Single-Disc Use Your Illusion
(I’m on my way home from the Nevada desert today. Until I get back, here’s one more installment of my 2006 double-album series.)
If not being able to edit an album down to a single vinyl disc of about 45 minutes is self-indulgent, then what’s not being able to able to edit down to a single CD? Excessive? Ridiculous? Loopy?
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Guns N’ Roses. Their 1991 release Use Your Illusion was sold as two separate discs but was clearly one big album. Oddly, this was debated at the time. (The tipoff: calling the discs Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II.) Use Your Illusion was one of the longest albums ever released by a major rock act: its total running time of about three hours even beat out famously excessive triple-disc efforts such as Sandinista! or All Things Must Pass.
Since vinyl albums had become pretty much vestigial by the early ’90s—collectors could special-order them, but that was about it—we’ve boiled down a playlist that fits on one compact disc, without worrying about those old-fashioned “sides.” To uncover the great lost Guns N’ Roses album, it turns out you don’t need to use your illusion—just your iTunes software.
1. Civil War
2. Dust N’ Bones
3. Bad Obsession
4. Don’t Cry (Original)
5. Right Next Door to Hell
6. Bad Apples
7. November Rain
8. You Could Be Mine
9. Yesterdays
10. Pretty Tied Up
11. Garden of Eden
12. Estranged
(total running time: 65:37)
posted 2 September 2008 in Tasty Bits and tagged double albums, Guns N' Roses.
