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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2019 15:36:46 GMT
KISS Dynasty (1979)
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Or were falling, anyway. Dynasty, released in May 1979 (about half a year after the four solo albums), marks the first dramatic misstep for a band that was embarking on a new career full of them.
It isn’t the dramatic stylistic changes of the singles that was necessarily the misstep, however, though that’s the obvious place to start any criticism: the elephant in the (Studio 54) room is, of course disco.
But the dirty little secret is, however out of character it might have been, KISS was good at disco! Let’s be honest, Paul Stanley was not only made for loving you, baby, but he was made for disco with his androgynous sexual sleaze. “I Was Made For Lovin’ You,” released a few days before the album, was a big hit worldwide: #11 in the US; #1 in Canada, The Netherlands, and New Zealand; #2 in Australia, France, Germany, and Switzerland; and #10 in Switzerland. (It peaked at #50 in the UK.)
The song is an effective if unusual stab at disco, the bass with a menacing tone and what sounds to be Stanley and Ace Frehley on their distorted electric guitars adding some edge to the spot-on disco drumming. Stanley’s lead vocals are doubled an octave apart to begin each line and in other spots, a clever production trick that adds atmosphere, and the falsetto refrain is catchy enough that to this day, KISS’s hard rock fans still sing along live.
Which brings us to the production. Vini Poncia, who had produced Peter Criss’s solo album, decided Criss wasn’t qualified to drum on the new album. While both Criss and Frehley had been replaced here and there in the past, that decision made Dynasty the first album that rarely featured all four members together. Instead, Anton Fig handled those duties—admittedly at a much higher level than Criss ever could—as a hired gun. Fig had worked with Frehley on his solo album and would later go on to work with KISS again on Unmasked, with Frehley in Frehley’s Comet, and of course as the drummer in David Letterman’s house band.
The other disco-tinged tune, “Sure Know Something,” is another Stanley and Poncia collaboration. (“I Was Made For Lovin’ You” was theirs, as well, along with Desmond Child. Child would continue to collaborate with KISS on and off throughout the 80s and into the 90s, an era in which he was a prominent and successful collaborator with many rock and pop artists.) It’s not quite the dance-floor track as “Lovin’,” but it is very much of its era.
Frehley’s solo-album success obviously paid off for him on Dynasty, as he was granted three songs, including prominent placement for his cover of the Rolling Stones’s “2,000 Man” (second in the running order). It’s not a great song, but it suits Frehley well both in terms of his literal and figurative voice.
That a mediocre song would feature so prominently among the stingy nine songs offered on the album says something about the state of the band. Whether they’d exhausted their stores with the previous year’s solo albums or simply were too fragmented to focus on KISS, these were weak songs.
Gene Simmons—yes, it takes nine paragraphs of a discussion of Dynasty before Simmons warrants a mention!—brings only two songs. The better of the two is “Charisma,” which opens Side Two. It is, as are most Simmons songs, a celebration of Simmons’s sexual powers. The other, “X-Ray Eyes,” comes across as a rewrite of half a dozen of his previous songs. It’s fine. It’s … it’s fine.
Frehley’s “Hard Times” and Criss’s sole offering, “Dirty Livin’,” fit into the same category: they’re fine. The former has a quirky little riff to drive it, while the latter has the appealing Criss funky sleaze. But they’re both typical album deep tracks. Worse still are Stanley’s and Frehley’s third songs, “Magic Touch” and “Save Your Love.”
The album was moderately successful, spending 25 weeks on the US charts and peaking at #9. It was also a hit to varying degrees worldwide, including #1 in the Netherlands and #2 in Australia, France, and New Zealand. But in hindsight it becomes clear that the KISS solo albums weren’t a temporary diversion from the primary project; they were the first step in a schizophrenic period, all of which became apparent with their “return” on Dynasty.
Things only got weirder from here.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Oct 18, 2019 16:46:39 GMT
Might sound like a stupid question, but I wonder how Peter Criss took his demotion? Did Poncia have a smooth parting of the ways with Criss after producing his solo album, or did Poncia stab him in the back?
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Post by kds on Oct 18, 2019 17:01:42 GMT
Many hard rock purists despise I Was Made For Lovin' You. Personally, I don't mind it so much when rock bands use disco beats while still retaining their sounds. I think KISS achieved that here, and other good examples were done by the Stones, Floyd, and Queen.
Those are far better than songs like HCTN '79, which is full on disco.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Oct 18, 2019 17:24:07 GMT
Many hard rock purists despise I Was Made For Lovin' You. Personally, I don't mind it so much when rock bands use disco beats while still retaining their sounds. I think KISS achieved that here, and other good examples were done by the Stones, Floyd, and Queen. Those are far better than songs like HCTN '79, which is full on disco. Back in the day it was a big deal, like with The Beach Boys and The Kinks and KISS. Today? It doesn't seem like such a big deal. Time gives it perspective I guess.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2019 17:27:11 GMT
Might sound like a stupid question, but I wonder how Peter Criss took his demotion? Did Poncia have a smooth parting of the ways with Criss after producing his solo album, or did Poncia stab him in the back? I don't know the answer to that. I know he had been in a car crash prior to Dynasty that supposedly hindered his drumming (a la Dennis Wilson in the early 70s), but while the crash was real, I don't know how real the excuse was. When he left the group a couple years later, the excuse was that he didn't want to keep grinding album-tour-album-tour etc. But there again, considering the band's constant dishonesty about just about everything from who played on what to background business, it's impossible to say.
The info is probably out there. And they've all put out at least one autobiography, so presumably we have five or six opinions from the four principals.
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Post by kds on Oct 18, 2019 17:28:18 GMT
Many hard rock purists despise I Was Made For Lovin' You. Personally, I don't mind it so much when rock bands use disco beats while still retaining their sounds. I think KISS achieved that here, and other good examples were done by the Stones, Floyd, and Queen. Those are far better than songs like HCTN '79, which is full on disco. Back in the day it was a big deal, like with The Beach Boys and The Kinks and KISS. Today? It doesn't seem like such a big deal. Time gives it perspective I guess. I can definitely see it back then, especially since disco was Enemy #1 among rock fans. However, forty years later, their have been way worse (IMO) genres than disco that have done far more damage. The late 90s / early 00s rap metal craze comes to mind.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2019 17:30:19 GMT
And now rock has been not only conjoined to, but subsumed by pop. So it's as if the Stones, KISS, etc., didn't just do a disco song or two, but that they and all subsequent bands did mostly disco with occasional touches of rock.
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Post by kds on Oct 18, 2019 17:34:40 GMT
And now rock has been not only conjoined to, but subsumed by pop. So it's as if the Stones, KISS, etc., didn't just do a disco song or two, but that they and all subsequent bands did mostly disco with occasional touches of rock. Yeah, it's a sad state of affairs. Oddly enough, here in 2019, thanks to "rock" bands like Imagine Dragons and 21 Pilots, I Was Made for Lovin' You, the controversial KISS-CO song, sound very rock-ish.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Oct 18, 2019 22:43:27 GMT
I was doing some reading about this Vini Poncia. He was quite the songwriter or co-songwriter. In addition to his KISS songs, his songwriting credits include, all as co-writer:
- (The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up - The Ronettes - New York's A Lonely Town - The Tradewinds - Oh My My - Ringo Starr - Just Too Many People - Melissa Manchester - You Make Me Feel Like Dancing - Leo Sayer
Vini in his younger days, and today:
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 18, 2019 23:17:25 GMT
It's interesting to look through their outside collaborators (and who those collaborators collaborated with). Especially as we move into the next albums, there are some very interesting and surprising names...
(And that, my friends, is what they call a teaser.)
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 19, 2019 17:02:45 GMT
KISS Unmasked (1980)I have a confession to make: I have an irrational love for Unmasked. It wasn’t always that way: it was also the first KISS album that disappointed me … and the first KISS album I ever heard. But if 10-year-old me wanted something heavier and more sinister, 30-year-old me reclaimed the album for what it is which is a pretty damn good pop and power pop album. Obviously, pop and even power pop aren’t what most KISS fans wanted at the time. Or since. And it’s funny to imagine the Demon singing backgrounds to disco. Still, some of these songs are really, really good! The band sounded polished, which makes sense considering who probably played (and didn’t). Anton Fig was again on board to handle the drumming throughout. Bob Kulick, at least, contributed to the guitar work. There were also studio musicians contributing keyboards and bass in spots. Production was handled again by Vini Poncia, who also co-wrote eight of the 11 songs. That collaboration included all three participating members of KISS: four songs with Paul Stanley, three with Gene Simmons, and one with Ace Frehley. Frehley had sole credit on his other two songs. The remaining track is Gerard McMahon’s sleazy album opener, “Is That You?” A mid-tempo rocker, the song is creepily accusatory against the sort of woman who, quite frankly, KISS made a career of celebrating: “Cheap, seventeen, and trashed out / you went too far, being the bitch you are / your reputation’s in the bathroom / it’s on the wall and down the hall / I hear you’re cheating with my teacher / after school, tell me what you do.” But slut-shaming aside, the chorus is inarguably catchy, and one of many examples of the greatness of the band’s multiple vocalists: Stanley sings the lead, while Simmons helps on the responding harmonies. Next is one of the album’s three singles and what one would imagine has to be one of the divisive moments. Stanley and Poncia’s “Shandi” isn’t quite disco … but it isn’t quite not disco. And it sure as hell isn’t rock. But what this pop ballad is, is one of the best lead vocals of Stanley’s career—a career that’s full of great lead vocals. Mostly avoiding the screech and shrillness of his higher register, this song opens with an almost baritone melody before climbing into pure tenor range for the refrain. “Talk to Me” follows, one of two power pop gems from Frehley (along with the similarly good “Two Sides of the Coin”). While they both successfully play it straight down the middle, Frehley’s “Torpedo Girl” is more quirkily him. They could have skipped the gimmicky nautical sound effected opening, but the beat hints at Bo Diddley’s classic, and both bass (which must have been played by someone better than Simmons) and guitar augment it with clever and complementary riffs. Frehley’s contributions are more most consistently strong through the album. Stanley’s work stands alongside his co-guitarist’s, though. Not only with “Shandi,” but with the third single and another power pop gem, “Tomorrow.” This is not only one of the album’s best, but the band’s most underrated songs. His other songs are more disco-influenced and less successful, “What Makes the World Go Round” and “Easy As It Seems” are both fine, though not as good as his stronger efforts in the era and genre. Simmons is the one who stands out by not standing out. “Naked City” wants to be the menacing plodder—every KISS album has to have one—and the riff is solid. But it’s just there. With four co-writers (Simmons, Poncia, Kulick, and Pepe Castro), perhaps it was just a matter of too many cooks. His “She’s So European” musically is solid, including an interesting and melodic pre-chorus, and catchy chorus, but those lyrics are just so stupid! I know, I know, it’s KISS. It’s Simmons. Even so, my gosh. The closer, “You’re All That I Want,” is his take at the power pop that Stanley and Frehley more often succeed with through these years. It is probably his best song on the album, as forgettable as it is. Peter Criss, of course, is gone from the musical proceedings by this point, having been wholly replaced by Fig. He appears (in cartoon form) on the cover, but was replaced on (the almost exclusively international) tour by new member Eric Carr, the band’s first foray into band members as employees rather than partners. His absence wasn’t public at the time, but anyone listening carefully would know the drumming throughout was not Criss’s. (Frankly, it was too good.) Released in May 1980, the album hit #35 in the US. While it went gold, it failed to reach platinum, a first for the band in more than half a decade. There were three singles: “Shandi,” which went Top 10 in four countries but peaked at #47 in the US; “Talk To Me,” not released in America but a single worldwide, struggled and reached Top 40 in only a few countries; and “Tomorrow,” which charted only in Germany, where it reached #70. Unmasked isn’t Love Gun or Destroyer—hell, it’s barely even discernibly KISS!—but it is in hindsight a really solid album. The public did not agree. However strong the material, it just made no sense coming from a comic-book metal band in kabuki makeup, leather, and metal studs. The group clearly recognized it had an identity crisis on its hands; their response to the crisis only made things worse.
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Post by kds on Oct 19, 2019 17:35:14 GMT
It's interesting to look through their outside collaborators (and who those collaborators collaborated with). Especially as we move into the next albums, there are some very interesting and surprising names...
(And that, my friends, is what they call a teaser.)
I know one collaborator who cut his teeth in hard rock before becoming an adult contemporary megastar in the 90s.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Oct 19, 2019 19:42:48 GMT
It appears with Dynasty and Unmasked, KISS was experiencing many of the things that groups who are fortunate to last that long experience - trying to change their sound yet trying to fit in with the current trends, having a member who is no longer relating or performing like he used to, using more and more outside personnel as they make more contacts and acquaintances, and just a general mellowing from their earlier, younger days.
I guess it was inevitable that KISS would...change, but you have to hand it to them. They kept producing, they kept churning it out. I'm sure they had a few motivators, money and fame being two of them. But through the changes, in a lot ways they were still determined to remain good old KISS.
The only song I'm familiar with from Unmasked is "Shandi", which I like very much. And I always thought they should've saved the album title, Unmasked, for when they removed their makeup.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 19, 2019 19:59:00 GMT
The title is baffling. I assumed it was the big reveal when I first checked it out from the library. But then I followed the little comic on the cover and sort-of half realized, wait, they're still in makeup at this point? So ... uh ... what?
Makes no sense.
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Post by Kapitan on Oct 20, 2019 15:17:49 GMT
KISS Music From “The Elder” (1981)Squint hard enough and you can almost imagine what KISS must have had in mind in 1981 as they abandoned initial plans for a return to their hard rock roots and focused instead on an art-rock concept album. They seem to have reached a rare consensus that another pop album in the vein of Unmasked wasn’t the right move. But that consensus didn’t extend to what the right move actually would be. In fall 1980—six months or so after Unmasked was released, the KISS newsletter announced the next album would be “hard and heavy from start to finish.” Sometime thereafter, they decided to reconnect with Bob Ezrin, with whom they’d had great success on Destroyer (and who was coming off yet another massive hit with Pink Floyd’s The Wall). By the time recording began in spring 1981, Ezrin, Paul Stanley, and Gene Simmons had decided that an epic fantasy would be the best choice to reestablish themselves. (Ace Frehley by all accounts opposed the idea, preferring the initial plan of a hard rock album.) They worked in total secrecy crafting tracks with the band and a cast of outside musicians including an orchestra and a choir. Finally, a year and a half after Unmasked, KISS released Music From “The Elder”. Fans would have heard a chunky riff of "The Oath" to open the album, but the lyrics would immediately tip off listeners that this wasn’t quite a return to KISS’s hard rock form. Like a blade of a sword I am forged in flame Fiery hot Tempered steel fire-bright to the night I take I fear not Now compelled by something I cannot see I go forth surrendering to history Your glory, I swear I ride for thee Your power, I trust it rides with me Your servant, I am and ever shall I beOK, a little weird, but it rocked. Up next, the medieval woodwinds of “Fanfare” suggested we were nearer to Narnia or Middle Earth than backstage or the ladies room. By the time Stanley’s plaintive high falsetto begged off his epic destiny in “Just a Boy,” there was no question this was a very different kind of KISS album. With nine songs to go, a fan could tune out or buckle up… Taken on its own, the music isn’t bad. If this were a debut album by, say, The Gandalfs or Aslan’s Teeth, it may well have been seen as good album, a promising band. There are plenty of strong melodies—always the most underrated part of KISS’s skill set—throughout. The lyrics are clumsy and the story makes no sense, but in the end, how many concept albums have good, coherent stories? Precious few, or fewer. Speaking of those bad lyrics, some are from the pen of fellow New Yorker Lou Reed, formerly of the Velvet Underground and around this time a newly sobered up solo artist trying to make his own comeback. Stanley is quoted as saying they placed a call to Reed and explained the basic story to him; an hour later, he called back with basic lyrics to three songs: “A World Without Heroes,” “Mr. Blackwell,” and “Dark Light.” They are, to say the least, unimpressive. Further complicating the concept, the songs were not presented in the narrative order: “The Oath” and “A World Without Heroes” were presented to lead off sides one and two, respectively, to emphasize them as singles. The 1997 remastered version of the album presented the original sequence, with those songs eighth and seventh, respectively. And still further complicating the story, Music From “The Elder” implied that this album was a soundtrack to, well, to something. And indeed the original concept seems to have imagined a corresponding Hollywood blockbuster. Alas, obviously, no such movie has ever been made. (Decades later, an independent movie based on the concept was created by Seb Hunter.) The band, in a first, did not tour the album, making only a few televised promotional appearances instead, such as when they played “The Oath” and “A World Without Heroes” on the “Live on Fridays” variety show. It seems the public, which was lukewarm on KISS as a disco or pop band, was downright cold on them as a theatrical art-rock group. The album has yet to be certified as gold, to say nothing of their only recently ended string of platinum-selling albums. It peaked at #75 in the US, while “A World Without Heroes” peaked at #56 in the US. With a few exceptions in smaller European countries and Australia, it performed poorly worldwide. Frehley, at least, was no more enthusiastic than the public. Unhappy about the concept album direction and consistently outvoted 2-1 in band decisions now that voting member Peter Criss was replaced by voteless employee Eric Carr, he reportedly did not join the band for recording sessions in the studio. Instead he tracked his parts in his home studio and had tapes couriered back and forth. After landing three songs on each of the past two studio albums and coming off of his own solo album’s relative success three years earlier, Frehley landed only one song and lead vocal here. Simmons claims it was the one time KISS tried to satisfy critics, and admit embarrassment over the album. Ezrin acknowledged his enthusiasm might have been artificially reinforced by a massive cocaine addiction. Certainly this was the band’s nadir to date, but it did serve a purpose: they refocused and directed their ambition moving forward. As for Music From “The Elder,”, however big a failure it clearly was, well, it’s seriously not that bad. At least from the perspective of the adolescent boy who heard it as he was reading adventure and fantasy stories and didn’t especially relate to the sexual bravado and innuendo (unsubtle as they were!) of typical KISS yet, this was actually a pretty exciting album. And so returning to that line above about squinting hard enough: KISS were always a fantasy band. They were always comic book characters. The leap from comic book to epic fantasy isn’t a big one. If 12-year-old boys are going to be your audience, well, 12-year-old boys love heroic epics. But rock and roll is not Tolkien or Lewis, much less Homer or Virgil, and the clumsy story comes across mostly as a pretentious failure when viewed critically. Unlike chocolate and peanut butter, KISS and epic fantasies are best enjoyed separately.
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