Brace yourselves

[shermarama]

I'm about to do something foolish with my ears.

They say you shouldn't knock it til you've tried it, and all. Further to a conversation along those lines, Wayne has lent me a Kiss live album, which apparently shows something of what all the fuss was originally about.

*checks will is in order*

*presses play*

Comments

It's not that bad!

[philipstorry.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing it's either Alive or Alive II - both are good. Slightly over-dubbed at points, but not stupidly obviously.

KISS did some very good stuff in the 70's. They were leaders, not followers for that period - one of the best hard rock acts in the US. They toured relentlessly, and put out a lot of good albums.

Then the 80's crept up on them. The makeup was seen as silly, so they ditched it. At that point, they became trend followers - some of their 80's stuff is OK, some is pretty dire. Then, at the end of the 80's and the start of the 90's, they found themselves again - the album Revenge is excellent. Sadly, Revenge hit the shops just as Grunge hit the streets - Rock was uncool, and KISS spent the better part of the next decade trying to figure out what to do about Grunge.

Then Grunge died. Slowly, and painfully, but it died. And that was the last gasp for commercial rock/metal/punk for a while - it was all dance-oriented music.

So they put the makeup back on, and went touring again. It pays the bills. If you saw KISS today, you'd see something closer to Alive than the 80's stuff that you probably think of when their name is mentioned.

So that's three decades of KISS in a nutshell. And you're probably only familiar with one of them - which is arguably not the best of them.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the album!

Re: It's not that bad!

[shermarama]

Well, I have indeed survived, but I can't say I thought much of any of it.

The album in question is 'You Wanted The Best, You Got The Best!!' which seems to be a best of Alive I and II with a few extra unheard extra live ones thrown in. To be honest it never really departs from what I was expecting from a Kiss album. These concerns over the sounds from different decades I don't really follow - I wouldn't have said I was familiar with any particular period, the Kiss I have heard will have been in nightclubs and on jukeboxes and the like and will be whatever someone thought was the best of theirs to play.

The musicianship is a little better than I was expecting in places, I'll give it that. Parasite is a fun track with a really nice drum part and energy and catchiness. But really, that's the only one that keeps my attention and that I'd want to listen to again. Everything else goes past innocuously enough but with no reaction other than 'oh look, a seventies arena rock band, ho hum.'

I don't think I'm cut out to be a Kiss fan. Look at me, I don't even capitalise it right.

Re: It's not that bad!

[philipstorry.livejournal.com]

Heh. I checked my collection here, and found that I lack that particular album.

(KISS are the sort of band that have 10 "best of" albums. They extend this into their live albums, so I suspect that this is probably a combination of some old & some new stuff.)

Well, at least you didn't hate it. That's a start.

:-)