Showing posts with label 99 to Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 99 to Life. Show all posts

Monday, September 13, 2010

Used to Love Her









Random Guns N' Roses Talk 

I used to love GNR a lot.  I was thirteen, so think about your basic Justin Bieber fangirl and replace it with Axl Rose.  Then I discovered Bikini Kill and feminism.  I started wearing  combat boots, writing bad poetry and moved on.

Too bad.  Appitie for Destruction was a great album.  That being said, Axl Rose is an ass.  They could have made a lot of great albums, instead they made one great album, two sort of good albums, one dull covers album, and one bargin bin laughing stock.  

Talk Over

I hesitated before deciding to discuss the Guns' N Roses song, Used to Love Her.  Listening to it makes me feel guilty, the same way that liking the work that Tina Turner did with Ike more than her solo output makes me feel guilty.  While Axl Rose has never killed anyone, there's more than enough evidence out there that he has physically abused his partners.   

What makes this song any different than the other killing women type songs?  Besides the fact it's sung by a man who is an abuser?    The woman in Used to Love Her is disposable.

The women in Deila's Gone and 99 to Life are killed for withholding their very powerful affection.  The poor Knoxvile Girl is possibly killed for an unplanned pregnancy.  The woman in "Used to Love Her"? "She bitched so much, she drove [him] nuts." She became an annoyance, so the man simply killed her and buried her in his backyard.   And he's "happier this way".

The killers in Deila, Knoxvile and 99 pay for their crimes.  All suffer from remorse.  Haunted by ghosts and devils around their beds.   They all go to prison.  Axl Rose's killer is untouched by the law.

Yet the song, in my opinion is pretty damn funny.

I'd knew I'd miss her
so I had to keep her
she's buried right in my backyard

I still can't help but feel conflicted.  I give a lot of other songs a pass.  But not this one.  Is it fair?  Maybe not, but I'm sure that's human nature.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

99 to Life






She was my woman
I thought that she'd be true
Now she's gone and left me
You know her life is through.

- Social Distortion, 99 to Life

A simple age old tale. He loved her, she left him and he killed her "with his knife". Now he's in jail for the rest of his life, tortured by her memory.

While released in the 1990's, Social Distortion's 99 to Life, takes much of it's inspiration from another era. Blues and country ballads of love, broken hearts and murder permeate the song. Yet, the hard style of playing, and Mike Ness' rough vocals give the song a very modern edge. Mickey Spillane meets Johnny Cash meets the Ramones.

Don't try this at home . . .