I got Dynasty as a Christmas present back in 1979. It's the album that made me desert the KISS Army. Bought it about two hours ago. Listening to it for the first time since early 1980. Besides the two Ace tunes, I still hate it. Dreadful. Check back with me in a month. I'll probably love it. Edit: wow this is bad... my 11-year-old self knew what he was on about...
It's way too pop for me... I don't dislike pop but I want some balls on it too esp. when it's KISS... this is emasculated, which is a feat in of itself when you have Anton on drums... Edit: as I said, though, check back in a month... that is if my old lady doesn't toss me outta the house... she is not enjoying my KISS kick in the least!
On the other hand, CotN is opening up to me despite the heavily processed drum sound (if they wanted a Bonham sound, they shoulda just rented an old mansion and hung two overhead mics over the kit and let Eric bash away)... great songs and performances indeed...
I also don't like most hair metal ballads. Although of course I don't like a lot of hair metal non-ballads either, haha. For me, it's some combination of a lot of hair metal seeming: * Relatively "stripped down"/simplified--a lot of it has a lot of the quirks ironed out/more or less completely removed * Extremely conservative/traditional music-theoretically * Extremely commercial/polished The combo of those three things just doesn't appeal to me. There is hair metal I like, but I'm extremely picky about it. A lot of the stuff I like was rather made by older artists--folks like KISS who were around in the 70s, too, and who didn't get rid of all of the quirks in their music (aside from a tune like "Heaven's on Fire"), or it's made by artists who were considered more on the fringes of the genre, like Alcatrazz or Queensryche. The only mainstream hair metal/"glam" band whose fist album came out in the 80s that I consistently like is Motley Crue.
And then KISS did their own "Never Enough" (off Sonic Boom) that sounded a lot like Poison's "Nothin' But A Good Time" (albeit mashed up with Whitesnke's "Slide It In")...a lot of past rock DNA in that ditty...
Well, at least by dumping KISS after Nasty Din you spared yourself the horror of Unmasked. But yeah, if you cannibalised those 2 albums, you could just about make half of a decent album out of the ACE songs. The further we travel into the Heart Of Darkness that is post-ACE KISS, the more apparent it becomes that he was the soul of the band, and that without him, they were nothing. Sad!
I grabbed Dynasty so I could make an Ace playlist for my iPod... started with "Shock Me" from Love Gun, then onto "Rocket Ride" from studio side of Alive 2 and then his entire solo LP, his tunes from Dynasty and Dark Light from Elder... what tunes from Unmasked, which I have never heard, do I need? edit: Ace had a helluva a run songwriting-wise there for awhile, didn't he?
Going back to the hair/glam detour, idk how familiar the rest of the world was with our TIGERTAILZ, but they tried pretty hard, especially with their 2nd album BEZERK. About half the songs here are easily as good as anything KISS came up with post-ACE. IMO...and...no outside writers edit: on the subject of glam power ballads, track 5 here (Heaven) is the best one ever!
I'm generally not one for "power ballads," but the aforementioned "The Ballad of Jayne" and "House of Pain" by Faster Pussycat are notable exceptions. My parents divorced when I was quite young and my father was a deadbeat so the latter has always resonated with me
he's absolutely the soul of the band... I have always somehow had a copy of Alive 2, even after dumping my LPs back around 1980... even if it was a cassette I always had Alive 2 (since I saw the Love Gun tour and Alive 2 tour)... I remember in the early 90s a friend of mine who was also a fan from the 70s but hadn't listened to them was at my apartment... I played Alive 2 which he hadn't heard since the 70s... we sat in silence during the live "Shock Me"... after it was over, he turned to me and said, "Ace is the Keith Richards of the band, isn't he?" Amen, brother! As I've listened to these 80s songs post-CotN on youtube, I haven't commented much but besides the lack of Ace (who would have had better solos on CotN although I truly am loving the album, but I can't remember a single guitar solo and I've listened to it four times today!) the other two things that are jumping out at me are: 1) although Eric is a better ROCK drummer, I miss Peter as a rock AND roll drummer... not that he woulda been suited for this 80s material in the least, but I like his swing... 2) the outboard FX units being used to mix these albums haven't dated well... you hear a lot of that first generation digital effects outboard gear like reverb... I'm just old school in that department, whether it's real plate reverb or tape echoes or echo chambers (or putting Peter's kit in a bathroom a la RARO)... I don't like a lot of 80s bands/production because of those first generation digital units, esp. reverb... and godawful Aphex guitar Xciters... yuck...
Since we've gone off the rails this morning...here is one of my favorite power ballads...from one of my favorite metal albums of all time. TNT Tonight I'm Falling
SECRETLY CRUEL 1985 (Simmons) (3:41) “Secretly Cruel” starts out with a riff very similar to “Mr. Speed” and returns to it several times during the verses. The song itself is another Simmons tune about a groupie being obsessed with him. Musically it has more of a Stones or Faces kind of vibe to it (as does “Mr. Speed”) and a fairly straight forward guitar solo (not a lot of hammer ons or tremolo). The mid tempo rocker has some cowbell and heavy background vocals (reminiscent of Def Leppard) and a fairly bluesy overall feel. Gene's vocal is fairly restrained and more in his natural voice. I don't think this is a particularly bad song, but it's not great either. It's a standard blues influenced rocker. It sounds like it could be Faster Pussycat or some LA band. The influences are fairly obvious for this one and, I suppose, is kind of a nice change of pace on the album. In feel it's more like an older KISS tune in many respects so, depending on your perspective, that can be a good or bad thing.
Holy s***, so I hate those things, such fugly looking things, and they just sound so sterile. I worship Bill Wyman and Buck Dharma, but I'm still pissed at them for using those things.
"Secretly Cruel" A bit of a mixed bag on this one, but overall I like it well enough . . . though maybe I like it more when I'm playing guitar along with it than when I'm listening to it.--It's another one that's fun for me to play guitar with because it's just enough of a challenge for me at this point, and there's lots of busy riffing, which is kind of what comes naturally to me as a musician. So the negatives first: * The overall harmonic contour of this tune is pretty boring. Minus "ornamentations," passing tones, etc., we basically have I - IV for the verses, bVI - bVII for the pre-chorus, and then I - bVI for the chorus, with a little V - bVII tag at the end. And that's basically it, ad infinitum. There's not even a bridge. * The melody is kind of boring, too, except for the chorus. * It would be reasonable to say that it's pretty generic, or to classify it as filler. It's not an easily memorable tune/it's not particularly catchy. However * The ornamentations are pretty cool. The constant guitar riffing, with rhythm guitar parts interweaving a bit, is very attractive. It's basically like a hair metal take on a Stones-in-a-Chuck-Berry-mode tune, filtered through KISS-in-a-Rock-and-Roll-Over mode (and of course, there are lots of allusions to "Mr. Speed" here specifically). * The bass part fairly cleverly serves as a bridge between the busier guitar part and the far simpler, let's pound-out-the-quarter-notes for ass-shakin'-dancing drum part. The bass does this by regularly alternating which approach it's following, often in the space of a single bar. * I like the vocal pitch bends in the chorus a lot. And even though the verses are kind of boring melodically re the lead vocal, the back-up vocals in the verses, which also have lots of pitch bends in a vein very similar to the chorus, are pretty cool, too. * Has a fairly Ace-like guitar solo while still sounding like 80s lead guitar, which fits the general vibe of the tune well.
Gene has some good ideas, but his choruses are lacking on Asylum (although Any Way You Slice It isn't bad). Secretly Cruel and Trial By Fire fall flat for that reason.
