Live Era '87-'93 [Album]

How great were Guns N' Roses? Great enough to write a line like "She's got eyes of the bluest skies / As if they thought of rain." Great enough to make those wusses Poison wear cowboy hats. Great enough to kill off the opposition. When Axl Rose retired his bottle of Jack Daniels following 1991's Use Your Illusion I and II, every poodle rocker on Sunset immediately registered with Where Are They Now? But that was yesterday. Live Era may signal a resurgence of G N' R activity that includes a new album, but the record's really a eulogy. Slash, Duff, Izzy and the rest are gone, and only Axl seems unaware that his band is DOA. Yet Live Era remains rock for the ages. "Paradise City" sounds great even being knocked out by weekend bar bands. "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "November Rain" could only have been written by someone who cries when Nazareth's "Love Hurts" comes on the jukebox. Enough time has passed so that this stuff is formally classic. Indeed, Era should have been packaged with its own Zippo lighter. Live, however, G N' R were viciously calculated. Every track here smacks of precision, as if the rock was meticulously agonized over. When it's not polished, it's embarrassing. By the time "Move to the City" rolls by, the band is weighted down with an irrelevant horn section and jazz interludes. The howling mad "You Could Be Mine" doesn't come a moment too soon. If you were once young, white and hopeless, just listen to "Estranged" and know that Axl was there with you, too. Rose still gives good lip, and he's also included the misogynist "Used to Love Her" to prove it. But while America's least-eligible bachelor could knock over mic stands and then bounce off of the occasional audience member, the rest of the Roses must have gotten tired of cranking out the same riffs night after night after night - perhaps they were right. But for the millions who revisit their youth via L wrote: