Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Track #4 on Chinese Democracy.

This thread is for all discussions about the song.




/jarmo

still one of fav's on the new album.... the piano at the beginning is so tearful and Axl's vocals are in fine form. still think the name change was a shocker though

One of my favorites.

The intro especially. Well frankly, its just all good but the intro hits a nerve. Its very emotional.

Better than my favorite RIR3 version

WOW, the ending now is back to being so powerful. The music is excellently done, the lyrics are some of the best and it just is so powerful. I am still tingling.


Amazing!

what a song :D this has been one of my favourites for many years now since i first heard a live bootleg of it back in 02 I think (could have the year wrong there)

I just love it and the way the guitar parts now sound so crisp it just all works

Never really liked the song that much, but the final version is the best version (as we all should expect)!  :yes:

It will help separate the new fans from the old.  Most old fans will refer to it as the Blues every so often and the new ones will not understand what they meant.

I always loved the song and the reworked intro is great.

Well...i did think it made more sense to call it the blues haha, since thats more chorus heavy.

but bah, who gives a fuck lmao. The songs the song, n thats all that matters

its the only song i wish was still like the 02' version...it just seems like a waist without that guitar lead in it...

still very happy thou!!!!




clint

This kicks ass now - luv the guitars

Love the introduction. Besides the guitar, the strings worked in slightly below it add to the sound. The vocals on this are incredible. A great mix of everything Axl does right. As far as lyrics go, this song contains some of my favorite ever. "As long as this road seems, I know it's called the street of dreams" and "What this means to me is more than I know you believe" both hit home for me. Robin's solo is awesome and exactly what this song needs.
5/5

Great song!!What else is new lol!

Love the "it cost more that it should for me" lol, among all the rest of the song of course lolol

I've had a mixed relationship with this song over the years. Now it's finished my conclusion is that it's a good song but Axl's vocal is too whiny and spoils it overall.

IMO, when this is released as a single, it will do what SCOM did for Appetite.  It will be one of the most popular Guns song of all time once it gets heavy circulation.  Just awesome...

Love the song, I wish they would have put the "ok nevermind" bit from RIR3 though  :hihi:

listening to it again (really hope my pre-order turns up tomorrow) thank god for myspace!
Its always going to be the blues to me

Still a great tune! 4/5

There is one very small background keyboard effect from 2002 that started at the lyric "I don't know just what I should do"... I wish that was still in the song.  Anyways, it's still great!

One of my favs since I first heard it from the RIR '01 gig...  Back then i remember thinking: oh! the album must finally be on the way!!   ::)

It's great to finally have the CD. I got it today!

What's up with the missing lines in the printed lyrics in the booklet...?

Does anyone else think the vocals on this are poor?

I have been reading the comments above with people saying "vocals are amazing" etc, and I can honestly say I think they are poor. The first line is good but the 2nd and 4th lines in the intro - when Axl is forcing it - I think are poor.

I remember hearing the leaked version and thinking - yes the vocals are poor (I even thought they had just been lifted from a live performance for the purposes of putting together a quick demo) but I was thinking that doesn't matter - it is only a demo version.

However now that I have heard the final version I am still not happy with them.

I've never really liked this song, but after hearing the finished version I finally get it. Great track. Aggressive pain and beauty.

I honestly didn't like this song that much from the live versions it didn't seem that special, but I have TOTALLY change my mind and I love this song and think that if released as a single will be a hit!

This is my favorite song so far.  When Axl hits those high notes after the piano interlude towards the end it just gives me goosebumps. 

My favorite version to this point had been the 2002 version

But wow, Ron really just knocked this thing out of the park.  He actually managed to make it rock a lot harder than it did without taking away any of the elegance.  I think Ron may have been the missing link.  His work on CD, Street of Dreams, and IRS in particular elevated these songs to whole new levels

"street of dreams?"

when did this song get changed from the blues?  i forget which live version I had, but i loved it.  this version is just as good.  i had that old live version on a short 'new guns song' playlist i used to listen to.  i didnt like it at first, but after listening to it several times, im pretty sure it became my favorite of all the newer songs that i had listened to.

at first looking down the track list, i was disappointed not to see "the blues."  but after reading the titles, and seeing "street of dreams", i said hey, wait a minute, that line is in the song....and low and behold, they were the same.  for a minute i thought axl was saving the blues for one of the 'later' albums.

but i definitely am an older guns fan, was really into them with some of the leaks and live bootlegs of the early 2000 shows, but got fed up with year after year of "the album is coming out tuesday, XX, 20XX".  i actually posted that i would not be too interested again until i got official (and i mean official) word of the album....which seems is finally here.

Not happy about the name change.  It'll always be "The Blues" to me.

This song starts out so awesome, then dies a slow death toward the end.  A little too much vocal melody as the song is winding down for me.  But still, I regard it as one of the album's strongest tracks.

his vox in the start sound like the guy in forgetting sarah marshall singing his vampire song....this song would be a great ballad if this i love didnt exist...that song makes this one seem superfluous

HAHAHAHAHA, I said the same fuckin thing about the Forgetting Sarah Marshall thing and then in Sorry he does the dracula voice!

Yeah I'll never call this Street of Dreams.

It's the Blues to me. Axl said it in a interview way back when, so I'mma call it that.

Great song but I am surprised that the vocals are very similar to the demos we had heard. I expected them to sound more finished on the final version, especially during the first half.

My only complaint with this is

I don't like the rasp on the high intro parts

I liked his 2001 RIR3 clean high voice on those parts better where he'd do the awesome vibrato..........

wish he had stuck with that.

but other than that, the song is amazing

yep, I agree 100% , I love how he sang this song in his clean higher pitched vocals ala RIR3

and the guitars seemed to be lower in the mix in this version...
I still dig the new intro though

Gotta agree with much of the above comments.

Positive The build up in the beginning really captures a unique, dare I say, more positive vibe to the song.  I didnt think I would like that, but I do.  Also, I think it builds up overall really well.  The layers work.

Negative The vocals are not as strong as I had wished.  It just seemed that from ther versions that this song would come across better album version.

I cant believe I am saying the song is not "epic" enough...  :o

Overall, I think this song is great though.

I thought the intro lost some gravity on the studio cut.  Hell of a song, especially the version I heard at RIR3.  I'm sorry, but I think they could have mixed this song a lot better from the studio.  It's a great song, but the mix is brutal.  It sounds like they recorded the intro in a garage.  Too bad for what is a killer song.

I didn't care for any of the previous versions of this song (leaks & live versions).

It's slowly growing on me.  They definately worked on it enough so that I don't skip it when listening to the cd.

I don't like the change of title. 'Street of Dreams' just sounds cheesy to me...

Other than that, I have no complaints about the song. Since the first time I heard the song, during the live stream of Rio 2001 on the internet, I don't think I have come to like it any better or any less than that time. It's just never grown on me. Don't get me wrong, I do like the song... just not in love with it I guess.

Love this tune especially the ending crescendo!!!  I hear what you guys are saying about the vocals but what hit me when I first heard it was how emotional he sounds singing it.
So perhaps they wanted to capture that feeling rather than get the "perfect" vocal take.

On a side note, i can now see why recording vocals takes so long..  these songs are damn hard to sing really well!

I think it's good, but it was alot better in 2002 and in the recent demos  :-\

I also think they should have laid down on the auto-tune.

Great song, but cant help feeling I liked it more way back.

I'm suprised to read some people unhappy with the vocals. I think Axl sings the fuck outta this song on the album and it's my favorite job of it he's done compared to earlier versions. Hate the title change tho. The Blues is way better than Street of Dreams.

Glad to hear that crunching A (??) at the start! Fantastic

me too  :hihi:

^ or it should have atleast been the title of the song

I always loved The blues, but I can't get used to the name change yet .. It is for me one of the strongest tracks on the album, after Sorry, but I don't like the new name, it's seems corny ...

I miss the drumfill they played live at around 3.48 i think it was, right before "what this means to me is more then i know you believe"

other then that, brilliant

This is a cool song, but one of the three songs I have listened to the least.  :-[

lol. Well besides the title, it is still the same song.

I like this song more now in the studio version than the older live versions I've heard. To me this song, speaks volumes about axl's emotions. To me, it seems that this song is about his former band-mates. IDK, what do you guys think?

Great song, one of my favs. Glad it did not change much from before. I love this song.

i love the song, specially the Axl screaming at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxaqJjfSo5g

if someone wants to hear the rir3 version.

it looks like Axl was pissed off with the microfone guy or something  :nervous:

Heard this on 97.5 (Cleveland station) last night at about 9:00 PM, Eastern Standard Time.

I was definitely surprised to hear it on a station that normally only plays singles, as far as new music goes. This station is always on at work, so I hear it for 1/3 of most of my days. They play the shit out of Chinese Democracy (The song), and the usual Appetite songs. I heard Don't Cry on this station last week and kind of stopped what I was doing at the time. I hadn't heard that song on the radio for years and just kind of took it in.


Yeah, it took a couple of years for many of us here to get that, "Ok, Nevermind," out of our heads every time we heard this song.

^^^^

although i prefer the arrangement at RIR, axl sounds terrible here.

Totally agree!  They should have put a rocker in its place. Still a great song though.

The intro reminds me of the intro of Breakdown  :o Don't know why, Breakdown just comes to mind...

Street Of Dreams/The Blues is a great song

When I saw them in 02 Axl did the "only memories" part as high as the album version. It's one of the only times I've ever heard him do it live. I was so hoping it would end up on the album like that and I'm so glad it did!

Hehehehe... those are my favorite lines!  Funny how different people's taste can be!

gotta disagree toonguns; love the lyrics and vocals; though it took a while to completely grow on me but now that it has, I really do love this song; the changes that accompany it are awesome

This and Breakdown have some of my favorite single lines from Axl ever.

Yeah, definitely! Sometimes he can really say a lot with a little.




Definitely. I think it's strange that some people would use the phrase that Axl is "forcing it." I've heard that before and I just don't understand. It's obvious that he could have done the vocals however he wanted, and it's not like he was in a rush.

As for those particular vocals, I love them, and I think there's an intention in doing them that way, which I think is true of most of them. I remember a very old interview where Axl was talking about NR and indicated that for that song he deliberately wanted to sing vocals that people would be able to imitate and sing along to. I always thought it was impressive how he thought of that, and I think on SOD we see a similar thoughtfulness. I posted somewhere else about the vocals matching the song meaning, and he does a lot of that on this album. I think Madagascar and Sorry are great examples. On this song, think about how his voice switches on "you know i tried so hard to make you..." That's a great place for it. And then "and it hurts too much to see you" ? his voice alternates with the meaning of the lyrics, as well as the progression of the music. I also think this is a very distinctively GNR song with a similarly distinctive Axl Rose vocal. This song and maybe Better are the two that I think if you play for a casual listener they will easily identify as Guns N Roses having not heard the album.

Anyway I love the vocals on this song and think they're very expressive. I can't mimic Axl's high notes, but when I sing along I tend to sing in the same general tones. I do this when I'm alone, because I no doubt sound like an idiot, but still, I feel pretty awesome.

exactly the vocals are great all round i think and for the forcing the words yeah Axl just did it like that for a rush element for that part of the song

..I've listened to Street of Dreams in surround-flawed-shite at work, on a single-speaker laptop (my stereo is busted, in my defense! I was jonesing for a lil Democracy) and FINALLY the other night I put CD on my iPod... -angel's chorus-

:3 

Having Axl wailing away in your head is pretty much heaven - I was listening and I was thinking something along the lines of 'holy shit!! this is amazing! this is REALLY, REALLY GOOD MUSIC! ...better than November Rain'.   

But should I really have saved myself for the album version? Is it abolutely vital to my GN'R education that I listen to a leaked version for comparative purposes at the very least..?

I was bloody impressed by the vocals on this track...it all sounds 'right' to me. But I guess that depends on how you understand 'Axl singing perfectly'. Perfect singing, or perfect Axl? It's got soul.

Love this song! I hope it's the next single!

^It is, was released a while ago

R U sure?

i don't think he is.

No it wasn't.  It was rumored to be the 3rd single and someone claimed they had a copy of it, and maybe they did.  But it was never officially released, at least not yet.

yeah faldor i meant that perhaps dimitrisaxl too... but, wait maybe it was secretly released in seelys region :o

I  remember the single edit was online. The song was shortened with some stuff edited out.

I know that it hasn't been released as a single yet, that's why I asked If he is sure!  : ok:

Found it

http://www.esnips.com/doc/55df9224-4cd0-4612-8842-edf6310be514/Street-of-drams---single-radio-version

this was the apparant promo cd.......

http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?topic=55927.0 (http://www.heretodaygonetohell.com/board/index.php?topic=55927.0)

Good work duder.

Well i'm assuming that was official anyway

Everyone i know thinks this!!! lol

It MAY be official, but it was never officially released.  So if it was official, it's on hold.

Loved the track ever since the bootlegs of "Rock In Rio III". It always vias with "This I Love" as my favourite track on the album.

The lyrics about being in Love and not being able to do anything about it, surely must be as universal as a song can get.

(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4702/cdstreetpro.jpg) (http://img189.imageshack.us/i/cdstreetpro.jpg/)


(http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/3731/cdstreetpro2.jpg) (http://img6.imageshack.us/i/cdstreetpro2.jpg/)


(http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/4540/cdstreetpro3.jpg) (http://img39.imageshack.us/i/cdstreetpro3.jpg/)


 :beer:

HBK *

That was out a while back, was it ever confirmed as real or fake?

Loved from the 1st time it was played in Vegas...The line "What I Loevd Doesn't Live Inside You Anymore" is classic!!

Other Singles/Promo:

(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5159/cdchidemsinghkpro2.jpg) (http://"http://img21.imageshack.us/i/cdchidemsinghkpro2.jpg/")



(http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/1376/cdbetterhkpro.jpg) (http://"http://img182.imageshack.us/i/cdbetterhkpro.jpg/")


HBK *

i finally appreciate the reductive function on firefox3.  8)

is it a chinese promo disc for 'better' ? no b side?

WTF? An youtube screen cap with tags? :hihi:

Heard this song on a rock radio (http://www.radiorock.fi/default.asp) station in Finland.

It fit nicely with the mix of old and new stuff they play.

 8)


/jarmo

Street of Dreams is one of the most played tracks on Radio Rock at the moment. They played it five times on Monday alone, exceeded only by Pearl Jam's Brother and some Amorphis song that both got six spins. SOD has been a Top5 song on most played list during the whole summer.

During this year, Chinese Democracy, Better and Street of Dreams are all on the station's Top20 Most Played list. CD has been played 457 times (#15), Better 439 times (#17) and SOD 411 times (#18). The most played song so far this year is Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire (829 times) followed by Metallica's Cyanide (715 times).

Those are some sweet numbers.  Thanks for that.  Finland knows where it's at.

It's the sing along song.  Everybody loves to sing with GNR--lol.

No disrepect there, it's a great song and I do like to sing along with GNR.  Has it been 9 years and we are still singing that song?  It's a keeper.

I thought it would be a hit the first time I heard it way back when.  Finland has caught on, I'm still waiting for the US.

So has Street of Dreams been officially released as a single, or is this just radio playing it because they dig the song/think listeners will dig it?

They're just playing the song at their own discretion, still no single.

On their web site it just says the track is from the Chinese Democracy album that was released last fall.

It doesn't mention the word single at all.




/jarmo

I just wish GNR released this song as their new single. It has everything to be a hit...even I remember the first time GNR played it in Vegas in 2000, Axl said something along the lines of "You'll like this one".

Hardcore fans we just don't realize how good this song is cause it's been around for over 9 years. This song was my favorite of the new songs GNR played in Vegas and Rio, and even now it's become again my new favorite track of CD.

That might take awhile...

Before all these great thoughts will happen, Axl needs to come out in the spotlight again. Do a new video or do a tour. Its totally silence and it wont make any good for CD.

BTW, I love the song...

I think he said that and then the piano sound fucked up and they had to go with Patience instead.. Later they indeed played SOD (or The Blues) anyways. :)

I just wish he did the intro like on RIR3

to this day I will play that version for people and they stand in awe of his vibrato and vocal control. I just don't think the rasp at the beginning works as well as the 2001/2002 high clean voice

on the whole, i personally prefer the album version  but that's true the 2002 live voice on the song was super beautiful.
and yet some rasp lovin people called it helium or something till 2006 tour started.

In Chile Play BETTER & STREET OF DREAMS In New Radio... SONAR FM

(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/1747/1248892659107f.jpg) (http://img38.imageshack.us/i/1248892659107f.jpg/)

This Radio Is OFFICIAL Festival International Of Vi?a Del Mar Chile In February 2010.

http://www.sonarfm.cl

 :beer:

This may be why you didn't produce this record.

This maybe is his own opinion .....

I agree his clean voice sounded better. The same goes with Madagascar.

yeah adz, i don't think axl ever thought of having D as the producer ::)

No, shit.

Listened to SOD for the first time in a good few weeks last night. I hadn't listened to album on purpose for about two weeks and it made a huge difference as I noticed little things in SOD and the rest of the album I hadn't noticed before.

I just realized how great this song is.  I had kind of overlooked it before, but I just listened to it again, and now I can really appreciate it.  Great song.  I think the lyrics are really deep too.   

Is that Buckethead that plays from 3:51 to the end of the song?  That part is really cool. 

I thought Ron put his finishing touches at the end, but I could be wrong.  It sounds similar to the live parts he plays.

yea I am trying to figure it out too. Buckethead and Bumblefoot sound similar at times.  The booklet says "street of dreams"...Guitar Solos: Fink, Buckethead.   The guitar solo at 2:16 sounds like Fink but then at about 2:40 it starts to sound like Buckethead.  I'm trying to figure out if it is both of them on that solo or if Fink does that whole solo and then Bucket does the outro.   However, on "Riad" it says Buckethead (outro) under the guitar solos section.  So you could be right about it being Ron, but I'm not really sure.  It is a very complex structure.

Fairly sure it's Bucket on the outro though it's Richard that plays it live..

This is one of the best songs on the album Axl got me with "I know its called the Street of Dreams but thats not stardust on my feet that leaves a taste thats bitter sweet thats called the Bluuuuuuuuues"

its either #1 or #2 on my favorites list for this album

Indeed. Wonder if it was Richard who came up with the idea in 2002, but then Bucket ended up nailing this outro better.

Sorry I just realized I was talking about the wrong song before.  For some reason I thought we were talking about "I.R.S.".  Whoops!

Yeah I seem to remember it emerging somewhere during the 2002 North American Tour being played by Richard but I could be very wrong.

Nope you not wrong. That outro was added to the song sometime in 2002 as it was not played like it during the 2001 shows.

Yeah. He played it for the first time in the Tacoma gig, the first of the NA tour. This outro wasn't played before that.

This song is the shiztnit*!

*3) gaddam' phenomenal, bi-atch!

Put back the drum roll in the last verse that Brain added during the 02 tour!!! They took it out on the album...

yeah, i've mentioned that too, they played it live during the 06-07 tours too so i was surprised that it wasn't on the album

+1, i loved thhat drum roll
not to mention the old guitar intro  :'(


still, the final song is good all the same!

...one of my favorite song,because it?s very emotional,I like the way Axl is singing ...


 ;)Regards from Germany ;)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shiznit


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=god+damn

You have to excuse Fernando's accent....

It isn't easy to understand what he's saying most of the time.





/jarmo

Version "THE BLUES" In 2002 Is The Real:

- STREET OF DREAMS -

 :smoking:

In all incarnations this song kicks ass, seeing it live is even better.

Thanks... 8)

Hi,
first I thought"what to hell is shiztnit" and now I know what Fernando is talking about...

thank you and regards from Germany

 ;)

I wonder why they left out the drum fill before axl's last verse on the album while they still play it that way live and have since 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct0xJgwIKc0&feature=channel 3.28 in that video in that video from 09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTn5O9G4VHc 3.47 in that video from 06

should've been around 3.50 on the studio version, you think they just forgot about recording it? :P

I'm really glad that's not on the studio version but I wondered the same thing you said.

Brain didn't play it at Rock in Rio 2001 at 4:23:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxaqJjfSo5g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxaqJjfSo5g)

Right. CheapJon mentioned performances from 06 on.

True, Brain didn't play it 2002 either.

And so once more; the point was that the drum fill was played from 06 on.

And my point was to prove it  ;)

Seeing this song live in 06 was pure magic. I had never heard it before, and during the finale, Axl jumped ontop of the piano and just fuckin nailed it.

Amazing song.

The song stuck out as a beautiful song to me as 'The Blues' when I heard it at the 12-29-01 show in Las Vegas. It was exciting and promising to hear a new and beautiful song live and in person from Axl.

Yeah wasnt that also the date when Axl was first gonna play Better but somehow fucked up and they just did another song?






Joe

say whuuuuuuuutttt?

Correct me if I was wrong but it was in 2001 either that or 2003 that I could be thinking of.






Joe

nobody ever heard of better until 2006

Before Axl was going to play it he said "I think your gonna like this one"

And I heard this was in 2001.

But like I said I could have messed up the dates. But I know it happened in Las Vagus.



Joe

He said that before Street Of Dreams at the 01/01/01 show...

Didn't have anything to do with Better. It was first heard of when Axl mentioned it in the the Jan 2006 interview with Rolling Stone.

Lol my bad well look at that I was on topic and I didnt even know it  :hihi:



Joe

In regards to the evolution of this song, I have to say I think every version has made the song better. I think it was the right decision to make the intro more piano based. In addition to this, the vocals and harmonys are spot on in the finished version.

I just remember how excited I was to have a studio version of this song finally, I loved it live and couldn't wait to hear it officially. The solo in this blows me away and Axls vocals are some of the strongest in my opinion.


Lee

For me, it was one of the highlights of the Sao Paulo show. It was fucking awesome and the band nailed it.

I just miss the ending of the studio version... Sometimes Axl remember to sing "that's what I'd tell ya", but most of the times he just sings like the old way.

Yeah. They were trying to play Street of Dreams, but there was some technical problems with the piano. So they moved on to Patience instead and played SOD/The Blues later.

I don't know nothing, but I don't even think Better existed by that time. :hihi:

This song is a masterpiece. Particularly the lyrics. They slay me.

I version I love is one of the best.

Pittsburg 2002  RAR 06 is also a very cool version.

it's just the live feeling of that songs does it for me. the studio is to studio.. in my eyes.
Live Axl always gives his best for the vocals on that song and that's what I love.

I completely agree with you this song is like a good wine. It took some time for it to be at its best!





Joe

Sorry to bring this old topic back and also if it's not the right place to post the links below or even if it's not allowed to do it here, but I just want to show even more something we all already know: Axl is a genius!

Street of Dreams - RIR 3 Emulation Mix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQraSWlAYRQ

Instrumental (guitar track off): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtq486SPNU

Hope you enjoy.

As much as I loved the final CD version of this song, I can't help but think how cool it was back in 2001-02. I loved the faster flow, and the intro guitars playing the short riff. I also feel that Axl's high pitched voice back in the early 2000s suited this song much better, to the more raspier voice we have now.

I still think that Rock In Rio 01 is still the best version of this song out there, with Boston 02 being a close 2nd.  :yes:

To me the guitar solos ruined this song, the should have made a different sounding solo. With another melody that is.

The rest of the song is simply perfect and i like the intro of the 2007 leaks with the piano only! The way they played it live in 2006