There could probably be a documentary exclusively about Kiss collectors, no doubt about that. I'm pretty thankful that I knew it was best to only worry about some very specific things - was always really afraid to be one of those people who wear Kiss slippers around the house with Kiss bowling balls on display, etc.
PSYCHO CIRCUS album I haven't listened to this one in a while, so the next 10 days will be interesting. Fundamentally, I just feel this is a very calculated and forced album, almost like a "KISS album by executive boardroom" or "KISS album by focus group". Throughout the record, it's rather obvious that it's trying to be Destroyer II, and I would dearly love to turn back the clock, scrap this whole thing (which means ditching Fairbairn, who's a big part of the problem here), and start over. A lot of people criticize the next albums, SONIC BOOM and MONSTER, but say what you will, they're true band albums, made the "right" way. Meaning, the 4 guys in the band get together, hash out ideas together, truly collaborate, and then lay down the basic tracks live in the studio. In other words, everything PSYCHO CIRCUS is not. Yeah, I know Ace and Peter may play a bit sloppily, but dammit, that's the essence of classic KISS, and instead of running from that, they should have embraced it. Again, I think the producer set the tone early on, and Paul admitted later that he clashed with Fairbairn quite a bit. Fairbairn passed away less than a year after this album came out, and I believe that's the reason criticisms of him have been muted, which is respectful and probably appropriate. But wanting this record to sound perfect, with every note and every beat presented with total precision, doomed this project from the start. Embrace the rough edges, forget trying to recreate DESTROYER (which was truly misguided), and just make an honest album. When you consciously try and make the "ultimate KISS album" you're bound to fail, and fail they did.
Appreciate that you said you liked it. But how many bands sounded the same in 1974 and 1994? And those bands probably got static for not developing.
I had wanted to focus my critique a little bit more on the backwards section since I know what a pain in the @** it is to compose & arrange backwards then perform forwards before reversing for a multi-track mix an entire section as opposed to the fairly easy and straight-forward reversing a single track guitar solo or lead fills here and there... but my syntax etc. seemed garbled so I deleted it... probably is still garbled and as confusing as yesterday... simplified: thought Bruce did a real good job with that... edit: and I certainly wanted to focus on what a pain it is analog, which from what I read on Bruce's website is how they did the basic trax. Pro Tools would be much easier... I'm an analog guy, too... all my machines are reel to reel so I know what a chore it can be...
CoS rankings (at this moment), which have been in constant flux for the last week as I listened to the album at least once a day. Certainly still subject to change... however, when I started listening to this for the first time over a month ago, I was more in the Gene camp. Now I think CE and SotI are good songs, but boy, those B-parts really show their seams... you can almost see the stitches where they're sewn to the A-parts... the Paul songs seem to be more natural and flow better to me now except for "Hate," which is indeed the perfect opener... Hate 10/10 Rain 8.5/10 Master & Slave 9/10 Childhood's End 8/10 I Will Be There 9.5/10 Jungle 7.5/10 (too long, otherwise it would have a higher ranking) In My Head 7/10 It Never Goes Away 6.5/10 Seduction of the Innocent 8/10 I Confess 8/10 In the Mirror 7.5/10 I Walk Alone 9/10
Understood, a stagnant band is in its death throws. But as bands change there is some identifying mark! A voice, a guitarist's style, a style of drumming. There was nothing that said Sabbath to me. Not the vocals, production was so heavy I couldn't tell who it was. YES, KISS, Crimson, Beatles all went through changes in style or personnel, but we're easily recognizable. I heard Discipline without knowing who it was, but instantly knew it was Fripp, I knew immediately it was him on Heroes. I'm not saying Sabbath is bad without Ozzy, just so different that I don't recognize it as Sabbath. Or maybe I'm just so used to Ozzy era that I can't hear anything else! Peace
My first KISS show was early in the reunion tour - Dallas on 7/5/96. I was stoked to not only be seeing KISS for the first time, but also being lucky enough to see them in makeup with Ace and Peter. I had been falling out of love with the band at the time, though the Unplugged special really made me sit up and take notice. I couldn't pass up a makeup show with the original four guys, though. Who knows when I would get the chance again? I went with my older brother who wasn't a very big KISS fan at all. At the time I didn't pay any attention to how well Peter was playing or anything like that, I just had the time of my life and loved seeing something I thought I'd never get to see live. Other than being happily surprised by the inclusion of Black Diamond, I wasn't even thinking about the setlist or what songs they left out or whatever. I was happy with everything they played. It's funny, I don't really remember too many specific instances from the show other than Gene's fire and blood, Paul's dancing & Ace shooting rockets from his guitar during his solo. I felt like I was almost in a trance for the show. Oh yeah, I was disappointed that Peter sang Beth along with a tape instead of a band arrangement as on Unplugged. Otherwise, it was an excellent show and I had a blast. It was everything I thought a KISS show would be and somehow even more. The show is on youtube if you want to spend 2 hours. Watching this again, I still think they sounded good. Not perfect audio or video, but it's cool to see it again.
Gene interview. Pretty good one actually. The Last Word: Gene Simmons on Kanye West, Justin Bieber and Trump
I think Iommi is pretty damn recognizable on his own. And you take a song like Cross of Thorns which also has amazing bass from Geezer...it's still very much Sabbath.
Psycho Circus - This is an ok song, I kind of like it, but it's not a classic by any stretch. A good opener but that's about it. To me, it has always sounded a bit too forced, wearing out its welcome pretty fast every time. Paul simply tries too hard to please here, as if he's in stage banter mode... And I'm definitely not very fond of Paul's 'super-confident', 'winning' persona, and that's what we mostly get here. Plus, Psycho Circus - the album - is ultimately watered-down by Ace's and Peter's absence.... The Reunion meant 'something' to most people, but that was unfortunately taken for granted in a very careless way. They should've never recorded the album the way they did. Wrong turn, I'm afraid, and everybody's loss. To me, the song Psycho Circus is below any of the stuff on Carnival Of Souls. 6/10
FWIW: From what I understand, above and beyond quality of playing/writing, Ace and Peter were also trying to renegotiate their existing contracts and that had a lot to do with their nonparticipating on PC. If they thought they could use the album as leverage it didn't work...
As a vocalist, Bruce is.... a good guitar player. Well, I'll say this: The I got myself to lean on, both feet on the ground part isn't bad. Maybe there is where I can hear the Ace-esque inflection some of you speak of. The solo is decent, but not Earth-moving for me. The melody is OK. I'm just not able to grab hold of anything in this song and really love it, although I don't hate it. Seems a little amateur hour for me. It's a 5.4 out of 10.
To me, what's the defining parts of Black Sabbath? Tony Iommi Tony Iommi then Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler It has all 4 for me. But that's just my opinion.
I think...had Bob Ezrin been available to them in 1993-4 when they wanted him...COS would have been a stronger album and Jungle a bigger hit. So maybe a co-headline tour with Smashing Pumpkins would have opened them up to a whole new generation.
Tell the truth, you're just trying to make my head explode, no??? Is "let's re-make a definitive KISS album" worse than "let's make an Alice In Chains album"? If you believe the results are worse, that fine. But they employed the same strategy of copying for both albums. I'd rather they fail at being themselves than fail at being Alice In Chains.
PSYCHO CIRCUS I am about 95% sick of this song. When I am physically in an arena it sounds good musically but outside of that I don't want to hear it anymore. I guess that's why they have worn out this song live. It's was challenging vocally for Paul in 1998. It is way out of his range now so I am not sure why he keeps making us hear that song in concert. At one point it was their one new song they would bring out but that hasn't been that case in about 10 years so get rid of it. I like a couple of the other songs better on this album. It worked as an opening single at the time as nothing else would've worked so it's fine for what it needed to be. Tommy (?) does a great Ace-like riff. The drums do not swing at all and it is the weak link of the song. Kevin Valentine just can't do a good copycat Peter. Bruce is on bass here? I don't know? This album is a dysfunctional mess. PC- THE ALBUM This is probably the biggest disappointment of a band that I really love. With the Reunion clicking so well, I really expected a fantastic album out of them. I figured there could be 2 Ace songs, 2 Peter songs and the rest Paul and Gene. Nope, we could barely eek out a song out of Ace and Peter. The mix is horrible. The chemistry between all the session players doesn’t gel. There is a mix of songs that sound like numerous past Kiss albums with no cohesiveness or direction. It has been talked at length that Bruce F was the wrong producer for this project. He didn’t get what they were about. This was probably the toughest album to make it seems like in their long history. I’m not sure why they just didn’t wait 6 more months for Bob Ezrin to come on board and for Ace and Peter to solve their legal problems but I believe the tour must have already been scheduled and they had a deadline to make. There is material on here that is really terrible and also really good. It’s all over the place in terms of quality. Dynasty is more of a band album than this.
I'm way more familiar with the first half of Psycho Circus than the second half, which I guess says something about it not being a super strong album. But I do like the first half so I'm not sure exactly what's going on here. I do think just seeing I Finally Found My Way on the track list makes me want to bail out early. That and Dreamin' is Paul still employing his CoS style of bad vocal melodies. For the longest time I didn't think Ace's song was very good either and it kept me away. The song Psycho Circus I've gone back and forth on. When I first heard it I loved it, loved the whole concept of a show beginning. I love those clips you see of bands standing backstage as the intro music plays and the lights go down. And this gave me that same vibe from the get go. Then for awhile I liked it a lot less for no apparent reason but listening to the album yesterday a couple of times I dug it. I agree that it's a bit baffling that Paul thinks this song needs to be played live so often, I like it but it's not one of his best either. Whatever, he's been beating Love Gun into the ground forever too, what does he know. I don't know what people were expecting KISS to do with a lot of this material. They had gone all in on selling you 1977 over and over and over and then you expect them to make a 1998 record? Part of what made those first six records great was getting in and out of the studio is amazingly short bursts. I don't think Ace and Peter especially could have pulled that off. Paul and Gene signed a deal with the devil and there you go. I would love for them to have made a sloppy KISS album but let's also not forget that Destroyer, RARO and Love Gun are NOT albums filled with sloppy playing. In the studio, they'd left that behind after Alive blew up. I absolutely would have wanted them to have the four guys play on PC and I believe it was possible. But that said, Paul and Gene already tied themselves back to a guy who Paul has said could barely play anymore (surely a bit of an exaggeration on Paul's part) and a guy who wasn't sober despite claims to the contrary. It's the solo from Sweet Pain all over again; if a guy's either not there or is going to take 10 days to do a simple punch-in, enough already. I don't think this album would be substantially better with Ace and Peter playing. So yeah, I like the song Psycho Circus.
Whatever faults COS has, "KISS by focus group" it is NOT. The band themselves wanted to do that; no one was trying to coax them into making anything. PC has the feel of the label, and the band, consciously trying to check off a whole list of boxes, and whether the song actually works on its own or not, is secondary. (I'm exaggerating, but not by much). That's my opinion, anyway. I see no parallels whatsoever between COS and PC. If you felt they were trying to "make an AIC album", we'll just agree to disagree. And if they had been trying to do that, I don't think they would have failed so miserably at the task. At most, 1/3 of that album evokes AIC, not the whole thing. Again, it's like calling DYNASTY a "disco album". It's just very inaccurate. To me, it's no more accurate than saying that with COS, KISS were trying to "make a Hendrix album combined with a Beatles album". No band should ever consciously try to replicate something they did in the past. (Obviously, many do; I'm just saying they shouldn't). Whenever you do that, the music just flowing freely is never going to happen, and the result will almost certainly be heavily compromised.
But 'the band' was Gene and Paul. Bruce and Eric had zero say in what kind of album they were going to make at the outset. They would have been the drummer and lead guitar player of KISS if the album was a hip hop album. I'm not going to belabor the point any further than this. Toby Wright says Gene and Paul came to him and said 'we want to make an Alice in Chains album'. Which to me means they wanted to make an Alice in Chains album. Where it went from there is another thing; Alice in Chains, like almost any other band at the vanguard of a movement, wasn't all about one riff and one tempo and one vocal style.
Yes my friend I understand that! For you it is, but please understand for me it is not. I have no desire to convince anyone to believe as I do nor should I. But at least we have common ground in KISS! Peace
Well, by this point in time Bruce had more input into the direction than you might have thought, for starters. But that's not really the point, anyway. As for #2, you're taking KISS b.s./hype, and running with it. I'm not going to deny there was some "pandering" going on here, but if you're going to run with that quote, you need to be prepared to do it on tons of their other albums, as well, and I know for a fact that you're a lot smarter than that! In other words, it's a dumbed-down soundbite for the age we live in. The reality is FAR more nuanced than that.
As usual, I feel like we're saying the same thing to each other. Disagreeing about the fact that we agree. Cheers brother!!!
