It's actually quite an interesting idea to me you guys have raised...low how many 'faulty' or 'bad' products does something have to have before you move away from a brand and then to what extent does the "bad stuff" ruin your appreciation of the good?

Metalalex's example of metallica is interesting. I know Metallica fans that loved Puppets and Justice and that sound and those people found the black album too rockish, then really disliked load and reload, saw no value in S+M, didn't like St Anger and LuLu is unspeakable. Death Magnetic helped a little, but I think there's a lot of those folks at the end of the rope.

Star wars is an example for me maybe. The original trilogy was fundamental to my child hood, something I considered a work of genius and one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time. Then they made the 3 new ones - which I won't derail the thread with a length exposition of why I don't like them - but lets just say I tried with all my heart to get into the spirit of it and love them - and other than a few fun moments - 95% of the films I disliked. I think it's worse than music too - as they've altered the whole universe and context the story took place in - so even when they don't directly effect the original they sort of do - whereas at least in music - AFD will stand uneffected by a CD3 or a Snakepit5 or whatever. But I must say the starwars stuff really got to a point where my interest in anything else new they make is minimal - and while I love the old films still - it's sort of bittersweet in my mind as they feel sort of defiled by what happened later on to them.

For me this doesn't apply to GNR as I love CD, but I can see for some people it could start to become an issue a few albums in. Although it's probably also relevant I guess that it's fundamentally a different band (aside from Axl) even though it has the same name while the U2 example given is the original line up.

It does interest me overall, how many times of feeling fan-raped by your product makes you quit. I have friends that follow WWE but have hated it for like 5 or 6 years in a row now but hang in there because they've watched for 25 years overall. But sooner or later it's going to need to "improve" (adjust to their liking) or eventually their credit gets too low.

Actually I think that's what it comes down to huh. How much existing credit does a band have.