Axl

I saw Mike Gordon, the bass player for Phish, in concert fronting his own band on Friday night. I expected to post a review for this site about that show. It was decent -- it peaked with some country funk in the first few minutes before devolving into straight country and smooth jazz. There was a woman whose instrument was tap dance (mics in the floor beneath her feet). Another woman in the band, a flute player, seemed entirely mauve. No matter what color light she was in, her shiny skirt, her sweater, and her mass of thin braids always looked mauve. Even her face was mauve. I don't know how she did it. There was also some sweet tromboning and pedal steel playing. But at the show, I was thinking about how I didn't want to write about it. No, I wanted to write about Guns 'n' Roses' video for "Paradise City". There's a brief shot in that video, right at the beginning, in black and white. It's before the song really starts, still in the part where the bass drum and the high hat are alternating through the intro. There's a shot of Axl Rose, decked out in some sort of carabinieri hat, walking into a concert venue looking remarkably sober and clean. He's got a tag around his neck, and he holds it up to the camera so we can all read that he has "Access All Areas". Then he gives a yessir nod with a twinkle in his eye that speaks all you need to know about the areas he'll access before the night is over, and that's it. Yes, that's what I wanted to write about, the twinkle in his 1987 eye.