Current mood: HUMPHREY
Category: HUMPHREY Music
Kiss are a proper AMERICAN Rock Band: A band as interested in their brand as their music. A band of comebacks and options. Make Up and no Make Up. Diversity and Contrast.
They're a band for whom I have great respect, even though at this moment in time, I don't own so much as one of their LPs.
I first found them as a boy.
My best friend at Junior School, Sandeep Jadav, was obsessed by Kiss and Bon Jovi and Whitesnake. He was also obsessed with Piranha fish, and carnivorous plants, and when he grew up, he wanted to be a divorce lawyer in New York.
In Junior School we were given a project:
We could pick the theme. The other kids went for Transformers or Southampton FC. I selected bird dissection & Sandeep went for evolution...
No-one else had ever even heard of evolution.
Sandeeps diligence paid off. He won a free scholarship at age 12 or 13 to Winchester College. He left us behind to join the toffs and I've never seen or heard of him since...
So, it was Sandeep who introduced me to Kiss.
Sandeep had a Sony walkman, which was odd because his preferred name was Sony (pronounced as if there were 2 n's). He would bring in his brothers tapes. Tapes like 'Lick It Up' By Kiss and 'Saints and Sinners' By Whitesnake
My first portable cassette player came a few years later. It was a crappy white German one that played tapes a fraction too fast. I remember the first time I used it: I was cycling down a hill at great speed listening to Forever by Kiss. At that moment, the portable tape player struck me as being the best invention the world had ever seen..
So, because of my history of KISS, I read this book with interest.
I was curious to know more about Gene Simmons.
Paul Stanley was the more in your face of the two in the era of which i was familiar. But Gene Simmons was always there with his tongue out, coughing up blood....
I was intersted to know what he knew. I'd heard about his 4500 female 'conquests' and figured he knew something or other about the whole man woman thing...
I found Simmons to be a very honest character.
He makes no excuses or concessions to morals. He has no regrets.
With regards to his 'conquests' he rightly points out that all straight men would like nothing more than to do what he's done - but most don't have the opportunity, the skills, or are beset with hang-ups or morals that prevent such behaviour.
Gene simply lived and loved a male fantasy. What is there to apologise about??
I also learnt that he doesn't like small talk - that if it's not meat and potatoes, he won't do it. Simmons has never drunk alcohol and only taken drugs accidentally twice. He's had relationships with Diana Ross and Cher and first and foremost, even before the sex, he's a businessman and a full and complete embodiment of the America Dream...
And Kiss? Well I've never heard the stuff by the original line up. I was into the mid 80's version with Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr. But I find I like Peter Criss and Ace Frehley. Between them, they made up for the Stanley and Simmons sobriety, by continually tanking things to and beyond the max...
They were pure couldn't give a fuck hedonists. They 'wasted' their lives with drink and drugs, whilst Simmons and Stanley concentrated on notching their bedposts, doing business, solidifying the brand name KISS and counting the cash...
The overwhelming result of my reading this book, is that I now see Kiss as a successful entertainment franchise business rather than as a musical band. I don't listen to them at all nowadays and their music doesn't seem to be that important or influential in the grand scheme of things.
There influence is mostly in the world of the business of entertainment. They are the Star Wars of the music bizz.
They invented merchandising and stadium rock.
It's a plenty contribution, but does it really have anything to do with music???
 | Currently listening :
Crazy Nights
By Kiss
Release date: By 01 September, 1998 |
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