The theatrical, gimmick laden, cartoon glam/metal rockers legacy is a global brand that boasts more than 3,000 officially licensed products to its name which, if recent reports are to be believed, has earned the serpent tongued, flame spitting bass player Gene Simmons over $300 million. You don’t get that kind of wealth from playing live and releasing albums but from shrewdly planned licensing. Paul Stanley once excitedly blurted ‘ we’ll put our brand on pretty much anything’ and that’s pretty much what they’ve done. From the standard band merchandise stuff (badges, tshirts, hoodies etc) to condoms, slot machines, a restaurant chain, a golf course, coffins, barbecue sauce and quite possibly the sky, your mum and the weather. Brand more important than band….their stage shows were visually jaw-dropping, a laser spinning, stage turning, pyrotechnic extravaganza, a real pantomime of exuberant, fired up sell-out crowds…Gene Simmons flying over their heads like a giant, overdressed fruit bat…as casually as you like. A Kiss show conjures an atmosphere somewhere between professional championship wrestling and an army of Sybaritic cyborgs marching across the landscape and splitting the land like an impulse...a discernable silence before the destruction, the never ending sabbatical….in a flurry of lights, stage trickery, fake blood and rehearsed exaggeration…a scripted hell, fire and damnation..If you will
This year is the 40th anniversary of their career and they are marking the occasion with a deluxe double cd special edition release of their 1977 album Love Gun. The first CD will contain the completely re-mastered album while the second CD is padded out with the much favoured ‘never before released’ rare demos, the standard interview (this time with Gene Simmons back in 77) and….wait for thissss……three never available live tracks and notes specially written by…..Joe Elliott of Def Leppard! Ooooh Kiss are a gift that just keep on giving….the Kiss Army must be urinating a tsunami in anticipation. The album is considered their best, musically….and the lyrical intellect Paul Stanley unfurls is a mesmerising delight…..be gob smacked at his poetic gifts, for example ‘no place for hiding baby, no place to run, you pull the trigger of my…love gun’ or the equally profound Plaster Caster narratives….’plaster caster, plaster caster, grab a hold of me faster plaster, and if you wanna see my love just ask her’ A cantering composition of delights…a nation sits in silent perplexity…not because of any below-par garbage oh no, they are hushed with admiration and startling wonder at his grasp of the English language. His finest hour though is the kleptomaniacs anthem ‘I Stole Your Heart’ and the biting lyrical swipe ‘I’m something different aint like the rest, how does it feel to find out your failin your test’ he taunts, (poetically), and quite clearly livid. It seemed a bit uncalled for but the woman in question must have really pissed off this literary icon or he wouldn’t write such exquisite vitriol. The acidic, backbiting rhetoric of the forward thinking essayist fills minds with a tumbling waterfall of delights and for the tiniest of moments the entire world want him to pull the trigger of their collective love gun....for he is a pointless fucking tosser...I mean he isTh he Starchild! Aint he?? I always get those two descriptions muddled up....
No comments:
Post a Comment