Well surprise surprise, the audio contents of the rather expensive Appetite For Destruction deluxe super duper remastered re-release are available to stream on the humble Spotify. I dunno how long this has been available but it's new to me. The main album has been discussed to death so I won't even touch that in this review. I also don't really give a shit about the abbreviated re-issue of Lies that got tacked on here either. What gets my rocks off are the 1986 Sound City Sessions. While the bootlegs of this sesh have been floating around for years, this is the first time a cleaned up version has been readily available to casuals and noobs.

The Sound City Sessions were a run through for Guns N Roses. They wanted to see what they sounded like for the first time in the studio after a shitload of gigs. This was to be their trial run before the official album sessions. What makes this such an incredible rock experience is the fact that this is essentially live in the studio and about as raw as you can get. The sesh even begins with a false start intro to Welcome To The Jungle. Even this overplayed turd sounds like it has new life to it in this raw stripped down format. There's no backing vocals at all and there's exactly two guitars. Izzy on his white ES-175 and Slash on his Derrig Les Paul copy. Several songs from the upcoming debut are included here: Nightrain, Rocket Queen, Out Ta Get Me, Think About You, You're Crazy, My Michelle, and the perennial hit Paradise City. Every single track has significant changes from their final forms. Nightrain is slightly slower and is missing the explosive refrain that comes right after the solo. Rocket Queen sounds way more bluesey in the extended outro by way of the pronounced slide guitar. This is in contrast to the heavily melodic outro on the album. What is notable missing however, are two important songs. The minor public hit / massive fan fav It's So Easy and the song that catapulted them, Sweet Child O Mine. Both tracks represent complete opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of pure rock n roll debauchery and tender affection. Surprisingly, there's a few tracks that were used on the Use Your Illusion albums, Back Off Bitch and two versions of November Rain. The former is extremely angry and the piano version of November Rain is superior to the acoustic.

The covers included here are a nice addition and I wonder if the band recorded them as either warm up songs or when they were just messing around. There's a real sense of just going for it and playing loose and wild. On tracks like Heartbreak Hotel and Jumping Jack Flash, Slash just goes off and shreds away faster than he's known for and while it's not the most musical sounding thing in the world, it's still pretty cool. Side bonus is having a studio version of Mama Kin. The "live" version on Lies was the only way to hear this for many years until now. If anything, this smattering of cover songs shows how fun it is to jam some fun shit.

Other than the Sound City Sessions there's various live songs and out takes. A few songs from club shows but not a whole complete set. Like I mentioned, this is on Spotify so head over there to hear it if you don't want to plunk down the cost of the massive box. Fans of the deep cuts on Appetite For Destruction will have a field day with this.