Something 4 The Weekend # 209

Angel: On Earth As It Is In Heaven: "Cast The First Stone" [mp3]

KISS was my favorite band when I was 9-11 years old, so when their label, Casablanca, signed Angel, I started listening to them. Such were the powers Gene Simmons had on my young and impressionable mind.

So, I was into Angel for a year or so, but then another Gene Simmons discovery, Van Halen, captured my curiosity and became my favorite band for the next 2-3 years...

Blather...

By the time I was listening to Frank Zappa with regularity, I didn't give a shit about Angel anymore , so Zappa's song, "Punky's Whips", about drummer Terry Bozzio being in love with Angel's guitarist, Punky Meadows, was riotous to me...

Maybe that'll be next week's S4TW...

For now, bask in the glorious bombast of this sword and sandal epic, and take a look at the band's logo. I still think it's one of the greatest band logos ever, and certainly made me dig this band more than a stupid 10 year old kid really should.



Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS No. 25

The 4 KISS Solo Albums

04: Paul Stanley

KISS had released three platinum albums in 1977, and the band and their manager, Bill Aucoin, were looking to milk as much cash outta the band as they could, while they could...So 1978 saw the simultaneous release of four solo albums from all four members of the group...As a "solo" album, Paul Stanley's sounds pretty much exactly like a KISS album, minus two Gene Simmons songs and a possible Ace Frehley number, so this one gets no points from me for originality or necessity...Paul's songs here aren't even good KISS songs, most likely because the band had been cranking out as many songs as they could in the process of milking...

03: Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons' "solo" record is absolutely fucking wretched, but at least it sucks in a more interesting way than Paul Stanley's offering, and is even unwittingly hilarious once or twice. His heartfelt rendition of "When You Wish Upon A Star" is an appalling example of retarded song selection and an ignorance of one's own vocal talents. Gene Simmons is a shitty singer even under the best of circumstances ("Do You Love Me?"), but if he believed his version of this Disney classic sung by Jiminy Cricket in Pinnochio, would be anything but an obscenity, then he's a much dumber man than I have imagined...As a whole, the Gene Simmons album is bloated and slow, full of tired riffs and sophomoric lyrics, but that was pretty much to be expected...A little Gene goes a long way, and an 11 song album like this is simply an endurance test...

02: Peter Criss

Let's give the drummer some love here...Peter Criss had arguably the best voice in KISS...To me he sounds a bit like Bob Seger - it's a voice that's a bit rough around the edges, and hearty enough to sing good ol' Rock'n'Roll, and even some R'n'B, which is pretty much what he does on his solo album, which is a collection of songs that plays to those very strengths. Throw in a couple of ballads that might accurately be called "Freak Folk", and a power ballad closer ala "Beth", and it all adds up to a fairly cohesive, if not game-changing, longplayer...Despite having the best voice in KISS, he was relegated to playing simple 4/4 beats, and maybe getting the lead vocal once per record, so actually having the chance to be in the spotlight for an entire album was a big and welcomed deal to me. Of these four "solo" KISS albums, this might not be the best one musically, but it's certainly the most interesting of the four, and the most unique and truly "solo" of the bunch.

01: Ace Frehley

And then there's Ace Frehley...As the lead guitarist, he was certainly the best musician in KISS, but he really never got more than one of his songs on any of their records...Maybe it was his supposed drinking and drugging...Maybe it was because he was never really more than a hired gun in the KISS, Inc. world...This was Gene's and Paul's brainchild, afterall...But the thing is, those lone Ace songs on each KISS record were usually pretty fucking good, and hell, "Shock Me' was the best tune on Love Gun, so here came Ace Frehley's solo record, and it really wasn't a suprise to anyone that it was the best of the four, miles ahead of the other three. In fact, as far as collecting KISS goes, I'd say that after Alive!, I'd pick this album second...It's just a really solid and well-recorded rock album, one that has aged much better than anything else in the band's catalog, and that includes the handclap-heavy disco-rock of "New York Groove"...

Hotcha! Hank

The Ugliest Sideways Maneuver Ever

OH MY! While perusing the Bootsy Collins videos at YouTube, I came across this stunning bit of footage of a bloated Gene Simmons bringing down the house somewhere on the 1985 KISS Animalized World Tour with an absolutely ridiculous bass solo...

Now, I had the pleasure of seeing KISS ALIVE! on two occasions - the Love Gun World Tour in 1978, when the original band was still intact and wearing their paint, and again on the Lick It Up Tour of 1983 when the make-up was gone, and so were Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, replaced by Vinnie Vincent and Eric Carr, respectively. At both shows Gene Simmons unleashed a bass "solo" as positively wretched as the one in this clip...And trust me when I tell you that his singing in concert is equally as horrid...The sick growl of a dying beast amplified through a 40k watt PA system...God of thunder and rock'n'roll, my stinkin' ass...

This man has more fame and money and sex than me and you and, oh, I dunno, Mike Watt, who quickly comes to mind as the greatest rock bassist alive...I'm sure he's got tons more fame and money than Bootsy Collins, and probably the sex as well, but who knows cuz I bet Bootsy pulls plenty...

Hotcha! Hank

Does craft services have any salami?

I've always wondered what the string players are thinking about when they play behind popular artists on television.

What does that university-trained violinist think about as she's playing short stabs of notes behind Vampire Weekend on The Jimmy Kimmel Show?

What does that viola player really think of blowing a bunch of long, easy notes for Kanye on Letterman? It's gotta be better than that SNL gig he did with Diddy back in 2003.

Or what about the time the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra did that thing with KISS? What did the cellists think of the score for "Love Gun"?

Is there scorn and contempt for music that will never exceed their skills and training, or is a gig a gig for violinists, just the same as it is for cocktail lounge pianists, foley artists, and death metal drummers?

Or am I being entirely too hard on the popular artists? Maybe hiring a string quartet for Conan's show isn't so much about ego and pretension as it is about just wanting to do something special for a network TV gig...Or maybe they simply need to fill up the stage, and even the sound, cuz on their own, they're just too thin...

(I still like you, Vampire Weekend, I really do)

I dunno...Just something I think about...

Hotcha! Hank

Speaking Of Boy Howdy!

Speaking of tits, now's as good a time as any to talk about Grace Slick's left one.

CREEM Magazine used to have a one-page feature every issue called the Star Profile, which was essentially a parody of Dewars print ads, and featured a picture of a different rock star drinking Boy Howdy! brand beer in each issue, accompanied by a short and silly profile of that particular star.

In their January 1975 Star Profile, Creem featured Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane/Starship, standing in a bathroom stall with a can of Boy Howdy at her lips, and her left tit hanging out.

Now, I don't necessarily want to get too sentimental, too maudlin about this, and lord knows you don't really want or need more of my navel-gazing, but I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that Grace Slick's left tit changed my life.

I was 9 years old when this particular issue of CREEM hits the newstands, and I dunno if this is hard to believe, but I was reading CREEM at this age, having discovered the magazine in my search for all things KISS, dig?

Nine years old, but Grace Slick's left tit wasn't the first tit I had ever seen in my young life...No, my friends and I had found my dad's Playboy stash, so this was nothing new to me.

However...

Grace Slick's stiff left nipple is the nexus of sex, drugs (Boy Howdy! beer) and rock'n'roll in my own personal consciousness. It is the singular point at which all the hedonistic possibilities of the rock'n'roll lifestyle found definition in young mind. At that moment when I first layed eyes upon Grace Slick's left tit, I absolutely became obsessed with rock music, once and for all time, and it has been the single most important "thing" in my life ever since.

I started collecting records like a mofo (and like my mom), and I tried to become a rockstar myself for a couple of decades, and I drank heavily for a long time, and have experimented with drugs, have enjoyed the groupie dynamic...And I wrote record reviews and essays for my college newsaper, and I've been a DJ at various points in my life, and I do a monthly podcast, and I post a new mp3 every weekend here at HOT POOP, and all of it, the last 30+ years, can be partially (at least) traced directly back to this picture and that moment in 1975.

Oddly enough, I'm more of an "ass man".

Anyways...

Aside from my previous posting of the Sparks' song, "Tits", I was inspired to write this post because Harper Collins just published a rather amazing hardcover coffee table book featuring the best of ye olde CREEM magazine...

An Amazon link

It's 270 big colorful pages loaded with tons of amazing photographs, and all the appropriately hilarious and REAL rock'n'roll journalism (Lester Bangs was an enormous influence on my young mind as well), and at $20, it's truly a MUST for any serious fan of rock music and journalism, especially from the '70's and '80's...Check it out...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 54

By the mid-70's, Frank Zappa had branched out into just about every conceivable style and genre of music known to semi-educated man. Certainly gone were the highly theatrical shenanigans of his live act circa 1968, replaced with nothing more than the sheer force of the man's charisma and words...No need to rely upon stuffed giraffes spewing whipped cream and the like anymore, not when ya got the best "rock" musicians in the world onstage, not when the music and the message are so strong...

So, who would fill that void? Who could rock righteously, but with a theatrical flair that left the kids slack-jawed and drooling? KISS, you say? Oh sure, they had the circus pomp down cold, but it was too much flash, not enough righteous rocking (save Ace Frehley)...Alice Cooper? Well sure, except by the mid-70's he was dancing with spiders, singing sappy ballads and showtune-sounding treacle, and simply taking himself way too seriously...

The answer, my friends, is The Tubes.

The Tubes: "White Punks On Dope": 128k mp3

The Tubes emerged fully-trimmed and sarcastic from San Francisco via Phoenix in 1975. They immediately proved themselves rather adept at seemingly every style and genre of music known to semi-educated man. Not only that, but they believed that humor belongs in music, and it ought to be presented with as much silly pomp as possible. And boy, did they deliver.

Mostly, The Tubes targeted the nonsensical ego and excesses of the rock'n'roll lifestyle, but in general they had a fairly profound interest in pop culture, and proved themselves ahead of the curve in terms of music videos...In fact, they knew their live act was killer, and so they shopped a demo music video rather than the typical audio-only demo-tape, and it helped them land their deal with A&M in 1974.

Anyways, this is all my way of simply saying that The Tubes are the rightful heirs to whatever crown Frank Zappa & The Mothers wore circa 1968.

Despite a couple of mainstream hits in the early '80's (again, thanks to music video and The Tubes visual brilliance), I don't think the band ever got their rightful due.

And if you want to extend this thread I got going here, I might suggest that The Flaming Lips are the rightful heirs to The Tubes...And so on and so forth...

Hotcha! Hank

OMG!1

Where were you?

Hotcha! Hank

Robot Gene Simmons

Here's 52 seconds of yr life you won't care about getting back.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 17

This week's SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND started innocently enough. I was simply going to stream a song by the 1970's Pop-Metal band, Starz, and tell you that they were one of my favorite bands when I was about 11/12 years old.

The issue then became, what song do I choose to share with you, dear reader? I won't bore you with the details of this dilemma, except to say that the song I chose, "So Young, So Bad" was only one of about eight candidates.

STARZ: "So Young, So Bad": 128k mp3

At this point I should mention that in 1977, at the age of eleven, KISS was still my favorite band, though just barely. Punk exploded that year, and Heavy Metal was about to rear its ugly head in earnest, to say nothing of Disco and New Wave.


Anyways, "So Young, So Bad" is a song about a 15 year old groupie, and it immediately brought to mind KISS' "Christine Sixteen", another song about another underaged girl, and of course, it seems natural to me that I offer you MP3s of both songs.

KISS: "Christine Sixteen": 128k mp3

I'm pretty certain that underaged groupies still exist today. I mean, as you read this I think it's safe to say that Pete Wentz is buggering a sophomore from Downers Grove High School. With vigor. But I also think it's safe to say that these days nobody is really writing paeons about buggering Downers Grove sophomores. Nowadays, it's all about emotions.

Yeah, it's times like these I actually believe Rock'n'Roll is dead.

Whatever. Nevermind.

Hotcha!
Hank

HANK RANKS, No.2

The 7 Non-Original Members Of KISS

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

07: Tommy Thayer: Lead Guitar: 2002-Present
Nowadays, KISS is a brand, not a band, really, and Tommy Thayer is nothing more than a marker until Ace Frehley returns for The KISS Company 35th Anniversary World Tour.


06: Eric Singer: Drums: 1991-1996, 2001, 2004-Present
Much like Tommy Thayer, drummer Eric Singer is little more than a marker, though he's drummer for KISS for 9 out of the last 15 years, which warrants a bit more than a footnote, I guess, but no better than the sixth spot on this list. While not quite a session man, Eric Singer has also played for the likes of Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Lita Ford, and The Cult throughout his long career. Eric Singer plays Pearl drums and Zildjian cymbals exclusively.


05: Mark St. John: Lead Guitar: 1984
Mark St. John played with KISS just long enough to appear on 1984's Animalize album. Then egos clashed and St. John conveniently developed arthritis and couldn't tour in support of the album. Since then, he's only managed to squeeze out stillborn demo tapes for a couple of different projects, including one with Peter Criss. Nowadays he might be Materials Manager for Uline, I dunno.


04: Bruce Kulick: Lead Guitar: 1984-1996
Bruce Kulick was in KISS almost as many years as Ace Frehley, but holds the record for most consecutive years as KISS' lead guitarist. Most of these years where served when KISS was lost in a creative wasteland and mostly off the pop culture radar. What is probably more interesting about Kulick is that he's played guitar on Meatloaf's 2 year-long Bat Out Of Hell World Tour, and played on a bunch of Michael Bolton albums. Yes, there is one degree of separation between KISS and Michael Bolton. Currently Kulick is the guitarist for Grand Funk Railroad, a thought that I cannot even begin to comprehend, because WTF is Grand Funk Railroad without Mark Farner?


03: Eric Carr: Drums: 1980-1991
Eric Carr's first album with KISS was Music From 'The Elder', which is auspiciously lame enough to land him in the top half of this list, and if his part in The Great Unmasking of 1983 isn't enough to nudge him up to 3 on this list, then his death in 1991 of heart cancer (HEART CANCER!!!!) certainly does, and earned "The Fox" a place in the hearts of KISS fans around the world.


02: Anton Fig: Drums: 1979-1980
Anton Fig is a well-known and well-respected session drummer who played on the Dynasty and Unmasked albums for KISS. He is number two on this list because he is the long time drummer for The CBS Orchestra, which is David Letterman's house band, led by Paul Schaffer. The list of artists he has recorded and toured with is way too long to list here.


01: Vinnie Vincent: Lead Guitar: 1982-1984
Vinnie Vincent spent the least time in the Lead Guitar role for KISS (hey, I've already forgotten about Mark St. John), and yet he's at the very top of this list. Why? First of all, he never officially signed a contract with The Kiss Company. Secondly, he played the majority of the guitars on the Creatures Of The Night album, and its subsequent tour, but it was Ace Frehley on the album's cover art and "I Love It Loud" video. This confused fans. Alot, apparently. Some of 'em still bitch about it. Thirdly, his real name is Vincent Cusano, but Gene Simmons made him change it to Vinnie Vincent, even though Cusano wanted to call himself Mick Fury. Like Eric Carr, Vincent was a part of The Great Unmasking of 1983, his make-up being an Egyptian ankh designed by Paul Stanley. I don't believe Vincent's character ever had a name. Vincent's post-KISS solo career consists of two Vinnie Vincent Invasion albums, and two lawsuits against KISS for royalties, both of which he lost. He also lost an $8 million dollar lawsuit with Chrysalis Records and is currently bankrupt and out of the music biz. See kids - all yr Rock'n'Roll dreams can come true!

Hotcha!
Hank