Welcome to the Nipple Jungle

I'll make no apologies for their current status and mutated incarnation, but I've always liked Guns 'n Roses. With me and music, and art in general, I always tend to ask myself "do I believe this art"... would the artist die for their art or while doing their art? And before I get too philosophical, I think we can agree that Guns 'n Roses were always near death, either on stage or off. There are few musicians who I BELIEVE these days.

So rewind to summer 2002... I knew my eventual wife was cool when she agreed to go with me to London for no other real reason than to see Guns 'n Roses play at the Docklands Arena, with Weezer (of all bands) opening. We had a great time in London and we thought the show was tremendous. If you closed your eyes, it was 1987. Rivers Cuomo made a funny statement... he said when Weezer first started out, they would open for GnR cover bands. He thought it was strangely ironic that here they were opening for the "real" band.

Anyway, some months later GnR played in our town of NYC at Madison Square Garden. My buddy Jules at MSG hooked us up with solid tickets and off we went. Again, there was an odd choice of an opener... the Beastie Boys DJ, Mix Master Mike... who is actually tremendously fun.

If there's one thing GnR, and Axl in particular, are famous for, it's a late arrival on stage. So I suppose in anticipation of a late arrival and because you're at a Guns 'n Roses show, the big screen operators put the "breast cam" into full effect. Camera guys in the venue would scan the crowd for mammary-ific women and the crowd would coax them into shakin' what their momma's gave them. So I'm sitting there next to my girlfriend trying to act tortured by this display of infrastructure operated by men. Anyway, there's a woman behind us with a beer in her hand saying "Oh, that's nothing... WHATEVER!" and we're wondering what she's talking about.

A couple minutes later she says, "okay, I'm going to give them a show... those things they've been showing are nothing. Watch this!" So we're curious what the deal is so we turn back... the woman stands up, lifts up her shirt... and starts spraying breastmilk, which falls directly into the area we are sitting in. We jumped out of our chairs while some drunk guys near us opened their mouths.

Okaaaaay. While my wife is patient, that's the kinda thing which could drive someone to get up and go home. I coaxed her into staying through that, somehow. The show was again tremendous.

There are many deep questions one has to think about while pondering this story. I'll leave you to it.

Welcome to the nipple jungle, indeed.