alantig

Had the distinct pleasure of stopping in at Chez Greg this afternoon on my way to the Frozen Four. Got to see the man's in-progress handiwork up close - just you wait! Greg is a master - I hope I never need a headstock repair, but if I do, I know where it's going. I thought about offering him $350...but there were too many sharp tools within easy reach!

Gene and Paul may not have explicitly said they wouldn't play w/Ace and Peter, but Paul sure alluded to it in the Classic Rock interview. I think it rankles Gene and Paul to no end that fans still love Ace and Peter despite how they screwed things up over the year. They repeatedly make the point that Singer and Thayer have been in the band longer. Singer and Thayer may be better technical players, but there's a certain spark and feel with the original band that the current lineup doesn't have, and that holds true for other bands as well - when Heart performed with their current lineup at their induction, it sounded great, but the song with the original lineup sounded like HEART. These guys had the chance to do a one-time, no-strings-attached performance for fans. No talk of a full-fledged reunion and/or tour. No album. Just 10-15 minutes playing a couple classic songs. And they're blowing it. I do give Ace and Peter credit for getting this word out now and forcing Gene and Paul's hand - tix go on sale tom'w. How thrilled would you be to pay $600 hoping to see the original lineup perform one last time and getting Eric and Tommy instead?

My favorites are the guys who say "this $500 import Brand X guitar is just as good as their American-made Custom Private Elite Shop guitar that costs 10x more - all I had do was change the tuners, the bridge, the pots, the pickups, the nut, level and finish the frets, put in a new jack and get new knobs". Well, yeah, other than that.

I'm guessing nature was trying to burn down Tommy Thayer's house...

As I recall from Rudy's book, Robert was up for the guitar slot in Ozzy's band after Randy Rhoads died.

The only thing I'll disagree with here is about a 17-year-old having no ego. I've seen more than enough 17-year-olds (and younger) who think the world just revolves around them to disprove that! Just go to some high school athletic events - you'll find more than you can swing a baseball bat at. That said, didn't we just have a thread and series of news stories about the old man who wrote his first song about his late wife of 75 years and how wonderful that was? So why isn't this? Opposite end of the age spectrum, to be sure, but she's putting herself on the line, whatever her reasons. And virtually no one who posts a YouTube video is unaware of the nastiness that can ensue, and since she apparently has a bunch of videos out there, I'm sure she's well aware of how nasty it can get. But she still did it. We guitarists have a well-earned reputation for being snide, competitive bastards. How many guitarists does it take to change a light bulb? 15 - one to do it, 14 to stand around and say, "I could have done that". There's more than a kernel of truth to that. It's a reaction I've had myself, but I'm trying to change that and be more positive and encouraging. So, if you can't applaud the performance, at least applaud the effort and the balls it took to put it out there. Alan

Gene's album is a decidedly mixed bag, but I think it shows him to be a lighter weight than the image he projects (or tries to). Some decent songs, some that are more cringe-worthy, and some that make you shake your head (I like his cover of "When You Wish Upon A Star" well enough, but still...). There were enough celebrity cameos to give the impression that Gene was trying to show how well-connected he was. Over the years, I've come to regard Gene's as third at best among the solo albums, and I'm more likely to listen to Peter's album. I'd rank Gene's third if the Kiss universe is a consideration. Peter's album suffers in that it's not really a rock and roll album, or at least not a hard rock album. There's nothing on it that fits into a Kiss show despite them doing "Tossin' And Turnin'" on the early dates of the Dynasty tour.

I love the fact that Gene and Paul claimed that they couldn't play some old material because Ace and Peter weren't up to it, then Kiss added "Love Her All I Can" for about five shows before dropping it. Ace played it - and a lot of other old Kiss stuff that Kiss won't play - on the Anomaly tour. Gene so wants for fans to be as sick of Ace as he seems to be, and he can't stand it that Ace is so beloved.

It was probably Ralph and Millie, from the Fridays taping in 1982!

And it aggravates them that fans know it, too, and that some fans prefer Ace and Peter to Tommy and Eric, no matter how much Gene and Paul try to spin that it's a better band now. Alan

Dunlop Ultex Sharps - $6 for a six-pack at GC, three for a buck at the music store I hit near Boston last week.

Happy happy Greg! Alan

Finally watched this - the backing vocals on the Gene songs were brutal. Paul singing an octave lower really destroys the songs, and not in a good way. Alan

Yes. "John The Revelator" is excellent - but it was even better live. Alan

IMO, Destroyer was and is my pivotal KISS studio album. It embodies all of the qualities I looked for most in a group/album/music at that point in my life- it had all the sturm und drang, darkness, polish, attitude and guitar tone I could've hoped for. The dark and mystical side of God of Thunder just hypnotized me and there were few, if ANY anthems that spoke more to my burgeoning rock n roll teen rebel persona than King of the Nighttime World & Detroit Rock City. Lastly, there was something magical and romantic about Great Expectations which undoubtedly spoke to my red-lining libido, as well as my closely guarded romantic side Even as I typed that, I was kind of surprised. Don't get me wrong - I like Destroyer, but a lot of what people criticize other Kiss albums for can be applied here. "Great Expectations" is a song I've gone back and forth on at times (mostly I really like it), but if you played that for someone who didn't know Kiss inside and out, they wouldn't peg that as a Kiss song. It sounds a bit like Kiss trying to be something other than a straight rock and roll band, which is not a bad thing, but it's the kind of thing they've said about "The Elder" and "Carnival Of Souls" (both of which I like more than most Kiss fans seem to). And the Ace solo album is an excellent choice. Lastly, FrettyMcgee touches on a lot of points that have made me largely indifferent to recent Kiss efforts. I don't mind so much that they've replaced Ace and Peter, but it does bug me that they're having Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer play Peter and Ace. The last time I saw them, Thayer was still doing some of the stumbling and moving like Ace, but he was getting away from playing just like Ace. But they started doing Ace and Peter's signature songs, and I'm sorry, that just rubs me the wrong way. And the constant criticism from Gene and Paul is old, but I guess they can't get over the fact that fans still recognize that there's a certain magic that happens when those four get together and it can't be replicated. I think my favorite development of recent years was when Gene and Paul were trying to push Tommy on the fans and said now that they had better players in the band, they'd be able to play songs that the other guys just couldn't pull off. The ones I remember were "Love Her All I Can" and "Anything For My Baby", and they didn't survive to the end of the tour. When I saw Ace last year, he played both of those (better than Kiss did) - AND "Flaming Youth". He didn't really say anything, even in interviews, but it struck me as being a big middle finger to Gene and Paul. Alan

Can't go wrong w/DTK or HTH. "Alive!" is definitely one of the first I'd recommend. I'm not as high on "Revenge" as some other folks, but for a later period album, I'd look at "Creatures Of The Night". Possibly their hardest album, although it's really just 3/4 of the band. I'm also fond of some of the albums that Kiss fans don't like - think "Elder", "Unmasked" and "Carnival Of Souls". FWIW, "Destroyer" is considered to be the peak of Kiss's career by many, but I don't think so. I wouldn't call it weak, but I think they had stronger albums. You could probably take the first six studio albums and cut them down to four outstanding albums (but that's probably true of most bands). Alan

'59 Burst three-holer. One for him, one for Mike Keneally, back in the Z days. I have Mike's. I had a shot at Dweezil's, but I couldn't see paying something like $300-400 more for Dweezil's when Mike is the one I have a connection with. And I have video of him playing it, which makes it that much cooler. Alan

So, what, now you're going to move into hip-hop? Bill - glad to hear it wasn't worse. I use a chainsaw rarely, and I'm a bundle of nerves the entire time. Especially after my uncle had an accident with one (nothing too horrible, but as I recall, there were numerous stitches involved). Alan

There are a couple greatest hits packages, but I'd recommend some version of "The Hits/B-Sides". It was released as two single discs ("The Hits 1", "The Hits 2", I believe) and a three-disc set with a disc of B-sides. The three-disc set might not be the best way to dive in for someone new, at least at the list price, but if you can find it used, it's probably worth it. Highlights for me from that set, among others, are "7", "Purple Rain", "Little Red Corvette", "Raspberry Beret", "When Doves Cry", "1999", "Head", "Peach", "U Got The Look" and "Sexy MF". Haven't gotten deep into his catalog outside of that, but some tracks elsewhere I'd recommend are "Take Me With You" from "Purple Rain" and "Holy River" and "Face Down" from "Emancipation. Not all SFW. Alan

Not true. So not true. Human League won the coin flip and gets him first.

I'm not sure I buy Tate's story on TMS. Some things don't add up, like the idea that he can't understand why they won't talk to him after he pulled a knife on them and spit at them. Or that there were no creative differences, but he complains (elsewhere) that the rest of the band wouldn't participate in writing. If you saw them on the Rocklahoma broadcast, it was somewhat bizarre. Tate didn't look at another band member for the full 90 minutes. No eye contact whatsoever, no acknowledgement that there was anyone else on stage with him.

Alan

Electric Mary. Saw these guys at Experience PRS a couple years ago and they tore it up. Unfortunately, other than downloads, everything's an import here. But worth checking out. Alan

I kind of took Grohl's message to be aimed at folks who might think you have to have AutoTune and 683 tracks of synths and 146 dancers to make good 'music'. I'm not really much of a Foo fan at all, but I respect the message. I didn't take it "Look - we did this all live to tape with one mic" or anything like that. Just that it wasn't tweaked to within an inch of its life. Speaking of docs and what they reveal, I lost a lot of respect for Metallica when I watched "A Year And Half..." and saw that Lars and the engineer went through and picked each individual snare hit and moved them around to comp the best ones together into one drum track. I've got nothing against editing and punching in, but even though he was replacing stuff he played, it was like it was a totally artificial construct (says the guy who's using Steven Slate Drums...) Alan

+1 on the Samsung LED. Not necessarily a fan of some of the software implementation, specifically picture-in-picture, but mine's a couple years old, so they may work differently now. The way PIP works on mine, the inset can only be the over-the-air antenna. And only the ANALOG OTA, which, as you may have heard, is useless as everything is now digital. That's the one thing my old Panasonic TV had all over this one - PIP and split screen that worked flawlessly. Nothing like two NHL playoff games on at the same time! Alan