Kiss: Klassic or Dud

... and I Just Wanna is a great throwaway track.

Absolute fucking dud.

the new RS cover story is actually informative! The nature of the Simmons-Stanley relationship, Ace 'n' Peter, etc

Nice evisceration by Dave Marsh: https://www.facebook.com/rrconline/posts/10201660685713307?stream_ref=10

All that mediocrity was harmless enough until the boastful bassist decided to turn it into a propaganda machine for the only two things he’s ever loved: Gene Simmons and money.

don't see anything wrong with Gene Simmons loving Gene Simmons and money. He should've written a couple more good songs w/out doctors though.

from the dave marsh piece quoted above:

In Kiss’s own genre and time, by which I mean 1970s hard rock, almost every fan of it as a whole (as opposed to the Kiss Army) would agree that at least Cheap Trick, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and Motorhead are not just more deserving, but far, far better choices.

dave marsh on judas priest in the "rolling stone record guide":

Grunting, flailing hard rock, as vulgar as its name, but less euphonious. (one star each for all nine albums judas priest had released at that point.)

malu halasa on motorhead in the "rolling stone record guide," edited by dave marsh and john swenson:

That this band has never caught on in America's wheat-belt heavy-metal heartland represents a mysterious lapse of bad judgment.

the "Kiss & Tell" bio is great, I think I got that recommendation from ILX

Dave Marsh is the worst

i will second the excellency of brian hiatt's RS cover story.

One of the first things I ever shoplifted. Dud, imo.

http://www.kissfaq.com/KissFAQ-wiki/images/f/f9/Cassingle_usalptxis_a.jpg

what's the name of the oral bio? It's fun.

dave marsh on judas priest in the "rolling stone record guide":

Like many critics/music listeners/humans, his judgments and opinions sometimes changed/evolved over time.

malu halasa on motorhead in the "rolling stone record guide," edited by dave marsh and john swenson:

I wouldn't conflate him being the Guide's editor with an insistence that the Guide reflect his opinions. He hated Pere Ubu, and trashed them in the first Guide; for the second edition, he handed them off to someone else who gave their records four and five stars.

They are so dud they make me want to figure out a way to spell dud with a K.

Also, Dave Marsh is lame, too, albeit maybe not lame with a K. He's right that Kiss does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but wrong in believing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should exist in the first place, let alone that its "members" - do you get a ring or a jacket or something? - were even remotely across the board "formidable."

totally agreed that critics and other humans can, and do, change their stripes over time. fair point. but marsh was such a loud and persistent hater of a certain style of music for such a long time that it's a little hard to take him seriously as a voice of authority on that same style of music today. i similarly have no interest in hearing tipper gore's opinion as to which hard-rock and metal bands belong in the hall of fame and which don't.

When the hall started in 1986, Berry, Diddley, Little Richard et al weren't exactly getting Grammy tributes on national tv; there seemed a real sense that the earliest innovators would be, maybe not forgotten, but at least not given due recognition during their lifetimes.

Of course now it's just a lightning rod for everyone who thinks it's stupid and simultaneously whines that their favorite band isn't in it.

xp

The Rock Hall would have only been worthwhile if they inducted Berry, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis et al every year, again and again.

totally agreed that critics and other humans can, and do, change their stripes over time. fair point. but marsh was such a loud and persistent hater of a certain style of music for such a long time that it's a little hard to take him seriously as a voice of authority on that same style of music today. i similarly have no interest in hearing tipper gore's opinion as to which hard-rock and metal bands belong in the hall of fame and which don't.

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, April 1, 2014 2:48 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't recall reading many Marsh reviews (aside from the aforementioned Priest thing) that indicated he hated that area of music; iirc, he dug Sabbath, among others. To be fair, I don't recall him digging Deep Purple or Motorhead, though.

But Marsh loved/loves the New York Dolls, and hating Kiss (who were just a ham-fisted Dolls with money) while loving the Dolls doesn't strike me as a contradiction in the least -- it actually seems completely reasonable.

fwiw, I like a handful of earlyish Kiss singles, and I appreciate the shit out of their live presentation, but they never really swung. And their desperate attempts to pretend their glory years didn't end, and meant something more than makeup and explosions (fun as those are), just get sadder and sadder with every all-caps Paul Stanley tweet.

Hall of Fame is to honor bands that sell, and the record companies that sold them, therefore KISS deserve a place as much as anyone.

Kiss is one of the few rock bands adult me can still find the energy to passionately hate. Stupid, clunky songs that sound like they should be blasted out of a hypothetical Epcot Center Hard Rock Pavillion. And awful, awful people to boot.

The Peter Criss book was OK. They called him The Spoiler, because once he slept with a woman he spoiled the chances of everyone else. Because he had a big wiener and was likely good in a bed and probably bought them flowers and made them breakfast and stuff.

(xxxp) i do not know if marsh dug sabbath or not. i do know that he assigned them, in the aforementioned rolling stone record guide, to a writer who trashed their entire catalog in a single paragraph. if he dug them, he might have thought them worthy of more than that one paragraph in a major rock and roll record guide that had his own name on the cover.

i don't, on the other hand, find any particular contradiction in liking the dolls and hating kiss, and i like plenty of other stuff marsh has written.

i have not, to the best of my knowledge, ever seen a paul stanley tweet, and i am ok with that,

Pretty sure he released an album of tweets from the stage:

https://soundcloud.com/christopher-armes/45-minutes-of-paul-stanley

They're analog tweets, though. None of that digital shit. Though I'm pretty sure they top out at 140 characters.

in the RS article Ace finally admits he endured a bisexual phase.s

No way Marsh liked Sabbath.

In some book with his name on it all their albums got LESS than one star, if that's even possible. Fuck that guy.

I don't even like Kiss

Bill Magill OTM, no amount of revisionism/rehabilitation can change just how terrible Marsh was/is

So...he was terrible for allowing anti-Sabbath opinions into the RS Record Guide? If you like Sabbath, what difference does it make?

he was terrible because he hats things he doesn't understand, I have no interest in debating this.

"hates"

also some bad tense form in that sentence, sorry but he gets me riled up

I think I was also put off this band by the fact that everyone I knew who liked them in high school liked them in this proto-bacon/awesome/zombies sort of way, like the band might as well have been called LOLKISS. I'm sure most fans ITT are not like that.

My esoteric late period reason for not liking Marsh. When Alejandro Escovedo (who I really like) put out his 2008 album "Real Animal" (I think it was this one), there was a sticker on the front that said, like "Album of the Year - Dave Marsh." Never mind that Marsh doesn't really review/rank albums anymore, afaik, never mind that it was nowhere near far enough in the year to make that proclamation in the first place, never mind that it wasn't even one of the better Escovedo albums. What irked was that Marsh's wife works for Escovedo's management team (who also handles Marsh conflict of interest bud Bruce Springsteen). Really bugged me because it went so dramatically, above and beyond, out of its way to be wrong on several different levels.

I just always got the feeling that the music was secondary to the presentation and the merchandising, and literally nothing I've heard by this band has shaken that opinion.

For some reason, the Springsteen connection never bugged me, but I was never a massive Bruce fan, nor a hater, so I didn't mind -- Glory Days is a fun read.

Marsh's championing of Pearl Jam is something I've always found utterly baffling, but it doesn't color the rest of his work for me.

(fwiw, Marsh still writes occasional reviews for Rock & Rap Confidential, but I don't think he/they do year-end lists anymore)

xp

So...he was terrible for allowing anti-Sabbath opinions into the RS Record Guide? If you like Sabbath, what difference does it make?

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, April 1, 2014 3:48 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes and None