In my opinion SI is a cool album...l its the weak spot in GNR cataloge cos it's not original material. But if you can get past the fact that it's covers there's some awesome peformances on it. listen to the attack on the guitars on "Black Leather".... I love it...at least all the ones Axl sings on...cos i'm not too much of a fan of duff's voice (love his playing though...just dont dig punk vocals much).

Anyway...back on topic kinda...one thing I think that's sad about the politics of the recent situation seems to be the way Axl and the band are distancing themselves from UYI.  When we've had an album so long its easy to get complacient about it...from familarity...but if you look at it with fresh eyes...there is some fantastic music on those records. And it's sad if other events have coloured their perception of the songs.

I couldn't get into a UYI vs CD though as I also think Chinese is a fantastic album, and it would take a few years to get the same historical perspective on both records.

I'm somewhere in the middle..."You could be mine" is like the soundtrack to my life, yet recently I feel that CD as an album is a lot more reflective of where I am at the moment in terms of my own music and life. And the more I think about life without these songs I think of how much enrichment I would have lost.

I'm rambling...suffice to say I have a love of pretty much all things GNR....

Great posts from so many people.

Anyway...i strongly agree with Neemo that most of the issues relate to the mixing rather than the parts themselves. Stylisticly I can understand if some people would prefer to have heard these songs in a more traditional format (like 1 rhythm player, 1 lead) - but that goes to Axl's concept of the project rather than Bumble himself. To me once you are going with 3 or 4 guitarists its not much crazier to add a 5th. I'd either like to hear it with everyone as we have or just like 2 people.

It's wierd how we all differ. Scraped is actually my 2nd favourite track at the moment. I love it. And "sorry" to me is ok but probably the song I like least on the CD. Wierd huh. My opinion is that the "skip" is an intentional effect in the song due to it's placement in the lyrics and the sound. But I can't prove it.

Juliette Lewis has something rocky about her that I dig:

Interesting what u say about scream saikin...that was my issue...i was ok with cornell doing a non-hard rock album...my problem is that most of the tracks i felt were musically not as cool as normal stuff of that genere. Which is wierd cos timberland is ment to be this hot dude right? But I felt with different producers I could see cornel doing a record in that style and it kicking ass. Although i did like a couple of tracks anyway.

Not to sound like a nutswinger, but I'm not sure that's entirely fair.

The 2006 tour was pretty sucessful overall, I think there was the odd cancellation but there was also a lot of dates played sucessfully. Not a bad average considering its GNR. And 2007 saw a sucessful tour of australia which pleased me I'm just saying I think your making it out like it ended the same way as the 2002 tour but that's not what happened.

This may be even more controversial, but I think i'm the only guy on this board who actually likes bumble. I thought the parts he added to CD and IRS really improved the flavour of those tracks. I'll admit at first I missed bucket's solo on rhiad...but I think a lot of that was that I was familiar with it from overexposure in leaks, as now that i'm used to hearing it, it no longer sounds 'wrong' to me and I look forward to the crazy melody of the new solo.

I would agree if all buckets parts were gone. But to me the signature bucket parts remain - the kickass CD solo, that amazing shred in IRS and the manic rhiad outro...the epic twat...its not like we lost those parts.

I can understand why some people are pissy about the Brian May thing. I'm on the fence on that one. On one hand the leak was kickass and sounded like a stripped down GNR reminicnt of the old GNR which was pretty awesome. At the same time stylisticly it was so different from the rest of the album that I can see the benifit of the new additions. I'm prob the only dude but I really like it at 2:23 - as its kinda the melody from the old version but with some cool shreddy stuff....

Anyway...each to their own...I'm just saying...I like Bumble and I like how with Bumble and Bucket on the same tracks they've become pretty awesome.