Tribute: Mr. Brownstone

Tribute: Mr. Brownstone

Standing mere feet away from a wailing Axl Rose, my hand wrapped around the lukewarm neck of a Bud Light bottle, my ears ringing from the sheer volume of a sold-out Paradise belting out the appropriately scream-inducing Paradise City, I couldn’t have cared less that the real Axl Ross was probably thousands of miles away from Commonwealth Ave., getting more bloated by the second.
Instead of a disoriented real-life Rose, I was listening to Sean Greenhalgh, frontman for the world’s greatest Guns n’ Roses tribute band, Mr. Brownstone. Greenhalgh, modestly described on the band’s website as a legend “whose last name alone can evoke awe and enigmatic power” looks, sounds and gyrates as well as the real-life Axl ever did. And considering the career arc of Guns n’ Roses, going to a Mr. Brownstone show is as close as you are ever going to get again to the mid-1980’s, rock god Axl.
Tribute bands are very often not at all a tribute to the band they claim to be honoring. More often than not, tribute bands are simply a tribute to their own band’s unfathomable lack of musical talent. But Mr. Brownstone is legit. And they just happen to be Connecticut College’s greatest living alumni (not named Jamie Chisholm).
How do I know that they are Connecticut College’s greatest living alumni? Because I don’t know any other group of CC alums that have been described as sounding “tighter than a 13-year old virgin” like Mr. Brownstone was by the New York Press. When someone takes the time to invent the world’s greatest ever metaphor and applies it to your tribute band, you’ve won at life.
I fully expect Greenhalgh, Gerald Egan (Slash), Drew Thurlow (Duff), Dave Godowsky (Izzy) and Marc Furley (Adler/Sorum) (pianist Chris Joyce went to another school not lucky enough to be located in bucolic New London, CT, America’s leader in eminent domain seizures) to get honorary degrees at the 2006 Connecticut College commencement. If they don’t, I may never pay that $5 I so generously pledged over the phone to the school’s development office several years ago. That is just how serious I am about these guys getting their due.
Let Harvard, Yale, M.I.T and the rest of those namby-pamby finishing schools produce all the doctors, lawyers, politicians, engineers, chemists, archaeologists, astronomers, investment bankers, inventors, writers, astronauts, venture capitalists, producers and leaders of the free world they want. As long as Connecticut College remains renowned as the cocoon of the world’s greatest GnR tribute band, I’m really not going to sweat any future job interviews.
“Well, your job experience isn’t at all up to snuff. And you really do need to be able to speak French, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi and you have several drug-related arrests included under the ‘Awards and Honor’ section of your resume, so I am sorry….hold on just one moment…education…Connecticut College…isn’t that where Mr. Brownstone was founded. Well, that just changes everything entirely, now doesn’t it. Welcome aboard, old boy, let me show you to your corner office.”
The beauty of a tribute band like Mr. Brownstone is that I get all the Guns n’ Roses I want with none of the ridiculous expense and almost certain letdowns that I would find at an actual Guns n’ Roses concert. If you offered me a $1000 to sit front row at a real Guns n’ Roses’ concert or let me pay for my own ticket and drinks at a Mr. Brownstone show, I’m picking Mr. Brownstone without hesitation.
First, they actually show up. That fact alone gives them a huge edge over the real GnR.
Second, they play what I want to hear. You know what Mr. Brownstone plays at one of their shows: all the GnR songs you actually know. There are no ridiculous covers so Axl can show off how terrible he sounds when he isn’t screaming incoherently into a microphone. There are no songs from some god-awful unreleased album. There are no surprises. At the show at the Paradise, I heard Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child O’Mine, Mr. Brownstone, and plenty of other GnR classics that every single person in the audience, even my friend Slitt, whose musical I.Q. was retarded by growing up in suburban Connecticut, could sing along to.
Third, they actually sound good. I don’t pretend to be the world’s most knowledgeable music expert. I have Lindsey Lohan, Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore lined up back-to-back-to-back in a sort of masturbatory murderer’s row of rapidly declining teenage hotties on the Embarrassment mix on my iPod so I am certainly not casting any stones. But the real-life GnR just don’t sound all that appealing anymore. In fact, the real-life GnR today sound exactly like what they are: prime candidates for a spot on the Surreal Life.
By comparison, Mr. Brownstone sounds legit. Greenhalgh can sing and Thurlow and Godowsky do a solid job on backing vocals. Like the New York Press so eloquently said: Imagine a bunch of 13-year old vaginas and therein lies the musical essence of Mr. Brownstone.
And the best part- a ticket costs $12. Honestly, as far as I am concerned, in 2005, anything that costs $12 is essentially free. I don’t even consider $12 to be real money and I write for a paper that pays its writers in i.o.u’s.
Which are just some of the reasons that Mr. Brownstone has suddenly become a very hot ticket in Boston and throughout the Northeast. The previous time I saw them was at Harper’s Ferry, just down the road from the Paradise. Harper’s Ferry is not a big musical venue but on the night that Mr. Brownstone played there, I would guess that there were approximately 72,000 people crammed together. Refugee camps have more elbow room.
But the packed crowds at both Harper’s Ferry and the Paradise couldn’t have been happier and that is the ultimate tribute for any tribute band.

Jamie Chisholm