In Defense Of Axl Rose & The Truth About The FMX Birthday Bash

I completely understand why Axl Rose turned his back on the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame awards.  Imagine if somebody told you you were going to get something cool, then told you you had to jump through all kinds of flaming hoops to get it. Chances are you'd just say, forget it.  This is the old carrot on a stick trick, except they offered him a carrot and they started beating him with a stick.  More after the jump.

A while back I turned 50 and because some people see that as a milestone, I was told that I 'had to have a party, you have some many friends who'd like to celebrate with you'.  This though completely rubbed me the wrong way.  Sure I'd love to have a party but in order to do so I'd have to get my backyard ready, call people from all over so they wouldn't feel snubbed, pick up a couple from the airport, get liquor and snacks and blah, blah, blah. The fact is, my old friends have moved on and my new friends already spend nearly every weekend with me.  I think it's for reasons like this that Axl Rose blew off the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  First off, the award means next to nothing, then there's all the pressure to do things you don't want to do to get it.  Forget it, rock has always been about rebellion and to tell the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame/Rolling Stone magazine to shove it is a VERY rock and roll thing to do.

So now that the awards show is filmed and in the can and FMX is  celebrating it's birthday this weekend, I can finally reveal that Guns n' Roses was supposed to be this years FMX Birthday Bash not once, but twice.   We literally had them on the hook TWICE but we just couldn't get the logistics to work out.  Now had this worked out, Guns would have been the Bash and we would have just called X-Fest 9 a two day concert (meaning it wouldn't have costed you the Korn show, although it might not be Korn/Chevelle and all the others).  The biggest problem stemming from this being that we could probably never repeat the two day concert format for future X-Fests.

I hope you have a blast at the FMX Birthday Bash and/or X-fest 9 this weekend (if you still need details you can get them here).  We still have a shot at getting Guns n' Roses at some point in the future.  Whether you want to call them Guns n' Roses or Axl Rose and his new band, the shows are supposed to be absolutely epic and Axl's singing is supposedly spot on.  Let's cross our fingers on this one and here's to a great year of concerts kicking off this weekend!