Nothing Short of Blasphemy

I heard something downright alarming the other day. It was so horrifying, my earlobes nearly folded themselves up into my ear canals so as to permanently prevent me from ever hearing anything ever again.

I was listening to the radio in my car - Star 98.7, I believe it was - when (and I think we can all agree on this) one of the best songs ever written came on: "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses.

So there I am, singing along to Axl's sweet sweet vocal stylings. And then, as he finishes up the chorus, it came time for Slash's big solo - one of his best, mind you, and Slash is not a guitarist short on awesome solos. As I set my voice for falsetto mode to screech along to his Les Paul...the song fast forwarded to later in the solo. Meaning, they edited about 30 seconds of it out, skipping right to a later part of the solo.

I couldn't believe my ears. Not only that, but later on in the song they edited another section out. I can't remember which one, because I was still suffering from the emotional devastation of the first edit. Nevertheless, I picked up on something else being wrong, even though I was too woozy to pinpoint it. It was probably similar to what it's like for a soldier to get shot in war, then kind of only barely notice when he gets shot a second time, because of the overwhelming pain of the first bullet. I probably should have pulled the car over, but I didn't. Luckily, no one was killed.

Except for "Sweet Child," that is. Why would they do this? Why would they edit down such a classic rock song? It's not like they censored swear words or anything, like when you watch "Casino" on AMC and it sucks because every third word is "fuck." They just went ahead and shortened it. Why? I don't know. It's not like it's a particularly long song. And even if it was, is there a finite amount of time radio stations have to play music? Are they worried they'll run out of air space that goes on forever? Last time I checked, the radio just plays music continuously, all the time, and will continue doing so until the world ends.

Suffice to say, I am of the opinion that whoever was in charge of this decision to bastardize "Sweet Child O' Mine" is a hater of good, if not all, music, and should be tortured before being put out of his misery.