The DJ Ashba era was also a letdown to me. To this day I still follow the band whenever theres something mildly interesting going on, but I just don't believe in their potential anymore.

That's why I so look forward for anything from the Robin and Bucket era. It's by far the more interesting stuff.

Ps: people who still wants the song, PM me with your email address.

It's not coincidence that Going Down, OMG and Silkwoms were all rehearsed to the 2011 tour and were all options on the setlist.

The likely scenario IMO is that these tracks were mixed that way to the stage sound crew. Knowing what Bumblefoot would play (which means not only his own parts, but also Buckethead leads - like in the ending of Going Down) and how it would fit with the rest could make easier to adjust the mix levels in Ron's in-ear monitor live. But hey, that's just pure speculation.

That's another possible scenario. Bumble mixed himself the tracks to show Axl and Caram his ideas. But why would he be so loud in the mix? I mean, it would be better to see exactly what he was playing, but it wouldnt be good to understand how it would blend with the other channels/layers. Unless it was the other way around: Axl and Caram put together this rough mix to show Bumblefoot which takes were chosen and how his own parts sounded like after the heavy editing.

Baz also talked about The General, but that song never made it to CD. And Checkmate wasnt on the tracklist either.

Nobody - at least in public - mentioned Going Down before it showed up as a setlist option in 2011.

Guess we ended up with the majority of the CD already spoiled because those were the songs being worked on and more "out there", bouncing between the band, TB, engineers and execs.

Prostitute from that era should be interesting. Wonder if the piano was more proeminent and if it was Robin on both solo spots.

Cmon, its fun to talk about it. Did you mean the band rehearsed the song back in 2007 or that it got some studio work?

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The first two are the same 1999 demo. The second is the 2006 leak (probably from 2004 sessions/mix).

I don't know if Buckethead's solo in Shacklers were that fitting. The song only got this final structure after Axl, Robin and Caram worked on it after Buckethead's departure.

IMO, Buckets best moment in the whole album were actually his fills in Better.

Agreed. As far as I know, Andy Wallace was already mixing the album by April 2006. By August 2006, while on the UK tour, Axl said Richard and Robin were working on some stuff (but maybe not for CD? I can't remember).

Axl asked for more time before the NA Tour too. That's when he wanted to include Bumblefoot and Frank, I guess - they started to play Chinese Democracy with the newer straight-foward drum arrangement with Frank and Bumble's fretless rhythm guitar. Also, and this is pure speculation based only on Axl's voice/rasp at that time, my bet is that it was still missing vocals on songs like Shacklers (bridge), If The World (verses), Scraped (verses) and Sorry (bridge).

I disagree. Like I said, their live performances indicated that Frank and Bumblefoot were already recording back in mid/late-2006.

As soon as they started to record overdubs AFTER Andy Wallace worked on some mixing, the thing got fucked up. It changed the whole sound direction and it needed another approach on mixing. Instead of taking advantage of the more organic sound brought by Bumble and Frank, Axl and Caram just pasted the new layers on top of everything and let the rest got mudded.