23 years ago today...

....My all time favourite album was released. It changed my musical taste forever.

21st of July 1987. I had just turned 19, I had a 2 year old daughter. I'd been a devout Durannie up until then. Then I heard Guns n' Roses, Appetite for Destruction. wow! I'd never heard anything like it before. Axl Rose couldn't sing, Slash looked rather odd in his leather trousers and top hat but could play the guitar like I'd never heard before. Welcome to the Jungle rocked my socks off (well it would have had I been wearing any).  The whiny high pitched vocals were ingrained in my brain and I still know all the words 23 years later, and I still play the album several times a week. It is a classic album that is still selling copies to this day. I've personally owned 3 cassette tapes (remember them? LOL) and 4 CD's of the album before moving on to mp3's of it. That's how much I've played it.

Without Guns n' Roses, we wouldn't have had the likes of Nirvana. Guns n' Roses stretched the boundaries of music and created something that wasn't music, but certainly got played. I never got to see them play live, although my hubby did when Monsters of Rock played at Donnington every year. 

Having read autobiographies of the band, their rock and roll life was a mess. Ego's clashed, drink and drugs were taken to excess. After Appetite, they released Use your Illusion I and II together. They couldn't decide which tracks to use for the album so they made two albums. After that, the rock and roll ego's were too much and Guns n' Roses as we all knew them went their separate ways. Axl has created several 'new' Guns n' Roses as he claims he had rights to the band name, but Axl wasn't in the original lineup. Izzy Stradlin and Slash created Guns n' Roses. We called out daughter Isabelle so we could call her Izzy (which we don't actually call her LOL). Slash is still touring now, and my hubby went to see him in Manchester a couple of weeks ago and was in awe at his guitar playing. He can still rock.

So I'd just like to say  happy birthday Appetite for Destruction, it's been a pleasure knowing you. 

The Gallery - A Novel Idea

This weeks theem for the Gallery from Tara is : A novel idea.  A photograph which you think represents a favourite book or novel or even children's tale.

I spent some time thinking about my favourite books. There are so many books to choose from as I'm a bit of a bookworm. I loved reading about Genghis Khan, but without a trip Mongolia, I'm lacking in photographic matter. One of my all time favourite books is called Aztec by Gary Jennings, but as the Aztecs no longer exist, I was stumped again.

I decided to go for this photograph. Some of you may have seen it before, but as it's the title of the book, I'm going to post it again.

The story of a search for the ideal utopia and personal fulfilment, only to find that life's problems don't all go away and in fact bring forth a multitude of new problems.

Guessed yet? It's The Beach by Alex Garland. It's such a shame they turned it into a film with Leonardo Di Caprio.