It has been announced who's going to be the opening act for Guns n' Roses on December 13th in Salt Lake City. It will be Zakk Wylde's band, Black Label Society. This will be the second time I've seen them. They were good, but not great. I saw them in a small club, it will be interesting to see them in a bigger venue. The concert doesn't even start until 9:00pm. It's going to be a late night with an opening act and Axl's diva behavior
I've been jamming out to the G N' R's "Live Era '87-'93" CD and it kicks butt. The first CD starts off with "Nightrain" ("I Love That Stuff")...
and segues seamlessly right into their best song "Mr. Brownstone". What a powerful 1, 2 punch. I love how "Mr. Brownstone" starts with the guitar and drums working together to create a sound I've never heard before.
This is the song that Axl says they "go on stage about 9:00", which is funny as it seems they go on stage later now.
Guns N' Roses were a tight band live back in this era. I don't expect them to be as tight in 2011. Although if they are 2/3rds that tight now they'd still be better than about 95% of bands that are around now.
"The Walking Dead's" episode last night was okay. But even when this show has one of it's better episodes it can't help but to disappoint.
Last night's episode was titled "Chupacabra", which is a mythical beast.
"Chuprcabra" starts off with a flashback: Shane, Lori, Carl and the Peletiers are on a freeway near Atlanta. The Peletiers are Ed, who was thankfully killed in Season One, Carol and Sophia. There are helicopters bombing Atlanta trying to kill off as many zombies as possible. That reminds me of one of my biggest gripes of this season: why don't the survivors lure a bunch of zombies into a place and kill a lot of them at once? Like for instance in a barn :)
Seeing the helicopters destroy zombie infested parts of Atlanta was a cool and logical scene, I started to think that maybe this show has it's mojo back. But unfortunately that notion was dashed with the great Sophia hunt still on. And it still wasn't resolved this episode. That will be at least 6 episodes with that boring storyline. As ew.com pointed out the missing Sophia story line will have covered almost half of the second season.
Meanwhile Carl Grimes is still recovering and Lori is still sitting by his bed crying. Although that's not the only thing she's crying about now. I realize each episode consists of one day, but how damn boring is that this season. Can we jump a few days ahead? We aren't getting any action, the only ones getting action are Glenn and Maggie!
Rick and Shane go out in the woods as this search has been broken up into a grid system. Rick and Shane remember good times but that eventually devolves into a pissing contest. Shane is ready to move on and stop looking for Sophia. Although if this is a real life situation, I would suggest they still keep on looking for Sophia. But in terms of entertainment, this story line sucks.
As if this story line hasn't done enough damage, Daryl is also out on the search. He's by himself, riding a horse while surveying the area. The horse kicks him off and Daryl rolls down an embankment. He impales himself with one of his own arrows as he rolls down the embankment. He passes out and later recovers consciousness. He's coming out of it slowly and he looks up and sees Merle, his long lost brother Merle. Merle is calling out his manhood.
A bit later Daryl realizes Merle is just a hallucination and there's a zombie that's actually chewing on his boot. (Yes it's as dumb as it sounds.) Sarcasm alert: Of course the zombie wouldn't go for a more vulnerable area. course although injured and barely waking up he has the wherewithal to get up and kill the zombie. Then another zombie comes out of the forest and Daryl is able to kill him just in time. I love that these zombies are just out in the woods when Daryl is passed out and they still can't kill him. The mindless zombies can find these people out in the forest, but they can't find Hershel's farm which is in a wide open clearing?
Meanwhile Hershel again is showing his lack of foresight and he's also being a douche bag. He seems to live in this Utopian world where zombies aren't a constant threat. In his twisted reality he wants to be in charge and wants Rick to clear anything through him. Hershel doesn't have the wherewithal to be a leader of men in the zombie apocalypse. Hershel doesn't want any weapons on his property. He warns Maggie not to get attached to Glenn. He even gets mad that Rick's crew wants to make dinner for Hershel and his family. It seems he literally wants to approve everything. It's too bad that he's such a shortsighted person. In the midst of a zombie apocalypse he seems to think they will remain untouched. He may be genial, but unfortunately he's short sighted and living in a world of fantasy.
Why are Rick and crew still worrying about Sophia? What they need to do is to get the hell off Hershel's farm, and so does the show.
Back to Daryl he needs to climb up the embankment and the hallucination of Merle returns. "Merle" berates him to get up to the top. He finally does and then walks back to Hershel's farm. Daryl is injured and has sort of taken on the gait of a walker. He comes out into the clearing around Hershel's farm. Andrea is on top of Dale's RV on lookout duty and she screams "walker".
Daryl comes into the clearing several of the men rush out to kill the alleged zombie. Andrea is now quite a marksman, on her own she decides to kill the zombie. The men run out and realize that it's not a zombie but Daryl. Of course Andrea still shoots, but the bullet only grazes Daryl's head. That was stupid. And if she really is going to shoot, do it before all the men rush out there. This show survives on illogic too much. Daryl being grazed by a bullet is a great metaphor for this show. Just when it seems something truly exciting is going to happen, the show only grazes that brilliant idea.
They get Daryl back to Hershel's house and Hershel sews him up and whines about all the antibiotics they go through. Add another attribute to his lack of leadership skills. Somebody please punch Hershel in the face. The tension continues to build between the separate groups of people.
After playing hard to get Maggie decides to have sex with Glenn again. She passes him a note at the dinner everyone is having. Again this show drives me crazy the note is passed in the worst possible situation? When anyone and everyone can see it and possibly guess what the two are up to. Glenn writes on the note about meeting in the hayloft. But because this show is lacking great story ideas, it has to have Maggie not read the note until a few hours later. What the hell? She couldn't say she had to go to the bathroom and read it then? She couldn't pretend like she had to clean the dishes and read it in the kitchen. No she had to take the note and not read it for hours later. Aargh!
Later Glenn goes to the barn to meet Maggie, he doesn't know what's in the barn. He discovers a whole horde of zombies. Hershel in his short sighted, completely unrealistic view has decided to keep these zombies in the barn for reasons that will probably be explained next episode. But knowing this show, it might not be explained for several episodes. Of course they will still be looking for Sophia at the same time. Or is she one of the zombies in the barn?
Again I hate that whole story line in the graphic novels and the show isn't as good as the novels. I can only guess how stupid next week's episode will be. From the previews we see Hershel talking to Lori about his expecting that they will be moving on. Hershel and the show are both repeating themselves. We also see that zombies break out of the barn. What's going to happen when all these zombies break out and attack? None of Hershel's people have guns? He also hasn't let Rick's people have guns on his property. People are going to be dying next week. While I'm not expecting a lot from next week's show, I hope this will finally be the impetus of Rick and gang finally moving on. That's the case in the graphic novel. This show needs a kick in the butt, there just isn't enough compelling drama at this point.
Let's hope the next two episodes are fantastic and lives up to it's promise finally. That's because after the 7th episode this show is going to go on a 3 month hiatus. If this show doesn't live up to it's promise soon there may not be enough people that come back for the last 6 episodes. Actually with a third season already being approved I don't think that will be such a bad idea. Maybe Glenn Mazarra, the show runner, and AMC will get the point about how lame this show has become. Although with how slow this show has come now, maybe we should call Mazarra the show crawler.
For one of AMC's other original shows, "The Killing", I'm expecting a fairly big audience for it's second season's first episode. But with season one ending so stupidly and with the long layoff I predict "The Killing" audience will plummet quite a bit for episode 2. Of course that's me assuming that the killer will be announced in the season two premiere.
With the insanely boring first episode of "Hell On Wheels" I'm afraid AMC is going downhill fast. It's time to start thinking about going back to showing repeats of "Top Gun" and "Jurassic Park".
themusicaddict
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