Anyone picking up the Velvet Revolver CD on the 8th? (1 Viewer)

[Jake Gove]

The "copy protection" is easy to defeat. I picked up the CD last night and have been disappointed with the production. There are so many layers of guitars that Weiland's vocals often are lost in the mix.

Best tracks IMHO:

Slither
You Got No Right
Set Me Free

 

[MikeFR]

At first listen it was a little dissapointing but its definately growing on me.

 

[Paul_Medenwaldt]

I noticed this same thing while i'm listening to the CD through its first listen. I don't find that the band has confidence in Scott's voice to make him the lead singer so they make the instruments/music the lead and throw the vocals in the background.

But i may be biased since i never really cared for Scott's vocal's even after he stopped his ripoff of Pearl Jam.

Paul

 

[Brian L]

There is VR thread at Steve Hoffman's with a link to a site that analyzed the copy protection scheme. ridiculously easy to get around it...it says for most users, just hold down the shift key when the disc is inserted into the drive.

Seemed to work here. Ripped it into iTunes with absolutely no problem, and the track list is already at Gracenotes.

As for the music, after one listen on crap PC speakers, I like it a lot. I was never a huge STP fan, and I can take or leave Scott's vocals, but there is something about Slash, Duff, and Matt playing together that just works for me. They seem to have a really solid groove.

Can't wait to fire it up in the he-man rig down stairs.

BGL

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Got it, and listening to it now. It's good, but I was expecting more. I don't know about anyone else, but it reminds me a lot more of STP than GnR (all the layers of guitars). One thing I always liked about GnR, was that their dual guitar attack was a lot like (old) Aerosmith in that each guitarist would be playing something different, yet it goes together really well. Here, just a mishmash of layers and layers and it's a lot of times tough to hear any individual instrument. Yes, seems "overproduced" to me as well.

 

[Rachael B]

I heard the album and I didn't find it very inspiring. I aggree with the over-produced accessment. I think I'd like this group better live, playing old T-Bone Walker or Mckinley Morganfield songs than their dull, "stereotypical" compositions. The vocals are poor also. I'd rather they did more instrumentals...

 

[Brian L]

KCB, you beat me to it

Thats exactly what I thought after finally giving it a complete run through Friday afternoon via headphones. Lots of chord changes that are straight out of the STP song book.

Not that the songs are rips of STP songs, just that Scott's influence on the songs is obvious.

Surprisingly for me, I like it. A lot. I was never a huge STP fan, but for some odd reason, this works for me.

Maybe because my last few rock cee-dees by contemporary artists (Jet, Fountains of Wayne, and Ryan Adams for example) have just pissed me off because they had so much derivative stuff?

Whatever, VR just sounds to me like what it is, and does not for the most part blatantly rip-off anyone else. Other than themselves, or course.

Overall, I don't mind the denseness of the mix so much as the fact that overall sound quality is lacking. Given that we have 3/5th's of the line up that did Use Your Illusion I&II, I was expecting killer sonics, particularly with the bass/drums/rythym guitar, and what we got was not even close.

I am sure someone with CoolEdit will chime in and say its overally compressed. Probably so. All these ears will tell me is that the recording just lacks the sort of rythmic punch that UYI did so well.

When I played it on my main system, my first thought was that the cymbals were way, way down in the mix, which robbed the recording of any sort of crispness.

Listenning to a 320K AAC rip via iPod through phones, that impression was reinforced, so much so that I used the iPods treble Boost EQ preset. That helped a lot, but still did not elevate this to anything close to GnR's last efforts.

But again, I like it. I think the riffs and songs are pretty good, so much so that I can forgive the sonics a bit.

BGL

 

[Andrew Bunk]

CD is OK, but certainly not the "return of rock" that it was advertised to be. IMO, the vocals were weak, there weren't a lot of memorable riffs, and Duff's signature bass sound seems buried.

On the copy protection, I have autorun disabled on my PC's CD drive. I think there's a program that autoruns from the CD that installs something on your PC so you can't rip the disc. That's probably where holding shift down comes in. But if you have autorun disabled my guess is you shouldn't have to do anything different.

 

[Todd H]

I picked this up over the weekend. It's a bit of a disappointment, but it grows on me the more I listen. I just wish the sound quality was better though. :frowning:

 

[Mark Murphy]

The CD's not bad from what I've heard but the "copy protection" really pissed me off. I make copies of all my CDs to bring to work. I hate when I want to hear a CD on a weekend and realize its at work.

 

[Brian L]

As a few have noted, no reason to sweat it.

It seems to be the most lame-assed copy protection imaginable. Makes me wonder if they are somehow doing something else, like embedding something in the music that can be traced if the files are shared over the 'net.

Surely, the fact that it is easily bypassed did not escape the content owners?

BGL

 

[Mark Murphy]

I ripped it to my PC, as I do w/all the CDs I purchase. It won't play on Windows Media. It skips on purpose.

 

[Brendon]

Planning on buying this either on CD or from the (newly opened!) UK iTMS. Is the copy protection at all problematic to get around on OS X 10.3 / iTunes 4.6 ?

I ask as my music listening is 50/50 on my CD player and iPod - having the physical media & packaging of the CD would be good to have, but not at the expense of not being able to play on my portable.

From what I've heard of the album, it's hardly likely to sound at it's best played through a decent hifi, so the lossy version offered by iTMS would be quite acceptable.

Thanks,

Bren

PS Damned good to hear Duff, Matt & Slash together again - brings back memories of the early 90s!

 

[Brendon]

Planning on buying this either on CD or from the (newly opened!) UK iTMS. Is the copy protection at all problematic to get around on OS X 10.3 / iTunes 4.6 ?

I ask as my music listening is 50/50 on my CD player and iPod - having the physical media & packaging of the CD would be good to have, but not at the expense of not being able to play on my portable.

From what I've heard of the album, it's hardly likely to sound at it's best played through a decent hifi, so the lossy version offered by iTMS would be quite acceptable.

Thanks,

Bren

PS Damned good to hear Duff, Matt & Slash together again - brings back memories of the early 90s!

 

[Brian L]

Brendon, I had no trouble at all ripping it to the PC version of iTunes.

As was previously posted, I did hit the shift key when I loaded the CD, but as someone else observed, the copy protection may not matter if you do not have auto-run enabled (I really don't know if I do or not).

Looks like Mark had some problems with Windows Media Player. Guess the VR boys are Apple guys

BGL

 

[Brian L]

Brendon, I had no trouble at all ripping it to the PC version of iTunes.

As was previously posted, I did hit the shift key when I loaded the CD, but as someone else observed, the copy protection may not matter if you do not have auto-run enabled (I really don't know if I do or not).

Looks like Mark had some problems with Windows Media Player. Guess the VR boys are Apple guys

BGL

 

[MikeFR]

This is what happened the first time I tried. The second time I disabled the auto-run(holding down shift) and it ripped no problem.

 

[MikeFR]

This is what happened the first time I tried. The second time I disabled the auto-run(holding down shift) and it ripped no problem.

 

[Benson R]

I had read that versions of this cd from outside the US included a bonus track, a cover of bodies. Since I was in paris during the release date I made sure to pick up a copy there, but was dissappointed to find it didnt include any extra tracks.

Can anyone confirm if any release of this cd included a bonus track?

Also its good to see that this album debuted at number one. I saw them live at the roseland show in nyc and they were great. I was never a big stp fan but weiland was a great frontman for this band.

 

[Benson R]

I had read that versions of this cd from outside the US included a bonus track, a cover of bodies. Since I was in paris during the release date I made sure to pick up a copy there, but was dissappointed to find it didnt include any extra tracks.

Can anyone confirm if any release of this cd included a bonus track?

Also its good to see that this album debuted at number one. I saw them live at the roseland show in nyc and they were great. I was never a big stp fan but weiland was a great frontman for this band.