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Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Love to hate, hate to love

We know these two terms, but can they apply to music or musicians? I think it's possible to some extent. I am going to take the second part first just because it's easier. It terms on hard rock/metal bands where I hate to admit that I love or at least like a great deal, I would say it is Guns and Roses. I don't mean the current Axl Rose and his hired band who will likely never release an album. I mean the real Guns and Roses that included Slash, Duff and preferably Izzy Stradlin. The drummer doesn't matter too much as production even made Steven Adler sound decent. The Spaghetti Incident is throwaway stuff, but the rest of their stuff I like a lot. When Appetite for Destruction came out in 87, it was a huge boost for commercial metal/ hard rock. They had a much needed energy that spawned a number of imitators, but no one came close. The love part comes form their studio albums. The hate part comes from the reports of their bad live shows, Axl's tantrums and attitude and the fact that they probably received more credit than they deserved.
Love to hate is tougher because I want to be open minded and I don't want to hate anyone if the music is good. Although I would say Gene Simmons might be very close. I say Gene rather than Kiss or even Gene and Paul. Over the last ten years Gene has became more known as a moneygrubber and I say more known because my guess is that he has been this way since say 75, but it has just become more known recently. Don't get me wrong I once loved Kiss, but now I can't even bring myself to listen to the first six studio albums just due to Gene has done. Even as recently as 92, Kiss were at least likeable in a goofy sense. Even the first make-up tour wasn't too bad because there were people who missed it and wanted to see it. Then we had repeated make up tours, substituting Thayer and Singer for Ace and Peter and of course piles of crap being peddled with the Kiss logo stamped on it. At the center of it all is Gene wearing his ratty wig and trying to pretend he's still cool. The same Gene Simmons who accompanied federal marshals on a raid at a Kiss convention to catch a record bootlegger that Gene knew of. So fans were lead away in handcuffs for selling bootleg Kiss material. Gene decided his time was best spent going after someone who might be making a buck off of Kiss instead writing music that mattered (like their music ever mattered that much). I used to think he was cool now I get sick when I see Kiss stuff at Spencer's or my local record store.

1 comment:

  1. Don't forget when he sued King Diamond! Kiss is a weird thing, because it was their commercial nature that drove all the stage theatrics that made them so much fun. Yet in the end, it is the commericalism that has also made them irrelevent.

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