cover albums#39: guns n' roses

39. Guns N' Roses, The Spaghetti Incident? (1993)



A set of metal and punk covers, with the latter far outweighing the former and who can tell the difference here anyway? Most of it's pure scuzz: Misfits ("Attitude"), Professionals ("Black Leather"), Nazareth ("Hair of the Dog"), the Damned ("New Rose"), Fear ("I Don't Care About You"), the Stooges, the Dolls, etc. Three tracks sound definitive: UK Subs's "Down on the Farm" (comic value of which is greatly increased by Axl's exaggerated Brit accent), Johnny Thunders's "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" (if not the best version, then probably the best recording), and the Dead Boys's "Ain't it Fun" (so made to order it's a cliché, but not an unconvincing one). Those last two are sung by...Izzy? As a double-bonus, you get a so-so remake (with a gorgeous Slash intro) of the Skyliners's doo-wop classic, "Since I Don't Have You," and an all-around-bad-idea Charles Manson cover, which, for eight seconds in '93 was "shocking," and which I'm pretty sure I listened to once.