Guns N'Roses
Unplugged (Disc 1)

And here it is, the manual to transform your garage band, which doesn't even attract the most desperate emo girls (the ones with black bangs and a big butt, to be clear), into a truly TRASHY and stylish rock band, as God (or whoever in his place) commands:

1 Choose a decent, original, and quirky name that evokes the noise you will make

2 The "kick-ass" songs must contain these topics (in order of importance): sex, drugs, making noise, sex, drugs, engines, drugs, and finally a bit of sex..

3 Create the following characters: the singer who acts like a star, the guitarist with a weakness for chicks (always shirtless on stage), the wild and crazy-as-a-horse bassist, the unflappable drummer, but he must have a double bass drum

4 To approach the groupies whom you'll eventually sleep with, at least 30% (and I'm not kidding!) of your repertoire must be filled with sappy slow songs, with choruses everywhere, dealing with the following topics (in order of importance): my love, I love you, my love, why did you leave me, my love, you don't know I exist but I'm crazy about you, I want you, I desire you, etc.. I know this is really boring but it's absolutely necessary

5 During solos, the guitarist must perform acrobatics, and the singer must do a bit of air guitar

6 The singer must scream, sing in falsetto, whistle at the chicks in the front row, and it's not necessary for him to know how to sing

7 The guitarist and the bassist, on the other hand, must know their stuff, and during the numerous instrumental breaks, the audience must bow down with "OOOOHH" that say it all

8 You need to change outfits often, during the long filler solos during the concert..

9 At the end of the concert, do some stage diving

10 Pretend to leave but quickly come back and generously offer some encores

11 Toward the end of your career, release an album with a symphony orchestra or at least an "unplugged"

Now, I wondered why Guns'n'Roses (fanatical adherents of these pagan commandments of the perfect trashy) had never released a live unplugged album before dissolving like snow in the sun after "THE SPAGHETTI INCIDENT?", and yet now I discover that it actually exists: they recorded one..

Like an Indiana Jones-style archaeologist, I wandered around the flea market to see if I could snag some collectible LPs from old fogies so I approach the "not quite legal" section of burned or used CDs, and see if there's something worth risking a criminal record for in the SEVENTIES section, when, taken by boredom, I look inside the Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, King Crimson shelf and realize that I already have everything in my computer's "incoming" folder at my office, then move to the GRUNGE section and the same scene repeats, then move to the area where married men are ashamed to enter and mingle with the young rockers: EIGHTIES ROCK. Inside there's as much kitsch as you can imagine, but also some revelation: in between Kiss, Motley Crue, and Guns 'n' Roses, I find a crowd of teenagers discussing Slash's technique compared to Randy Roads'. It turns out that after glancing at the discography of Badlands (underrated by most) and Dangerous Toys (rightly never noticed by anyone), I head to the source and momentarily find myself reckoning with my past consulting the entire Guns catalog, to see if maybe there were some new releases..needlessly. Then, while cursing, as I put the CDs back in place, the case of a burned "Appetite" opens, causing a dusty CD to fall, I bend to pick it up ensuring no one has seen me, turn it over and see a scribble with a marker: GnR UNPLUGGED.

Immediately my hands burn: I hide it in the trench coat given to me by Lieutenant Colombo and flee to the car to listen to it: useless, it doesn't read because it's all scratched and in a single track, I have to go home to clean it and.. but as soon as I insert it into the computer, a miracle happens: the CD starts playing on its own with a song I hadn't listened to in a long time: "Dead Flowers" by the Rolling Stones, I must say quite enjoyable, and this will be the peak of the album.. then with a "You Ain't the First," signed by Izzy Stradlin, it quickly moves to boredom, with country hues and the slide that irritates me quite a bit, then it moves to "You're Crazy," and the wah/wah intro annoys the heck out of me. From bad to worse: with the entire "LIES" repertoire, originality in the arrangements is not even touched; "Knockin" is as long as tradition demands, and the only positive notes are the two final songs: "Mr. Browstone" and "Move to the City" which warm the old fan's heart.. but Axl's voice (hard drunk, as far as I can tell) shows us that without the magic of the recording studio, he can't even enchant the most innocent fifteen-year-olds.

From what I could understand, the tracklist is as follows:

The first half of the album (1-6) was recorded in Argentina in 1993, while the rest was recorded at the legendary CGBG venue in New York, in 1987.

Did we need to churn out an album like this? Poorly played and "sung" even worse. Well, ultimately it wasn't such a bad idea to keep this wonder hidden from the whole world, I'll store it in the attic for another ten years, when humanity will be ready..