YEah same deal for me. I wanted to go see Gilby...but I was broke at the time and it was a stretch given it wasn't even the full band. Also - i hadn't been able to watch the show cos i didnt have cable...so i'd bought the cd blind...and didnt really care too much for much of it...I think a couple of songs were ok..but iguess with the line-up i'd got my hopes out of proportion.

I'm a paid member at VR and there's no website address yet that  could find  on that forum.

VR are apparently doing a vegas show soon that was contracted before the issues with scott. The band is going to perform the gig with several well known singers.

I do the same sometimes. Just get a $1 ticket.

I know its 30 million to 1 against winning...but then sometimes that seems like better than nothing when i'm broke!

I don't see why anyone has to be lying. Here's my speculation about this kind of thing:

Remember when Axl said after robin left the first time that it wasa good chance to redo some parts but that he never would have said that to his face because it would be rude? I don't think richard is the guy sitting with Axl at the pro-tools console.

Wel already know there's like 10 billion versions of every track with all kinds of different people playing on them. I mean fuck..how many versons of IRS does just the fan base have. And baz has said a few times theres multiple albums worth of tracks but that he's unsure what consitutes the final actual CD album out of what he's heard.

So richard comes in, has a listen to the state of the various songs at the present time. Maybe he gets some directions like "I really hate how this bridge sounds" from Axl or "This needs new outro..needs to sound more powerful" or whatever. He lays down what he is told to lay down for sure, he's a fucking session guy afterall. But after those takes Axl maybe also says something like "just do whatever you think would work for these songs" and fortus puts down his own creative ideas in another take. All of this shit gets recorded onto the data bank of a million different takes from a million players on a bunch of HDDs for Axl to go through at his leisure and pick and choose what he likes.

Meanwhile during thus process or on tour or something, fortus pulls out an original riff or two while warming up or something, Axl overhears it and goes "that's cool" - and it's developed into a song. Or once he's been made to feel part of the band and less of a session player maybe he goes "here's my original songs" or maybe Axl asks him if he has any originals he'd like to share with the group. If any of them are vaguely something Axl likes the sound of maybe he says something like "we'll work on that for a future album" - as its been clear for a while that when positive he talks about follow up releases and shit to CD...hell he even did it in the press in 2002.

My point is...fortus could easily have recorded a take for every song GNR has in its development-vault, some of them could be his own creative ideas for the song, some could be instructions given to him, and he could just have easily have submitted riffs/songs to the band and been told that those will be given the same kind of extended development for some future release.

Yes maybe now Ron has re-done everything he did, just as bucket redid what Robin did, who re-did what dave-navero layed down, who re-did what huge layed down etc etc.

At the end of the day its Axl using pro-tools who will decide these things. Axl was the guy who got Huge to redo slash's parts in SFTD, remember slash only found out latter on...when he heard it and went "who is that playing" lol...

Richard may not be on the album. I just don't think there's any reason to call him a liar yet as we don't know what he has an hasn't been told.