Guns N' Roses - Birmingham, England 26.05.2012

GUNS N' ROSES - NEC, Birmingham, England 2012-05-26

Tracks

DISC 1

101 Splitting The Atom intro
102 Chinese Democracy
103 Welcome To The Jungle
104 It's So Easy
105 Mr Brownstone
106 Sorry
107 Rocket Queen
108 Estranged
109 Better
110 Richard Fortus Guitar Solo
111 Live And Let Die
112 This I Love
113 Motivation (Tommy Stinson vocals)
114 Baba o'Riley (Dizzy Reed Solo)

DISC 2

215 Street Of Dreams
216 You Could Be Mine
217 DJ Ashba Guitar Solo
218 Sweet Child o' Mine
219 Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2
220 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Axl Piano Solo)
221 November Rain
222 Glad To Be Here (Bumblefoot vocals)
223 Don't Cry
224 Civil War
225 Knockin' On Heaven's Door
226 Nightrain

DISC 3 (Encores)

327 Instrumental Jam
328 Madagascar
329 Whole Lotta Rosie
330 Richard Fortus and Bumblefoot Acoustic Jam
331 Patience
332 Instrumental Jam #2
333 Paradise City
334 Thank You and Good Night

LINE-UP

Axl Rose - vocals, piano
DJ Ashba - guitar
Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal - guitar, backing vocals
Richard Fortus - guitar, backing vocals
Tommy Stinson - bass, backing vocals
Dizzy Reed - keyboards, bongos
Chris Pitman - keyboards
Frank Ferrer - drums

ARTWORK

To follow

SOURCE

Zoom H2 (internal mics, low gain) > Goldwave (volume boost and track splits) > FLAC 4 > MP3

NOTES

Surprised there haven't been more of the gigs from this tour on dime (eighth on the tour, only Moscow showing so far).

Well, to paraphrase the sayings of the legendary Mark and Lard - two hours of great music crammed into a three hour set! I had a fear that the set would be bloated and indulgent, and Axl didn't let me down.

The two out of three is a reasonable rule of thumb. The classic songs were simply superb; but SIX (count them) solos as a token gesture towards Axl democracy? Avoid AT ALL COSTS the Tommy Stinson, Dizzy Lee, Bumblefoot and Axl solos - all are absolute tripe deserving no place on a concert setlist for professional musicians. Richard Fortus's and DJ Ashba's solos, while unnecessary, are entertaining enough.

So, three hours of music, you may (I would recommend) choose to skip through some, but don't write the band off, when they rock, they really rock. Not that great a spectacle to watch, I'm afraid: in particular, having three lead guitarists, rather than value for money, just makes it difficult to know who's the focal point. As the gig went along, however, Richard Fortus became more and more mighty.

Got home at 2:35, so apologies if sounding early-morningish. Before anyone asks, didn't record Thin Lizzy - didn't like them at the time, don't like them now. The sound quality on their set was truly awful, so I doubt a recording would have worked anyway.

DL
DL