Rocks In The Attic #130: Guns N’ Roses - ‘G N’ R Lies’ (1988)

I’ve never been overly enamoured with this album. It’s yet another shocking record company cash-in, something to keep the tills ringing between the success of Appetite For Destruction and their follow-up studio albums. Half of the album is made up of previously released material - four songs from the pre-Appetite EP release Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide - together with four ‘new’ acoustic songs (one is an alternate version of a song from Appetite).

I’ve never been a huge fan of this band. Appetite is a good record, but it’s vastly overrated, and mostly subscribed to by girls who claim to be rock chicks but don’t actually listen to any other rock albums. The Use Your Illusion records have their moments but I have trouble seeing behind their pomposity.

Lies is an odd release, capturing the band live a year before their debut album was released, and then again in the year following the spectacular success of Appetite. The band pays homage to Aerosmith twice on the Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide tracks - namechecking Permanent Vacation in the first song Reckless Life, and then following this with a great cover of Mama Kin.

If you were a fan of Appetite when this was released, it would probably disappoint you, but then again wouldn’t everything else in Guns N’ Roses’ subsequent career?

Hit: Patience

Hidden Gem: Mama Kin (Live)

Rocks In The Attic #28: Various Artists - ‘Good Morning Vietnam (O.S.T.)’ (1988)

This is a great film. I’ve always been slightly dubious about Robin Williams, after I heard that on the stand-up circuit he used to shamelessly steal material from other comedians; but in terms of energy and improvisation, there’s no other comic actor to touch him, except maybe Jim Carrey.

Like Jim Carrey, Williams’ best roles are those which are comic with a huge slice of realism involved. Good Morning Vietnam is one of those films, and the music contained on the soundtrack are a great reminder of the happy / sad dynamic that the movie puts across.

I’ve never been a fan of soundtrack albums that have dialogue interspersed with the music tracks, but it works so well here, essentially because Williams is playing a DJ - so the whole album sounds like a radio program. This is probably the first time I heard Them’s version of Baby Please Don’t Go (with a young studio musician named Jimmy Page playing guitar).

Hit: What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

Hidden Gem: Baby Please Don’t Go - Them