing" in that they think there should be a strong social safety net, don't mind a moderate amount of government regulation on business in the public interest, and don't mind a reasonable level of taxation to achieve those aims. People who are capitalist but who think no regulation unlimited capitalism could be too far.

They are left in the sense that a right wing person likes small government and less taxes, but they don't necessarily subscribe to the modern leftist theories of gender and racism in everthing.

I consider myself a little like this in that I have some sympathy for the poor, and I think it's unrealistic to think everyone down and out has a realistic shot of bootstrapping themselves to a good place, especially when some of them face multi-generational disadvantages. However at the same time, so much of what the mainstream media pushes as sexism, racism and all the so called woke stuff is just illogical and outright nuts to me too. I don't think there's a political home for me at this stage. The far right is racist which I can't accept, the middle right i see their point but they're so harsh and mean, there doesn't seem to be a center, and then the whole left seems to a land of people who believe things I think are bordering on crazy. Why is there no centre and why is there no moderate left? That's my 2c anyway.