A FEW SONG BY KISS THAT I ACTUALLY LIKED
While I never fell into the “Kiss your good taste good bye” anti-Kiss crowd of the late 70’s I certainly never cared much for what they were doing musically. By that time I was leaning more towards bands like Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Not to say I do not like raw bands with a dirty sound or acts that lean towards heavy theatrics. I have no issue with that stuff. I may have had a problem with Paul Stanley’s vocals and lyrics I think as well as his totally arrogant persona backed up by mediocre talent. I am not sure as I have never analyzed it too deeply. I do not think a grwon man should be ruminating over Paul Stanley. I do recall once going to do some partying with some Kiss oriented friends and putting on Relayer by Yes and almost being ran out of the place. I always felt a little more tolerant of certain musical styles than some of my associates have been of mine. It might me easier to adjust from Yes or King Crimson to AC/DC or Kiss than the other way around.
I saw a post at My Retrospace on some Kiss songs and I thought it over and decided there were a few songs I had always liked by them. I think they are from their first albums, before the pretty good Kiss Alive, and I believe I have the correct album covers for the songs here. If I do not and one of the Kiss Army wants to attack me over my ignorance I will apologize in advance. This is my first post in my new “retrology” category because whether I like their music or not I acknowledge they had a significant impact on music and entertainment culture. It is not up to me to decide if it was good or bad. I liked Ace Frehley’s lead work and Gene Simmons actually had some good bass lines. The three samples I have here are what I liked about the band when they were on the mark. There are a few more songs I like but I think this sums it all up. Pretty straight forward rock and roll and there is never anything wrong with that.
Strutter
Cold Gin
Hotter than Hell
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URANIUM WILLY 4 FEB 10
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January 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I’m glad you’re open minded about music. I think a lot of rock snobs miss out on some good stuff because they are too aloof. They’ll heep praises on a rare Dylan bootleg, and totally slam a band like KISS because they were theatrical and only sung about banging groupies. (BTW: Early Genesis and Bowie were theatrical, but they didn’t just sing about banging groupies, so it’s okay for a rock snob to like Genesis).
It’s glam rock. It’s theatrical. But that doesn’t preclude it from being good. I plan on writing a post on The Elder (the failed KISS LP) which attempted something approaching quality, and I think nearly acheived it…. unfortunately, no one else on the planet liked it.
Last thing I’ll say is that it goes both ways. I imagine there’s not that many KISS fans who bought Yes or Brian Eno albums. Both sides missed out…. best way is to stay open minded – I’ve got as much respect for an ABBA record as I do a Hawkwind.
Great post!
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Right. The music snobbery thing gets too extreme. Like saying if I like main stream rock I can never listen to country and western or heavy metal or pop or Mozart or whatever. In fact I never had an issue with the glam aspect of KISS. I liked early Genesis with Peter Gabriel and Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Mott the Hoople. I even have dabbled in extreme bands like the black metal stuff from Norway and Sweden where the music is severe and theatrics plays a big role on and off stage. In fact you mentioned Hawkwind and I used to have some double live album by them and it was great. I had only one friend who liked it but he was into Eno and stuff before I was too. A good example of snobbery is some people’s conviction to not even listen to something if it sounds a little like rap. Sure it is not my preferred cup of tea but I have heard some pretty cool rap songs, often the gangsta’ variety. I may not subscribe to some “larger ideology” about rap culture but I do not subscribe to the ideology of Guns and Roses too that says get wasted everyday and beat your girlfriends, but I really like a lot of their music.
Looks like this music upload site is stable and works. I am right now redoing my Death Wish II tracks as I expect that hosting service to delete those files soon.
Also I am so happy the Cafe is alive still. Seems I just had to install a caching program and so far it seems to work okay. Nothing ominous has happened in a few days. I am glad I wrote some emails to the place before I surrendered. I hope this sight is around for a long while. Until I am simply too old to write about KISS and Jimmy Page anymore. That will be about 99 I think.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I got that old “Kiss meet the Phantom of the Park” movie laying in my “soon to be seen” pile.
I should give it a higher priority…
and BTW, I’ve updated my “20 men meme” with the “20 women meme”, still without legend, but I give some hints in the comments.
January 24th, 2009 at 6:18 am
I remember that strange movie. Made for TV. I remember when Marvel comics did a comic book about them and they claimed each band member put a drop of blood into the printing ink, so that it was printed with real Kiss blood.
No problem, I am will check out your ladies now. I am curious if I can name some of them.
January 26th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I try to be open minded about music. I’ve got all sorts of music in my collection. I’m not one of those snobs that turn my nose up at certain musical genres. KISS was just fun music. It wasn’t high art at all. It was good theatrical rock n’ roll. I love that about them. I don’t think everything they did was great though. They had their share of crappy music. Love the tunes you posted. I liked them through the years whether it was with the makeup, without it during the hair metal days, etc.
February 6th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Yea I never took them too seriously one way or the other. I actually like some of Gene Simmons acting. He played a bad guy in some Tom Selleck sci-fi cop movie. I forget the title but he was pretty creepy. As usual.