"Let's play some old Honk!" (revised)

So sorry for the lack of posts here lately, especially in light of my recent vow to keep on plugging away while the rest of blogdom snoozes.  However, a series of crises on this end—not the least of which is my old man being hospitalized with pneumonia again—has stifled my creativity and limited my free time, hence the relative silence from yours truly.  I can’t guarantee when the clouds will clear at this point or when I’ll be able to post more frequently, but in the meantime, enjoy my re-worked band tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd, which I originally posted in the spring of ’07, and have decided to expound on a bit more…

I recently read two books from the library about Lynyrd Skynyrd, one good, one not so good.  The good one was co-written by a former member of their road crew and a close friend of the late Ronnie Van Zant, Gene Odom, entitled Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering The Free Birds Of Southern Rock, and it’s totally worth it for his first-hand account of their tragic 1977 plane crash alone, during which Odom lost an eye and suffered other serious injuries.  The other book, Freebirds: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Story by Marley Brant was more expansive and also covered more of the group’s post-plane crash history, but was loaded with factual errors, gossip/hearsay and misspellings galore (for instance, ‘Van Zant’ was spelled numerous ways throughout the book, including ‘Vanzant’ ‘VanZant’ and ‘Van-Zant’) and former bassist Larry Junstrom (later a member of .38 Special) was listed as Larry ‘Jungstrom’.  Pretty sophomoric effort, there, Marley…

When I first heard Skynyrd on AM radio in ’74, I naturally assumed they were from Alabama, based on “Sweet Home”, but of course, LS hailed from Jacksonville, Florida.  I was fairly ambivalent about the band during the ‘70s for the longest time—I liked some of their stuff, especially the monumental “Free Bird”—but I was rather put-off by the brawling biker-bar mentality the group projected for so long (much of which was fairly true, based on my reading).  But, when I looked a little deeper and learned more about them, I discovered there was a lot more to this band than I realized, singer Ronnie Van Zant, in particular.  Far from the macho gun-toting redneck I pictured him to be, RVZ was actually a fairly ordinary guy who shunned the limelight and disdained being famous, just as the song “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” indicates.  Actually, all of the band members were hardly your typical Rock Star material—they were just regular working-class folk who were talented enough to make a go of it in the music business.

Mr. Van Zant was well-spoken and a far better wordsmith than I initially gave him credit for being, and had a knack for coming up with lyrics and never committing them to paper.  It was like he had this internal Rolodex in his head that he filed ideas and phrases in, and just dialed them up at will.  Just about every account you read about Ronnie portrays him as a “fine Southern gentleman” who was well-respected by his peers, almost to the point of granting him sainthood.  No disrespect intended to the dearly-departed, but this is the same man who would routinely get fucked-up on alcohol and beat people up who crossed him, including his own bandmates—late keyboardist Billy Powell lost numerous teeth to Ronnie’s fists once.  Doesn't sound very “gentlemanly” to me.  He seemed to be fairly unapologetic about it, too, making it all the more confounding.  Alcohol is no excuse, either—you don’t go around beating up your friends.  If you beat me up, you’re no longer my friend, but I digress…

The rest of the band was full of characters too, like late bassist Leon Wilkeson, better known as “The Mad Hatter” for his humorous onstage headgear, ranging from English “Bobbie” helmets to “Cat-In-The-Hat” hats.  I think the boy was a little mental, too, because when I saw Skynyrd in concert in 2001—just weeks prior to his death—he wore these bright red latex pants onstage in searingly hot weather.  Lead guitarist Allen Collins was extremely underrated—I find it amazing to this day that he dreamed up and played the entire legendary solo on “Free Bird” by himself, with only an assist or two from Ed King and Gary Rossington in places.  Sadly, Collins was probably the most self-destructive member of Skynyrd, and his post-plane crash life was full of tragedy.  His wife died suddenly during childbirth in 1980, and six years later, he got drunk off his ass and wrecked his car in which his girlfriend was a passenger, killing her and leaving him paralyzed from the waist-down.  Some say Allen had a death wish in the years following the plane crash, and even though he tagged along on the ’87 Lynyrd Skynyrd reunion tour as a “musical director”, not being able to play guitar and be on-stage with his friends must have just sucked the life right out of him.  Collins died of pneumonia on January 23, 1990 at age 37—done WAY too soon.

Another tragedy amongst the many this band has had its unfair share of was guitarist Steve Gaines, who joined in the summer of ’76.  Skynyrd was in a slump following two so-so albums (Nuthin’ Fancy and Gimme Back My Bullets), which led to the departure of Ed King in late ’75.  They carried on with just two guitarists for a time until back-up singer Cassie Gaines (of the “Honkettes” as Ronnie dubbed them) recommended her brother as a replacement for King.  In a most unusual move, the band decided to “audition” Steve right there onstage at a Skynyrd show at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas—talk about a baptism by fire!  Gaines was so good, though, that Van Zant took to him right away, and Steve was inserted into the lineup just in time to record their live album, One More From The Road.  Gaines was a much-needed shot in the arm, and he brought a new dimension to the band with his almost jazz-like playing.  You can hear him prominently on their final studio album Street Survivors on tracks like “That Smell” and “I Know A Little” (which he wrote) and that’s him sharing vocals with Ronnie on “You Got That Right”.  You might say that Steve Gaines was another Stevie Ray Vaughan in the making—who knows what he might’ve gone on to do…

Steve seemingly re-energized Collins and Rossington, who both suddenly realized they needed to elevate their playing just to keep up with this guy, and all seemed to be right in Skynyrd-land again until that fateful day, October 20, 1977, just three days after the release of Street Survivors.  During that time, I was just beginning to make the transition from Top 40 radio over to Album Rock, and I just happened to be tuned into the old KY-102 that night when the DJ (Ray Sherman, I wanna say) broke the bad news, and it turned into an all-night vigil as the details trickled in.  I also clearly remember the next night when Walter Cronkite committed his fairly infamous gaffe on the “CBS Evening News”, “Three members of the Rock group Len-yerd Skin-yerd died yesterday…”

What sucks the most about the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash is it could have and should have been averted.  Their plane was over 30 years old, and the pilots knew there was something wrong with one of the engines, but arrogantly decided to hold off on fixing the problem until they reached Baton Rouge, where a mechanic from Houston was due to meet them and make the necessary repairs.  Even worse, there was no compelling need for Skynyrd to arrive in Louisiana on the 20th—their next concert wasn’t scheduled until the next night, and they could’ve taken alternate transportation from South Carolina, where the doomed flight originated.  Basically, the plane ran out of fuel about 50 miles from its destination, and ironically, if they’d run out of fuel a bit sooner, they may well have been able to land the plane in a flat field to a much lesser impact, but unfortunately, the plane dropped right into a grove of trees in swampland.  Both pilots were killed on impact, as were Ronnie Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, and tour manager Dean Kilpatrick, all of whom were seated at or near the front of the aircraft.  The other 20 passengers suffered numerous injuries of varying degrees of severity, and drummer Artimus Pyle—with broken ribs and bleeding profusely himself—was able to make a run through the rugged terrain to summon help from the locals.  Mr. Odom’s blow-by-blow account of the crash in his book is as riveting as it is chilling.

For a band that always prided itself on being a “family”, Lynyrd Skynyrd sure has been a dysfunctional lot ever since the 1977 tragedy.  Now, I’ve never been in a plane crash, and I hope to hell I never will be, so I have no idea what it’s like or how horrific it can be, but the way these people have treated each at times over the years has been downright baffling.  Keyboardist Billy Powell raised eyebrows and caused some hurt feelings amongst the Gaines family when he embellished the plane crash aftermath story on VH-1’s “Behind The Music” in 2000, claiming that Cassie Gaines “died in my arms and Artimus Pyle’s arms”, not to mention that her neck was slit from ear-to-ear.  Neither claim was true, and Powell’s story didn’t hold water anyway, considering that Pyle was off seeking assistance, therefore she couldn’t possibly have died in both sets of arms.  He also claimed that Ronnie Van Zant “didn’t have a mark on him” (there goes that sainthood stuff again) when Van Zant indeed died of massive head injuries.

I also find it rather sad that the surviving band members turned their collective backs on Pyle when he was accused by his whacked-out girlfriend of child molestation with the daughter he fathered with this woman.  Pyle was forced to register as a sex offender for a time, and no one in the band stood up in support of him, and they basically just threw him under the bus and his reputation is ruined for good.  There seems to be an especially nasty rift between Pyle and guitarist Gary Rossington, the lone surviving original Skynyrd member.  At least AP was invited to attend and perform at Skynyrd’s induction ceremony for the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 (as was original drummer Bob Burns), but there was one glaring no-show that night that I’ve always been curious about.  Charlie Daniels, who often championed the Skynyrd cause and was a close friend of Ronnie Van Zant, was nowhere to be found that night.  Considering how Daniels honored Ronnie’s memory in the poignant 1979 C.D.B. song “Reflections”, I would’ve thought for sure Charlie would be the obvious choice to induct the band into the Hall, but we got stuck with Kid (C)Rock doing the honors instead—talk about a downgrade!  Makes one wonder if there’s a rift between Daniels and the band now, too.  I also have issues with Van Zant’s widow, Judy, who owns and controls the band’s name and interests, for selling Ronnie’s songs to TV ads to help Col. Sanders sell chicken, etc.

My All-Time Lynyrd Skynyrd Top 15:
15) Workin’ For MCA (1974)  As proud a man as Ronnie Van Zant seemed to be, evidently he wasn’t above doing a little sucking up to his record company with this song.  Actually, it was all tongue-in-cheek, and not a bad tune all the same.
14) Crossroads (1976)  Rather difficult to tell Skynyrd’s version (off One More From The Road) from Cream’s classic 1969 rendition, but I’ll take Skynyrd over Cream here, if only because Van Zant was a better vocalist than Eric Clapton.
13) Simple Man (1973)  This was a very personal song to Mr. Van Zant, with the “Mama” in it actually being his grandmother who counseled him during his youth.  One can only imagine Ronnie doing somersaults in his crypt when they started using this song in TV beer commercials.  And for a cheap, crappy brand like Busch?  Pure heresy…
12) Gimme Back My Bullets (1975)  Nice and rough (as Tina Turner might say) with a nasty rumbling riff.  Don’t let the title fool you—the song’s not about firearms or ammo…
11) I Know A Little (1977)  One of the rare times Skynyrd did a song with lyrics not written by Van Zant (other than cover songs).  Young master Gaines had written this one some years before joining Skynyrd.  I love the punchline:  “I know a little—baby, I’ll guess the rest…”
10) What’s Your Name? (1977)  This one came out as a single in advance of Street Survivors and it’s the one that made me finally embrace the band.  I found the way Ronnie sang “Little girl” in the chorus rather endearing, for some reason, and the song is funny in places.
9) The Needle And The Spoon (1974)  The first of several cautionary tales that Ronnie Van Zant put into song.  Pity some of the band members didn’t heed it…
8) Don’t Ask Me No Questions (1974)  Another personal song from RVZ, all about wanting to get away from it all when returning from the road.  I imagine all Rock stars go through this in one way or another with their family and friends, which makes me kinda thankful I’m not famous.
7) Saturday Night Special (1975)  In which Ronnie and the boys take an anti-handgun stance—most unusual when you consider that a good chunk of Skynyrd’s fan base are NRA members.  Nasty riffing from Collins and Rossington here too.
6) Tuesday’s Gone (1973)  Excellent tear-jerker that features a beautiful Mellotron solo in the middle, which was usually the province of Moody Blues and Elton John records back in the day.
5) Gimme Three Steps (1973)  Probably Skynyrd’s funniest song, all about that “fella with the hair colored yella”.  Van Zant kinda sorta based this one on actual events.
4) You Got That Right (1977)  Not only did Steve Gaines impress everyone with his guitar playing prowess, he wasn’t a bad singer, either, thus he got to duet with RVZ on this one.  Love the attitude here, especially, “I’ve tried everything in my life/The things I like, I try ‘em twice…”  The line “You won’t find me in an old folks home” was prophetic, too, as Van Zant had often predicted he wouldn’t make it to the age of 30.
3) That Smell (1977)  An even more haunting cautionary tale, and again, it’s a pity some of the band members failed to heed it, especially the late Allen Collins.
2) Call Me The Breeze (1974)  The Muscle Shoals Horns (aka ,“The Swampers”) totally make this already cool song cook even more.  How it was omitted from the first Skynyrd compilation album, Gold & Platinum is a mystery.
1) Free Bird (1973)  Just like The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” and Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love”, no matter how much this thing gets played to death on the radio, I never tire of hearing it.  This song ended virtually every Lynyrd Skynyrd concert from day one.

NOTE:  Yes, I know, “Sweet Home Alabama” didn’t make the cut here.  Classic song, yes, but there are a few classics I just don’t care for that much and this is one of them.  Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall” is another example.  And unlike “Free Bird”, I’m pretty burned-out on constantly hearing “Sweet Home” on the radio…

Ain't too proud to blog...

Ain’t too proud to bitch, either…

TEDDY PENDERGRASS, 1950-2010
We lost Teddy Pendergrass this week at age 59 to colon cancer—as if being paralyzed from the chest down for the last 28 years wasn’t bad enough for the man.  As comedian Eddie Murphy once accurately pointed out, Teddy’s masculinity compelled many of his female audience members to throw their panties on the stage when he performed.  Before becoming a solo artist, TP was lead singer of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (which makes one wonder why they weren’t called Teddy Pendergrass & The Blue Notes, but I digress), and their classic “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” may well have been Ted’s finest hour.  S'long, Teddy—you were bad (in a damn good way)…

WENDALL ANSCHUTZ, 1938-2010
Those of you outside K.C. won’t know this name, but Wendall was a longtime local TV news anchor here—one of the best we ever had—and he died of throat cancer week before last.  A native of Kansas, Anschutz started at KCMO (now KCTV) Channel 5 in 1966 as a cub reporter (as they called them back then) and worked his way up through the ranks.  By the late ’70s, he was the station’s chief news anchor and he paired up with Anne Peterson to form one of the longest-lasting anchor duos in TV history, working together for nearly 20 years and scoring mighty high ratings.  WA retired about eight years ago, and one of the tributes in the Kansas City Star referred to him as the “Walter Cronkite of Kansas City”, which is pretty accurate.  He was certainly one of the last of a vanishing breed in TV news—a trustworthy substance-over-style news anchor—and I have no doubt that it pained him greatly to watch his former station devolve into the sleazy tabloid-y “Live, Late-breaking, Investigative…” irritative news outfit it has become in recent years.  Everything I’ve heard about Anschutz says he was a classy guy off-camera as well as on.  Rest in peace, Wendall, ya done good…

OOPS!  HE DID IT AGAIN…
The very wrong Rev. Pat Robertson just couldn’t wait to play his “they had it coming to them/this is God’s wrath” card again in regards to Tuesday's tragic earthquake in Haiti.  Just as he did in the wake of 9/11 and Katrina, instead of being a healer like a good religious leader should, Rev. Jagoff pointed fingers instead, saying the poor island nation had “made a pact with Satan” (or some such bullshit), hence this latest in a string of disasters for Haiti.  I know I shouldn’t let this Neolithic dipshit get under my skin, but it’s totally irresponsible for someone who’s this influential (whether he deserves to be or not) to go around making such outrageous claims just to further his own religious/political agenda.  While he was at it, I’m surprised he didn’t also try to blame the gays for the Haitian calamity.  Just for once, I would really like to see someone prominent from the conservative side (Limbaugh? O’Reilly? Beck? ANY Republican politician?) come forward and condemn this douche-bag and take him to task for this crap, but they won’t do it for fear they’ll lose votes or alienate their radio/TV audiences.  Predictably, Robertson’s camp went into spin-doctor mode, claiming that Pat was misinterpreted and/or misquoted.  Hell, they’ll probably deny he ever said it in the first place.  I’ll say one thing for this yutz—he’s as consistent as he is ignorant.  And the band played on…

WAKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER, PLEASE
Is anyone else as nonplussed as I am about the whole Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien thing?  I’ve long been burned-out on the whole late-night talk show thing anyway—they all kinda seem the same anymore (even Letterman) and I rarely tune in much these days.  I say put on some old Johnny Carson reruns—I bet they’d easily outdraw Leno and Letterman in the ratings.  I’m just about burned-out on today’s TV offerings in general—it’s a barren landscape of “reality” shows and “CSI”-type dramas in prime-time, “Andy Griffith Show” and “Roseanne” reruns on TV Land, sensationalism, lies and general bullshit on the news channels, infomercials all night long, and even sporting events are losing their allure with me.  About the only new stuff worth watching anymore are animated shows like “Family Guy”, “Squidbillies” and “Robot Chicken”, and even those can get tired after a while.  Is it any wonder I try to time-travel so much with old-school ‘60s, ’70s and ‘80s escapist fare via the DVD trail?  I’ll gladly take a cheesy “Love Boat” rerun over 95% of what airs on TV these days.  Even “B.J. & The Bear” or "The Misadventures Of Sheriff Lobo" would be a step in the right direction…

SPEAKING OF TV THINGS…
As mentioned, I’ve spent quite a few hours lately watching ‘70s crime drama shows on DVD like “Hawaii Five-0”, “The Rookies”, “S.W.A.T.” and “The Streets Of San Francisco”.  As much as I love the ‘70s, I’m still a bit embarrassed by some of the lingo and dialogue from that era.  For instance, when was the last time you referred to law enforcement officials as “Pigs” and/or “The Fuzz”?

While watching a “Mannix” episode the other night, I thought I was hallucinating when Joe M. attended a swanky dinner party at the home of his client, a home which looked amazingly like that of the Brady Bunch! Evidently the folks at Paramount decided to save a little money on set-building and simply farmed out the Brady household to the “Mannix” folks for one ep in 1970.  Not-so-coincidentally at that time, actor Robert Reed had a concurrent recurring role as a cop on “Mannix”—when he wasn’t busy with three boys of his own…

SPEAKING OF POLICE THINGS…
Just as I feared, the palooka who stole my checkbook out of my car last month tried to pass one of my checks for himself at a local Walmart store that I haven’t set foot in in well over three years.  I got a notice last week in the mail from some collection agency who intervened on Walmart’s behalf saying I owe them 144 bucks, so to prove my innocence in the matter, I went to the K.C. Police Department to obtain an official copy of the report filed by the off-duty officer at the library where my stuff was stolen.  Imagine my surprise when they informed me it would cost ten bucks to get that report!  Talk about a kickback.  I’m the fucking victim here, yet I have to pay to prove my innocence?  As my soccer hooligan friends in England are known to say, “Bollocks!”

Oh, by the way, Walmart—I don’t suppose you bothered to check this asshole’s I.D. when he wrote that check, eh?

GETTIN’ OUT WHILE THE GETTIN’S GOOD…
No big shock that USC coach Pete Carroll has bolted for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, seeing’s how he has (in the words of Gen. Taylor in Good Morning, Vietnam), “left a trail of shit behind him that would fertilize the Sanai.”  Major NCAA sanctions most likely loom for USC for various rules violations during Carroll's watch, but ol’ Pete’s high-and-dry now, claiming he just couldn’t resist the “challenge” in the Great Northwest.  Easy to forget that Carroll was a monumental flop in his first two NFL head coaching gigs with the Jets and Patriots.

Meantime, Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin didn’t even wait for Carroll’s seat to cool down before taking the USC gig after just one year in Knoxville.  What’s up with this one-and-done crap with college coaches now—don’t these guys have contracts to fulfill?  College athletics is becoming every bit as corrupt as professional boxing these days…

SPEAKING OF CORRUPTION…
So Mark McGwire finally came clean about the steroid thing?  YAWN!!  I don’t know about y’all, but I personally don’t even give a damn who did what anymore.  It’s become such a worn-out topic and there’s nothing we can do about it now, other than put an asterisk next to the ‘90s and early ‘00s in the record book and just misremember the whole damn steroid era.

WHERE FOR ART THOU, ROMEO?
The Chefs hired former Cleveland Browns head coach Romeo Crennel as their new defensive coordinator yesterday.  Might be a great move, might not, but between that and the hiring of Charlie Weis as offensive coordinator, at least they ain’t standing pat with the coaching staff after this train wreck of a season.  In his usual negative manner, K.C. Star columnist Jason Whitlock poo-pooped both moves.  The guy’s forever bitching that black coaches never get hired, yet even when the Chefs hire one, he still pisses and moans.  The University of Kansas also recently hired its first black football head coach, Turner Gill, and he ripped that move too.  Can’t have it both ways, Jason…

TODAY IS JANUARY 16th…
…so those of you who still have your outdoor Christmas lights turned on are a few neurons short of a synapse—Christmas was over three weeks ago!  I understand perfectly if the recent crummy weather prevents you from taking down your decorations right away, but you can at least turn them off.  In spite of what most retailers would have you believe, the yuletide season is NOT a year-round event, folks…

Takin' off and landin' with Jefferson Airplane/Starship

The first Rock ‘N’ Roll song I ever remember hearing on the radio that was NOT a Paul Revere & The Raiders record was Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love” when I was a wee three years old.  It’s a timeless classic that would easily make my Top 100 songs (probably even my Top 10) of all-time list, if I ever get around to making one.  The Airplane was one of the mainstays of the Rock world in the late ‘60s, but they were quite the dysfunctional lot, and it’s amazing they stayed together as long as they did, given all the ego trips, in-fighting, back-biting, sniping and just plain animosity they inflicted upon each other.  When the Airplane finally ran aground in the early ‘70s, it morphed into the Jefferson Starship and enjoyed another round of success in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s before it became the neutered just plain Starship in 1985.  Like their contemporaries the Grateful Dead, JA/JS/S did indeed take “a long, strange trip,” which is chronicled in the very fine book I just finished entitled Got A Revolution!  The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane by Jeff Tamarkin, who also authored the write-ups in the Airplane CD box set and the re-issued Airplane/Starship CD catalog.  I’ll spare you the minutiae of the band’s history (hell, read Tamarkin’s book if you want that—it’s well-written and holds one’s interest throughout) and I’ll just throw out some random observations and thoughts about the band(s).

As I’ve stated before, as much as I like Jefferson Airplane—not to be confused with the “Jefferson Hairpie” from Cheech & Chong lore—I still feel that their overall body of work is a skosh overrated, and not quite Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame-worthy.  While “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit” (or “White Wabbit” in Fudd-ese) were landmark recordings, and the albums Surrealistic Pillow (1967) and Volunteers (1969) both hold up quite well, the rest of their 1966-72 output was inconsistent at best and the post-Volunteers era was short-circuited by drugs, indifference and lack of musical direction.  I would even go as far to proclaim that the Jefferson Starship era from 1974-82 was far more prolific than the halcyon Airplane days.  Then again, I’m a child of the ‘70s, therefore I prefer that style of music over some of the meandering improvisational stuff the Airplane often dabbled in.  More succinctly, I’m more partial to structured songs that sound like they are going somewhere and/or have a point to make, as opposed to mindlessly rambling around in no particular direction, which was often the Airplane’s in-concert style, as well as on vinyl.

Co-founder Marty Balin is a great singer and a decent songwriter, but he has this irritating penchant for playing his victim card a lot.  Far too often in interviews, he goes into Rodney Dangerfield can’t-get-no-respect mode when he jealously talks about how Grace Slick always overshadowed him on record and on-stage.  And while some of his songs were pretty good (“Volunteers”, “Miracles”, “Plastic Fantastic Lover”, etc.), a lot of his stuff was rather wimpy and repetitive and he got very one-dimensional with his wooing and crooning, especially as the mid ‘70s wore on.  In fact, I remember guitarist/co-founder Paul Kantner stating in a radio interview after Balin left Starship that he (Paul) was tired of the band getting smoked in concert by upstart opening acts like Foreigner and Journey because the Starship’s stuff had gotten so stale and wimped-out, thus inspiring the much edgier Freedom At Point Zero album in late ’79.

And then there’s the inimitable Grace Slick, the Bea Arthur of Rock ‘N’ Roll.  I’ve always known she was outrageous at times and a little on the crazy side, but I’ve also tried to give her the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that there’s a nice person underneath all the macho bravado.  But, based on the book, what you saw is pretty much what you got—it seems like Grace has an axe to grind with most everyone, including her own bandmates and lovers (which included every member of the Airplane except Balin, at one time or another), and was often a total bitch (Brother Raley, care to chime in, here?)especially when she was drunk, which was quite often.  There were also many times when she would do totally tasteless crap like dressing as a Nazi and doing Hitler salutes on-stage and appearing in blackface on the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” during the height of the Civil Rights era and the tensions therein, not to mention her infamous '78 drunken meltdown on-stage in Germany where she took the audience to task for the Holocaust.  Still, she possessed one of the most distinctive voices in Rock history, and back in the day was an incredibly striking woman (before she started wearing that ‘80s crap anyway), and I always liked her confident smile, the rare times she flashed it, anyway.  This photo of Grace with Janis Joplin (informally known as “Ice” and “Fire”, respectively) is a classic, too.  Hard to believe she's 70 years old now...

It’s easy to forget that Grace wasn’t the original female Airplane vocalist.  Another cute brunette, Signe Anderson, filled that role for the debut LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, but left the band soon after its release when she had her first child in ’66, thus becoming the answer to a great trivia question.  Some early Airplane fans of the band were quite pissed that this Grace person replaced her, but Signe was soon forgotten anyway.  Based on what little I’ve heard of her voice, she reminded me a bit of Spanky McFarland of late ‘60s pop group Spanky & Our Gang.




I was really surprised (and disappointed) to read that the band considered 1982’s Winds Of Change—one of my Jefferson Starship favorites—to be “a dog” of an album.  I thought it did a nice job of maintaining the continuity that began with Freedom At Point Zero and Modern Times, and it was certainly the last really good record JS ever made.  They started losing me with 1984’s flaccid Nuclear Furniture (after which Kantner split the band and took “Jefferson” with him), and their albums got progressively wimpier and more plasticine to woo the MTV crowd after that.  They lost me even more with 1985’s Knee Deep In the Hoopla—when “We Built This City” came out, I’ll never forget a guy I used to work with exclaiming when he first heard it, “Oh my God—they sound like ABBA now!”  To this day, I’m astounded that Bernie Taupin co-wrote that hunk of roach droppings!

Then Starship lost me altogether with 1987’s insipid “Nothin’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, from that cinematic classic Mannequin, starring Andrew McCarthy and a pre-“Sex And The City” Kim Cattrall.  I had to endure constant playings of that bloody thing during my first year in radio at the “Mighty 1030”, KKJC-AM in Blue Springs, and even though I thought Mickey Thomas’ and Grace Slick’s voices blended quite nicely together when they sang duets (“Stranger” from Modern Times being a prime example), “NGSUN” was just too saccharine for me.  Slick looked like a total sellout singing this mindless schlock, and Grace herself later admitted it was pretty ludicrous for a 50-ish veteran of failed (not to mention volatile) relationships to be singing such lovey-dovey teen-oriented drivel.  While the song did hit #1, and netted her and the band a big fat paycheck, Grace seemed so out-of place and looked like a fool.  I cringe every time I see this photo of her, and I have no doubt she’s more than a little embarrassed by the clothing and bad hairstyles she sported back then.

I have a retraction of sorts in regards to Airplane/Starship co-founder Paul Kantner.  When I spoke of Winds Of Change in my rundown of 1982’s best albums that I posted about a year ago, I chastised PK a bit for how he pissed and moaned about the direction of the band at the time, even though (in my view) it was HIS band, so why didn’t he do something about it?  Well, after reading all about it, it seems that as Mickey Thomas and (to a lesser extent) Craig Chaquico rose in stature and had more say-so, there was a seismic power shift within the band.  Slick tended to side with those two more and more, thus Kantner was often out-voted and outmoded when it came to musical decisions, and he more or less became a non-factor and subsequently left the group.  Now that I see where Paul was coming from, I take back what I said about him, and I apologize for calling him a “whiny bitch”.  I still think he’s a bit too acerbic, petty and spiteful, but I do enjoy his wry sense of humor, and Kantner still rates highly with me just for writing “Stairway To Cleveland” alone.
I was also surprised to learn how latter-day Starship drummer Donny Baldwin rearranged singer Mickey Thomas’ face (literally) during a 1989 tour.  Baldwin and Thomas were longtime friends, having both been members of the Elvin Bishop Group (that’s Mick singing on Elvin’s 1976 classic “Fooled Around And Fell In Love”), but they’d had some brouhahas during this tour and after a night of heavy drinking, Baldwin beat the livin’ shit out of Thomas, who required major reconstructive surgery and installation of titanium plates in his face.  So much for DB’s career with Starship, eh?Their flight? was just about over by then, anyway.  Ironicially, if you scan back up to the group photo two paragraphs back, it looks like Baldwin has Thomas all teed-up to kick him right in the face!  Meantime, over in the other camp, the critics gave the 1989 Jefferson Airplane reunion album the same treatment Baldwin gave Thomas’ face, but I didn’t think it was such a horrible record, really.  I snagged a copy of it for a buck at a used CD store a couple years after it came out, and while it’s hardly Surrealistic Pillow, Volunteers or even Red Octopus, it’s at least listenable.  In both cases, though, these were rather ignominious ends for both factions of this once-proud musical franchise.

The most underrated member of the Airplane/Starship conglomerate was guitarist Craig Chaquico (pronounced cha-KEY-so), who was literally a teenager when he climbed aboard the Starship (wait, that’s a Styx song, ain’t it?) in ’74, but he was already light years ahead of many seasoned veterans, and was a perfect fit for the band.  CC provided many distinctive solos and hooks over the years, as well as giving J. Starship some badly-needed edge, especially in the early ‘80s.  Craig has since moved on to a very successful career in the smooth jazz genre, and some of his instrumental stuff is quite tasty.  Not something I’d get the urge to listen to every day, mind you, but good stuff to relax to and/or work by.
Bassist Jack Casady and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen (pronounced YOR-ma COW-ko-nen) were pure musicians, and just loved to play and play, so when they got bored with the Airplane stuff in the late ‘60s, they formed a sideline band called Hot Tuna that specialized mostly in folky blues.  Their albums and shows were known for their extended jams which some music-lovers enjoyed, but I often have trouble with.  As I hinted above, 10-, 15-, 20-minute jams bore me, and I’m more partial to actual songs in concert.  I did see Hot Tuna open for George Thorogood at a show in ’95, and they weren’t bad as a 45-minute opening act, but I don’t think I could stand three hours or more of them, which is how long their headlining shows often lasted.  Great musicians, Jack and Jorma are, but just not quite my cup of tea.










Jefferson Airplane/Starship went through more drummers than Spinal Tap throughout their storied history.  I counted at least nine after reading the book:  Jerry Peloquin, Skip Spence, Spencer Dryden (pictured here), Joey Covington, John Barbata, Aynsley Dunbar, Donny Baldwin, Kenny Aranoff and whoever replaced Baldwin in Starship before the group dissolved in ’91 (he/she wasn’t mentioned by name in the book).  Dunbar might be the most well-known of the lot, having also played for Journey and Whitesnake, among others, and Baldwin had the longest tenure (1982-89), while none of the others lasted more than about three years with the band(s).  The late Skip Spence left after Takes Off and later formed Moby Grape before alcoholism and mental health problems did him in.  Spencer Dryden was dismissed not long after JA played at Woodstock, and he later joined New Riders Of The Purple Sage in the early ‘70s and died of cancer in 2005.  To my knowledge, everyone else who was a member of Jefferson Airplane/Starship is still living.

My All-Time Jefferson Airplane Top 15:
15) Embryonic Journey (1967)  Nifty little instrumental by Jorma Kaukonen off Surrealistic Pillow, and a hint of what he would go on to do with Hot Tuna.  I normally don’t go for acoustic stuff, but this one wasn’t too shabby.
14) Won’t You Try/Saturday Afternoon (1969)  I get a kick out of listening to Paul Kantner try to sing.  While he’s not quite as tone-deaf as The Doors’ Ray Manzarek, he ain’t exactly Robert Plant, either.  Still not a bad song, though.
13) Crown Of Creation (1968)  Title track off the fourth Airplane album, which was slightly better than the third record, After Bathing At Baxter’s.
12) She Has Funny Cars (1967)  Ignore the title—it’s pure silliness.  Opening track off Surrealistic Pillow, which featured some nice interplay between Marty and Grace, as well as between Kaukonen and Casady.
11) Other Side Of This Life (1968)  Airplane often opened their live sets with this one.  Not a bad choice for a lead-off hitter.
10) How Do You Feel (1967)  Sounding almost Mamas & Papas-like, in places, I’m surprised this wasn’t a hit single.
9) It’s No Secret (1966)  One of the better pre-Grace Slick Airplane songs, and a prototypical romantic Marty Balin song.
8) Plastic Fantastic Lover (1967)  Before Balin found his niche (or rut, if you will) of writing mushy love songs, his stuff had a lot more bite to it, and this one is a good example.
7) We Can Be Together (1969)  This one has risen rapidly up my chart after I finally sat down and listened to the lyrics, which for whatever reason, I never paid much attention to before.  I always thought this was just another love song (based mostly on the title, I guess), but in reality it was a protest song, and very timely for 1969 America.  Even more surprising for me, I never even noticed the potty-mouth language in the song (“Up against the wall, motherfuckers”, et al).  Caught me napping on that one…
6) 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds (1967)  Marty apparently got the title from reading the drag race results in the paper, and he does utter this line near the end of the song, which rocks out quite nicely.
5) Wooden Ships (1969)  Co-written by Kantner and David Crosby, Kantner went uncredited so Crosby Stills & Nash could also record the song and not have to endure the legal hassles JA was dealing with at the time with their ex-manager.  Both group’s versions of song are quite good, with slightly-differing lyrics.
4) White Rabbit (1967)  Pretty hard to leave this timeless classic off the top-echelon of the list, which no doubt left skidmarks in the collective underwear of the parents whose kids listened to it back in the day.  Go ask Alice, indeed…
3) Greasy Heart (1968)  When I was little, because of this song, I thought Grace Slick’s name was “Grease” and/or “Greasy” Slick!  It’s a very cool and vastly underrated cut from Crown Of Creation that was inexplicably omitted from the JA box set, all about superficial and phony people.  Could easily have been written about today’s “Reality” TV generation.
2) Volunteers (1969)  The perfect bookend opposite “We Can Be Together” on the Volunteers album and one of Marty Balin’s ballsier songs.  The excitement and fervor he generates from the get-go (“Look what’s happening out in the streets…”) is rather infectious, and made you want to get off your ass and do something.  Again, very timely for 1969…
1) Somebody To Love (1967)  Is this not a KILLER fucking record?  Catchy chorus, crashing guitar chords from Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady’s rumbling Entwistle-esque bass lines and (arguably) Grace Slick’s finest vocal performance ever.  Even though it’s been played to death on the radio over the last 43 years, I NEVER tire of hearing it.

My All-Time Jefferson Starship Top 15:
15) Miracles (1975)  Probably Marty Balin’s finest hour, one that even Papa John Screech—er, uh—Creach couldn’t ruin with his shrieky fiddle playing.  I know that Papa John was beloved by the band and some fans, but I always thought he was as out-of-place with this group as Kid Rock would be on the "700 Club".
14) Find Your Way Back (1981)  Album Rock radio classic off Modern Times that still garners quite a bit of airplay today.
13) Ride The Tiger (1974)  Best track off the first Starship album, Dragon Fly, and it succeeds in spite of silly lyrics.  “Look to the summer of ’75—all the world’s gonna come alive…”  Really?  I don’t recall that happening.  Don’t get me wrong—’75 was great year, but the world hardly came alive.  I also had problems with the couplet “A tear in the hands of a Western man—tell you about salt, carbon and water/But a tear to an Oriental man—tell you ‘bout sadness and sorrow and the love of a man and a woman.”  Uhhh, you’re saying we Americans don’t have soul?  I beg to differ, Mr. Kantner.  If anything, we’re just the opposite—Western people are far more emotional than our rather stoic Oriental counterparts.
12) Modern Times (1981)  Underrated title track off a rather underrated album.
11) Runaway (1978)  Even though the Balin-era Starship was starting to run on fumes at this point, I always liked this song, which showed off Craig Chaquico’s melodic side quite well.  Was also a nice respite from all the Disco that permeated Top 40 radio that summer.
10) Jane (1979)  I couldn’t believe my ears the first time I heard this song, and was most impressed with this Mickey Thomas guy.  The Starship was born-again hard, and for a while, people were actually uttering, “Grace who?”
9) Keep On Dreamin’ (1982)  Great track off Winds Of Change that makes me think of a cute chick I had the hots for at the time.  It mystifies me why this wasn’t a hit single.  Nice guitar work again, from Mr. Chaquico.
8) Out Of Control (1982)  One thing I always looked forward to on Starship albums was at least one really whacked-out song, and this one features Grace.  It hasn’t aged very well over the years, but I still have a soft spot for it anyway.
7) Stranger (1981)  When Grace Slick emerged from some much-needed time on the sobriety wagon between 1978 and ‘81, she took baby steps getting back into the band, and this song is where it started, an excellent duet between her and Thomas.  Their voices complimented each other well, and more duets (for better or worse) followed later on down the road.
6) Winds Of Change (1982)  Another underrated title track from another underrated album.  One of Grace’s better vocal performances during the Starship era too.
5) Can’t Find Love (1982)  Story of my life, unfortunately.  Love the attitude near the end from Grace (“She’s got a fat ass, no class…take some, make some, do it ‘til you make her come, but don’t say no…”).
4) Save Your Love (1981)  One of Mickey Thomas’ finest vocal performances, and outstanding guitar outro by Chaquico.
3) Rock Music (1979)  “Rock ‘N’ Roll is good-time music,” the song sez.  No need to argue that point.  Another FM radio favorite too.
2) Freedom At Point Zero (1979)  I really liked the positive attitude of this song, and how tight and together the band sounded at that time.  More great vocals from Thomas.
1) Stairway To Cleveland (1981)  This one would also make my Top 100 of All-Time list, if I ever get around to compiling it.  I love songs with rapid-fire vocals, and “Stairway” is brilliant in its satirical view of the history of the Airplane/Starship franchise and the slings and arrows it had suffered at the hands of music critics worldwide.  Have to love the motto, “Fuck you! We do what we want!” which is the basic credo of this blog, too.  As the song repeatedly sez, "Whatcha gonna do about it?"  Also the only Rock 'N' Roll song with Walter Cronkite in its lyrics.  And that's the way it is... 

Well, blog me down!

I yam what I yam!

TIME TO EXHALE…
Man, I am so glad the holiday season is over!  Like I wrote in my last post, I’m growing to dread the end of the year more and more, even though it’s supposed to be a real happy time.  To me, it’s nothing but stress and hustle and hassle.  The first week of January always re-charges my batteries, thankfully.  And I’ve officially decided to forego my annual “Asshole Of The Year” chronology—I’ve already sufficiently ripped on these people anyway, and I’m just about sick of re-hashing 2009—time to move on, already.

One last thought, tho:  In all the year-end reviews of famous people who passed away in ‘09, I saw a listing entitled "Untimely Hollywood Deaths".  Other than Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Disco and a few others, is there really such a thing as a timely death?

AN OXY-MORON OR JUST A PLAIN MORON?
Rush Limbaugh was said to be in “good spirits” after his little hospital scare in Hawaii last week.  The Big Fat Idiot and “good spirits” are definitely a contradiction in terms…

NO TIME FOR LOSERS…
…because I AM THE CHAMPIONS!  Congratulations to me and my Sweet Bippies fantasy football team for winning the whole she-bang last weekend.  I was the #2 playoff seed, and I trailed my worthy opponent, the #1 seed, by 20 points heading into the Minnesota/Chicago Monday Night game, but thankfully he had no one in that game and my man Adrian Peterson of the Vikings came through for me, big-time.  What’s ironic is that I pulled a Brett Favre and came out of “retirement” to play again this season.  This would be my third fantasy football champeenship, the first coming in 2002 with my “Holland’s Comet” franchise at the K.C. Star (for which I actually won money!), followed the next year with another title in Yahoo’s free leagues with a team I dubbed the “Matriculators” in honor of the late Hank Stram.  I know fantasy sports are for geeks, but it’s good clean (and free) American fun, and I enjoy competing with other guys who know what they’re doing.

GET WELL, WES
One of my most productive Bippies, Wes Welker of the Patriots, suffered a nasty knee injury yesterday in Houston on the third play of the game which most likely will end his season.  They’re saying he has a torn ACL and MCL, and what’s weird is he wasn’t even touched on the play—his knee just gave out on him.  I strained ligaments in my right knee back in ’85 and that hurt like hell—I can only imagine what tearing ligaments feels like.  Damn shame—Welker is one of good guys in the NFL, even though he plays for those evil Patriots.

WHERE THE HELL WAS THIS ALL SEASON, GUYS?
The Kansas City Chefs suddenly looked like a Super Bowl-caliber team yesterday, after four months of general ineptitude, whooping the Denver Broncos 44-24 in their first win ever at Mile High Stadium II.  Running back Jamaal Charles set a new team record for rushing yards in a game (259), blowing Larry Johnson’s previous mark of 211 clean out of the water.  Equally-impressive was linebacker Derrick Johnson picking off two passes and returning them for TDs in the second half, a feat only done 24 other times in NFL history.  Even sweeter, the win knocked Denver out of the playoffs, which is always fun to do.  While the Chefs did double their win total from last season, I still think this was a totally-wasted year—we can only hope this off-season’s personnel moves (both players and coaches) will produce better on-field results next season.  The 4-12 record nets K.C. the fourth pick in April’s draft, so there’s a ray of hope right there…

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST
Last night’s NFL season finale between the Jets and Bengals was also most likely the finale for Jimmy Hoffa’s alleged final resting place, Giants Stadium in the Joysey Meadowlands.  The Jets and Giants will move nextdoor next season into their as-yet-to-be-named multi-gazillion-dollar stadium, which is near completion.  The new joint dwarfs the current one and looked quite impressive in the aerial shots NBC provided last night, and unlike Giants Stadium, the Jets are equal partners instead of mere tenants.  Personally, I think the Jets should have their own home stadium, but their attempts to snag one in Manhattan earlier in the decade proved futile.

Giants Stadium was the first place the G-Men could truly call home after many years of living a nomadic existence of sorts, playing home games at the venerable Polo Grounds and old Yankee Stadium, only to be kicked out of the latter for its major renovation after the 1972 season.  They spent the next three seasons in the twilight zone, playing two years at New Haven’s Yale Bowl in ’73-’74 and sharing Shea Stadium with the Jets in ’75 (shades of irony there) before the home where L.T., Phil Simms, Eli and Big Tuna would soon roam opened in ’76.  The stadium was also home to the short-lived New Jersey Generals of the ill-fated USFL in the mid-‘80s, as well as the mighty Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League (Pele and the boys would pack the place quite often during their ’70 heyday) and Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls (nee Metrostars), not to mention more than a few Bruce Springsteen concerts.  The J-E-T-S—Jets-Jets-Jets joined the fun in ’84 when they deemed Shea to be substandard, and what was initially intended to just be a temporary stint in the Meadowlands wound up being permanent.

Even though its seating bowl and layout were clearly modeled after our own Arrowhead Stadium here in K.C., Giants Stadium isn’t nearly as distinctive or striking as the ‘Head, and I always found it a rather boring stadium to watch games on TV from.  Giants Stadium might as well have had a dome, because it seems all closed-in, while Arrowhead is more open and airy.  GS also seems very poorly-lit, and the glare from the lights off the old AstroTurf and even the current FieldTurf surface rendered some night games almost unwatchable, especially when it rained.  Even when they replaced the AstroTurf with the temporary real grass that was trucked-in on palettes in the late ‘90s, it didn’t really make the place any more tele-genic.  The stadium’s exterior is very utilitarian and Spartan too—i.e., hardly a sexy stadium at all—so I can’t say as I’m all that sorry to see it go.

UNCLEAR OF THE CONCEPT?
Was channel-surfing Saturday afternoon around 3:30 and landed on UHF Channel 50, our local Ion-TV affiliate.  The network formerly known as PAX was founded by one Lowell Paxson, who was appalled by all the sex and violence on network TV and decided to create his own network devoid of such vices, and fill his programming schedule instead with Christian programming and wholesome family shows (think “Growing Pains”, “Little House On The Prairie”, etc.).  All well and good, I suppose, but guess what was airing when I dropped in the other day—none other than Death Wish V!  Ah, yes, a gory Charles Bronson shoot-em’-up—now that’s fine family fare, ain’t it?  And surely on a Saturday afternoon, there couldn’t possibly be any young and impressionable kids tuned in, right?  Let me guess, next Saturday’s matinee feature on Ion will be Showgirls…or maybe the Porky’s trilogy…

Even though I liked Bronson, I gave up on the Death Wish film franchise after the third one—you can only do so many variations on a theme, and the flicks got progressively stupid-er with plots that were thinner than Ron Howard’s hair.

I DON'T MEAN TO NIT-PICK...
...but is it really necessary to post church closings on TV during inclement weather?  Unlike school, attending church is a fully-optional activity, and it seems to me that all one needs is a little common sense to determine whether to go or not.  And after all, the Lord is well aware that it snowed—He's the one who made it happen, right?  Or does He only cause hurricanes and tornadoes?

And in another example of our ever-diminishing society, even the school closings now have on-screen corporate sponsorships on some TV stations here.  Oy!

LATHER, RINSE, RE-PETE
Some South Florida children’s advocacy group has its collective panties in a wad over The Who’s upcoming halftime performance at the Super Bowl, because of Pete Townshend’s brush with the law over kiddie porn charges in 2003.  They want the band punted (sorry!) from the game, claiming Pete shouldn’t be allowed in the country because he had to register as a sex offender in England, even though he was cleared of all wrongdoing in the case, and his name came off that list after five years.  Uhhh, folks, The Who has toured the U.S. at least twice since 2003, and were honored at Kennedy Center as well—where was all the protesting and bitching then?  The NFL, to its credit, is not changing the halftime show, and the band will play as scheduled.

It chafes my hiney no end when these grandstanding do-gooder groups come out of the woodwork and use the Super Bowl (or the Oscars or Olympics or any other high-profile event) to further their cause, like when the native Americans pitch a fit about Indian team nicknames every time the Redskins make the Super Bowl.  If they’re so dedicated to their heritage, then how come they aren’t out protesting at some routine weeknight Chicago Blackhawks game in November or Cleveland Indians game in June?  Because they don’t get no attention that way.  Meantime, it seems to me if these child advocators spent more time going after those who produce and supply the kiddie porn in the first place instead of worrying so much about those who view it, maybe they’d make a little progress toward eliminating the problem, but they don‘t have a fucking clue about how to stop it, do they?

Btw, by “do-gooder” I’m not referring to people who do good things—certainly nothing wrong with that—but rather these phonies who act important and want to appear to be doing good (“save the children”, “save the this” and “save the that”) when in fact, it’s just another dog-and-pony show.

POTTY MOUTHS!
I never noticed until this week that the Jefferson Airplane song "We Can Be Together" (from 1969's Volunteers album) contains the line "Up against the wall, motherfuckers."  Shows you how much I've been paying attention all these years—I always thought it was a love song rather than a war protest tune!  That album must have had great difficulty getting airplay back in the day, because another song contains the Grace Slick line “doesn’t mean shit to a tree.”  More to come soon about the Airplane/Starship franchise—I'm all but finished reading the book about them.

LADY LOOKS LIKE A DUDE?Tell the truth, now—does Susan Boyle not look like Matthew Perry in drag in this photo?  If they do a biopic film about Boyle, he’d be my first choice to portray her!

Just another New Year's Eve...

It's never a good sign when I'm quoting Barry Manilow!

Again, my profoundist apologies for not posting more often here recently—it's certainly not that I don't want to, but I've been a bit pre-occupied with a music project I've been working on hot and heavy (inventory-ing my collection), not to mention having a slight case of writer's block, which is usually short-lived with me.  Hopefully I'll be able to work in some more posts as the new year/decade begins.  I do have a couple projects in the works, including my previously-promised Who album countdown, as well as a band tribute to Jefferson Airplane/Starship, whom I'm about to finish reading a very interesting biography on.  Bear with me, folks—there'll be plenty to chew on in this space again very soon.

Since I didn't get a better offer, I'm spending NYE alone at the ol' homestead this year with my favorite alcoholic beverages.  It's getting too expensive to go out drinking as it is these day, and when you plop some outrageous NYE cover charge on top of that, it just ain't worth it, not to mention having to dodge the drunks and sobriety checkpoints on the way home.  Maybe next year I'll actually have a date for once on NYE, but until then, this'll have to do...

Back when I was a kid, I couldn't wait for 6:00 on New Year's Eve, because that's when WHB radio would do their annual "Top 71 of..." whatever year it was countdown of the year's biggest hits.  I also ordinarily enjoy all the year-end/decade-end reviews and reminiscenses in the papers and on TV and what-not these days too, but for some reason, I'm finding them rather difficult to digest this year.  I don't know if it's just my current state of mind or burnout or what, but I'm just not grooving on it like I usually do.  I originally planned on posting my annual "Asshole Of The Year" anthology tonight, but I only got about halfway through writing it when I realized it sounded too much like last year's version, only with different offenders.  I may or may not finish it and post it later—we'll see.  It also dawned on me that I need to tone down the negativity on here a skosh but still be a good hypocrisy pointer-outer.  Trust me, I don't plan to turn into Mr. Rogers, but I hope to cut down on the vitriol a bit and make this blog a bit more readable.  Anyway, as for the year-end stuff, I'm just anxious to get this wretched year and decade over with and start fresh.

In that spirit, I quote the Edgar Winter Group: "We (I) gotta do better, it's time we (I) begin...you know all the answers must come from within..."  So, come on and take a free ride with me into 2010—nowhere to go but up at this point.  Happy New Year, y'all...

The Good, The Blog And The Ugly...

My heartfelt apologies for being incommunicado since the Kiss concert, but I’ve kinda been sequestered in the Man Cave lately.  I’ve also had my plateful with some issues on the homefront (see below) as well as a music project I’ve been working on, and haven’t had the time or urge to blog lately…

PLEASE WAKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER…
Is it Saturday yet?  It’s getting to the point where December 26th is becoming one of my favorite days of the year anymore.  Hate to be so Grinch-y during this festive time of year, but as the years go by, I grow to detest the holiday season more and more.  How does something that’s supposed to be so fun and uplifting always wind up being so damn aggravating?  The end of the year is already stressful enough for me under normal circumstances—with year-end tax and insurance bills due, then add the Christmas crush on top of it, and it’s just not worth it anymore to me.

And this year has been even more stressful thanks to the miscreant who stole my tote bag out of my car two weeks ago.  I’m normally pretty vigilant about locking my car whenever I go somewhere—even when I just stop for beer at a Quicky-Mart—but I got a little careless and left my passenger side door unlocked while I stopped at the library to drop-off and pick-up one evening on the way home from work.  I couldn’t have been in the building more than five minutes, but that was enough time for some palooka to purloin the tote bag I’ve taken to work virtually every day for the last 17 years, which contained my checkbook, two fairly expensive books (mine, not the library’s) and a project I’d been working on in conjunction with them, along with my iPod charger cord, et al.  The douche also made off with my “portable drug store”, the Zip-lock bag that I kept my Tylenol, nasal spray, asthma puffer, Band-Aids, ointments, etc., in, along with not one, but both pairs of sunglasses I had in the car, a sweatshirt and sweatpants, my heavy winter gloves and sundry other items.  Hope this ass-wipe is happy, because I closed my checking account the next day and opened a new one, and in reality, the stuff he/she/it took was really only valuable to yours truly and no one else.  All they really succeeded in doing was inconveniencing me with some collateral damage, as two of the checks I’d sent out before this happened got returned by the bank and I’m out $64 in bank charges.  I was kicking myself for a couple days afterward because I left the car unlocked, but the more I thought about it, if they wanted my shit that badly, they’d have thought nothing of busting the window open and taking it anyway, thus leading to an even bigger FUBAR, not to mention a chilly ride home on a 10-degree night…

Therefore, dear friends, I’m feeling fairly salty as this wretched year and decade hurtle to an ignominious end, and Christmas is just exacerbating that vibe with me.  Maybe I’m just getting old and jaded, but I’ve grown weary of the whole Christmas rat-race that seemingly starts around Labor Day each year.  Hell, you have the stores selling Xmas decorations in September, the radio stations playing wall-to-wall Yuletide tunes before Halloween, and just after Halloween, I have to endure the intrepid Salvation Army bell-ringers.  Couldn’t they at least show a little mercy on us and provide these poor schlubs with melodic bells to ring?!?  And let’s not forget the people in my neighborhood who have become so obsessed with out-doing each other in their annual competition to see who can create the biggest Christmas shrine in their front yard and/or have the most Christmas lights adorning their house.  And then there are these insipid Walmart TV ads depicting these idyllic family units where everything’s just peachy-keen and lovey-dovey in their little worlds.  Poffeycock, I say!

I used to look forward to Christmas as much as anyone else, but time and age have chipped away at my enthusiasm.  I no longer subscribe to the idea that Christmas is some sort of magic elixir that’s supposed to make everyone suddenly all warm and fuzzy and “get happy”.  It’s particularly hard being a single person like me during the holidays, especially one who doesn’t groove to the whole family dynamic thing—I feel very much like an outsider amongst my friends who are in the family way (or whose families are in the way, in some cases).  I used to love shopping for gifts for close friends because I always knew what to get them, but in spite of being more well-connected to my friends (via e-mail, Facebook, etc.) than I ever have been, I now often wind up punting by doling out gift cards instead because I don’t have a clue what they could use.  Even in my paltry excuse for a love-life, I’ve never had a warm body to wake up with on Christmas morning—not counting my cat who crawled in bed with me in ’85, that is.  Ironically, I lost my virginity on Christmas Eve of ’84 (25 years ago tomorrow night?!?) but we didn’t spend the night together—my parents would’ve flipped if they’d known what was going on in their basement that night, let alone if my first girlfriend had stayed over.  In my second relationship, my girlfriend wanted very badly to be with me over Christmas, but she’d made previous plans to visit her family back East long before we ever met, so that was a no-go, and my third girlfriend was a long-distance relationship, so Xmas with her was a bust too.

So please forgive me if I’m in full-goose-bozo Grinch/Scrooge mode this year.  More succinctly, in the words of Ozzy Osbourne, “I hate fucking Christmas!”

Okay, on to new business…

OUI, OUI, MONSIEUR!
Congrats to my man Martin Brodeur of my beloved New Jersey Devils, who broke the coveted career shutout record for goaltenders Monday night in Pittsburgh, breaking the late Terry Sawchuk’s record of 103.  While not quite the same as the home run record in baseball (still held by Hank Aaron, IMO), #104 is an impressive milestone for a guy who still has plenty of gas left in his tank, and MB could easily reach 125 before it’s all said and done, if he remains healthy and has the desire play that long.  And while Sawchuk set his mark with several different teams, what’s even more impressive about Marty’s record is he recorded all 104 of his shutouts with the same team—that’s something you’ll never see happen again.  Even better, Martin Brodeur is one of the truly good guys in sports—you never see him in the headlines for getting drunk and stupid in a bar fight or for cheating on/beating on his wife (he’s divorced anyway)—and he’s a credit to his sport.  He’s bad, he’s nationwide, indeed…

HERE COMES YOUR 20th NERVOUS BREAKDOWN…
As for a guy who used to be a credit to his sport, although it didn’t quite shake out the way I envisioned, Brett Favre is indeed causing friction in the Minnesota Vikings locker room after all.  Just like I predicted before the season started, Favre is proving to be a drama queen and divisive figure, given his much-publicized blow-up this week with head coach Brad Childress, who wanted to remove Favre from the game in Carolina during a crappy performance on Sunday night and BF protested.  While Favre has performed most impressively and far exceeded my expectations this season, there’s still something rather amiss when an inmate runs the asylum.  Would Johnny Unitas or Joe Montana or Peyton Manning have pulled crap like this?  I think not.  It’s becoming ever so clear that in Favre’s mind, it’s all about him this season and not the team, and I saw today where a former teammate, Leroy Butler, labeled BF as a “diva”.  I hope Favre is attacked by the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs (in words of Dr. Niles Crane), “like a drag queen at a tractor pull!”—if the Vikes even get past the first round, that is.  And if I have to sit through his annoying Wrangler jeans commercial one more time, I may blow up my TV!

YOU BET YOUR SWEET BIPPIES!
I’m proud to report that my fantasy football team, the Sweet Bippies, are in the Super Bowl this weekend.  I’m the #2 seed in our league, and survived a major scare in the first round from #3, and held on to win by five points, thanks mostly to the ineptitude of the Washington Redskins on Monday night.  Now the Bipsters face the #1 seed, which features Randy Moss, Matt Schaub and Dallas Clark, among others.  Get your tickets now—plenty of good seats still available…

WE DIDN’T MISS A THING
I was actually pleased that the Chefs’ game with Cleveland was blacked-out on local TV Sunday.  It gave us the opportunity to watch a much better game—Dolphins/Titans—on CBS instead.  From what I hear, it was Fan Depreciation Day at Arrowhead, as the team gave out $5 food vouchers to fans entering the stadium, but only opened like half the concession stands and none of the ancillary beer carts.  They also apparently ran out of Coke and Sprite by halftime.  Oh, and then the Chefs let the Cleveland Clowns run all over them (literally) and beat them 41-34.  Is there any doubt that this team is a total train wreck, both on and off the field, right now?  It feels like 1978 all over again, minus the Disco music on the radio.  Let’s blow this whole thing up and start over again…

HARMFUL IF TAKEN ORAL-LY
Good ol’ Oral Roberts kicked the bucket since I last posted.  As you should well know by now, I consider TV evangelists to be the lowest form of species this side of child pornographers, rapists and Hummer drivers, especially those who extort emotional cripples (and sometimes just plain cripples) for money and turn them into a legion of check-writing morons just so they can lead lives of luxury and keep their LearJets in the air.  People like Roberts give organized religion a bad name, and just as I did when Jerry Falwell died, I’m not about to praise the man just because he’s dead now—you know me better than that!  Good riddance to another asshole, I say…

MORE TIGER TALES…
Excellent cartoon in Newsweek last week:  Tiger Woods is sitting on Santa’s lap and Santa sez, “HO! HO! HO!” and TW responds, “WHERE? WHERE? WHERE?”.  Friggin’ brilliant, and evidently pretty accurate, too, since Tiger seemingly has a chick in every port on the PGA Tour to philander with.  I’m proud to see that his wife’s actually divorcing his cheatin’ ass too, rather than doing the standard stand-by-your-man act that so many famous wives do, like Elizabeth Edwards, for instance.  Not only can’t I relate to being filthy-rich and having the wherewithal to doink any woman I please, I also can’t even relate to cheating on my significant other.  It pisses me off no end whenever I see people do this—cheating on someone who treats them well—including a good friend of mine who used to do it with some regularity back in the day before he finally settled down, even though he had a real sweetheart of a girl at home.  Given the dearth of relationships in my life, I’ve never even been in a position (let alone had the desire) to cheat on anyone anyway, and from my point of view, it’s just a real shitty thing to do to someone you supposedly love.  As for Tiger, as the old Motorhead song goes, “Just ‘cos you got the power, that don’t mean you got the right.”

NOW I REMEMBER…
…why I loathe Rolling Stone magazine so much.  A copy of their end-of-decade issue was laying around work last week, and I perused it.  True-to-form, their Top 50 albums of the ‘00s list was practically all Kanye West, U2 and Bruce Springsteen.  Kanye West is a douche, U2’s output this decade has been mediocre at best, and while a couple of Brucie’s albums over the last ten years weren’t bad, I still say he is grossly overrated, especially by Rolling Stone, as if he can do no wrong.  Hell, The Boss could record an album of nothing but nursery rhymes and RS would praise the shit out of it.

I AM A PROPHET! WELL, 60% OF THE TIME, ANYWAY…
“So, here’s who I think should get in [to the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame] this year: Kiss, ABBA, Genesis, the Hollies, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

And here’s who I think will actually get voted in this year: The Stooges, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Genesis, Jimmy Cliff and Laura Nyro.”--B. Holland, September 24, 2009

Well, in both cases, I got three out of five right, as Genesis, ABBA, the Hollies, Jimmy Cliff and the Stooges are (for better or worse) the 2010 Class of the Crock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame.  I knew (and correctly predicted) that Kiss wouldn’t get in this time, but I’m a tad surprised the Chili Peppers didn’t make it.  Then again, these are the same people (Rolling Stone critics) who think Leonard Cohen is a Rock star…

Concert #108

Kiss/The Dead Girls (Thursday, December 10, 2009--Sprint Center) Ticket price: $27.50

“Kiss The Dead Girls?”  Ewwww…

Thirty years, two months and ten days after I attended my first Kiss concert (on the Dynasty tour), I attended my 16th Kiss concert on Thursday night at the Sprint Center, a mere four blocks east on 13th Street from where I saw the band that first time at Municipal Auditorium.  I’ve had more than one friend question my motives for seeing the band so many times (you know who you are, Tom, John and Dr. S!), and my response would be to quote Lynyrd Skynyrd:  “I’ve tried everything in my life—the things I like, I try ‘em twice!”  More succinctly, in one of his more lucid commentaries, K.C. Star music critic Timothy Finn noted in his review of this concert:

“About 10,000 fans came to the Sprint Center on Thursday night for Kiss Alive 35, the latest name for the band's never-ending tour.  It's safe to say that more than half the fans in the place had seen the band at least once; some of us were seeing Kiss for the fourth time in 10 years or so.  But at some point repetition becomes something more rewarding, like ritual or tradition; that's why some of us still watch A Christmas Story three times a year, every year.  Likewise, a Kiss concert is all about knowing exactly what you're going to get and enjoying it anyway.”

And when you factor in the strife I experienced the previous night when some douche-bag broke into my car during my ever-so-brief library stop and stole my tote bag that contained my checkbook, along with a project I’d been working on and numerous personal items that were totally worthless to everyone but myself, a Kiss concert really hit the spot.  After 24 hours of stressing out and feeling pissed-off, there was nothing like a Kiss show to “get me back on my feet again,” as “Cold Gin” goes.  This was also my first big indoor arena concert in quite a while—the previous ten concerts I had attended were either outdoors or in small venues—and it was refreshing to see that "Arena Love" (a phrase coined by music critic Robert Duncan) was alive and well and living at the Sprint Center!

Even though you pretty much know what to expect at a Kiss gig, you have to give the band credit for adding some new twists and keeping the show fresh.  This time ‘round, they employed a much more open stage and jettisoned the superfluous staircases that once flanked the drums.  A huge video screen stretched nearly the entire width of the stage, and numerous other video squares featuring other visual effects dotted the rest of the set.  With the main video screen being so huge, it displaced the trademark light-up Kiss logos on-high, which they reduced to a larger single logo relocated to stage level below Eric Singer’s drums, which created a rather neat background effect on the video screen whenever the guys stood in front of it at center stage.  In addition to elevating up and down, Singer’s drum riser also rotated 360º during his solo, as did the mini-stage Paul Stanley “flies” out to during “Love Gun”.  They also added a dash of color to the pyro, with the rising flames behind the stage tinged in red, green and orange, in addition to the natural yellow/gold hues.  The costumes are all-new this time as well, with each one being a bit of an amalgam of all the previous stage outfits worn by the original four Kiss members over the years, and in a bit of a throwback, Paul Stanley switched back to his Flying V guitars from the early days in place of his shattered-mirror models of recent years.

The set list was heavily-weighted toward the early days as well, and only included two ‘80s songs (“I Love It Loud” and “Lick It Up”) and two from the new album Sonic Boom, “Modern Day Delilah” and “Say Yeah”—the two I liked the least, naturally, although “Say Yeah” sounded better live than on the CD, mostly because it was punctuated with lots of boom-booms.  Everything else they played was of ’70s vintage, as they kicked things off with the opening combo from Alive!, “Deuce” and “Strutter”.  To my delight, the Hotter Than Hell album got a pretty fair shake this go-round, including three of my all-time Kiss faves, “Let Me Go, Rock ’N’ Roll”, “Parasite”, and (for the first time in the 16 Kiss shows I’ve attended) the title track.  In a minor surprise, Gene and Paul turned the microphone over to guitarist Tommy Thayer on Ace Frehley’s “Shock Me”—nice to see they haven’t blown Ace off altogether.  Of course, there was no hope in hell they’d honor Peter Criss by doing “Beth”, but that’s another can of worms.  In another slight format change, the set ended kinda early with “Black Diamond” and “Rock And Roll All Nite”, the latter of which included a white confetti storm that made the stage eerily resemble my back yard at the moment.  An extended encore ensued that featured "Shout It Out Loud", "Lick It Up" (which lurched briefly into the middle section of The Who's “Won’t Get Fooled Again”), “Love Gun” and “Detroit Rock City”, which makes almost as dandy a concert closer as it does an opener.

Paul Stanley’s between-song patter can be alternately predictable and extremely entertaining.  While I could’ve done without his routine half-singing/half-speaking plea to not drink and drive prior to "Cold Gin" and his plug urging those who hadn't already done so to buy Sonic Boom at Walmart ("Hell, I'm not proud", he proclaimed), I loved his prescient commentary about politically-motivated Rock musicians:  “If you came here tonight to hear some Rock band tell you how to save the world from Global Warming, two things—You're out of your damn mind and you came to the wrong place!  They're just a Rock band, anyway...”  So there—take that Sting, Bono, Don Henley, et al.  Paul accurately pointed out that there’s nothing wrong with trying to save the world, but we ain’t gonna accomplish it all in one night anyway, thus he brightly suggested, “Let‘s take tonight off…”  I don't attend concerts to hear political folderol anyway—I want to be Rocked!

This was also my first Sprint Center concert, and in a touch of irony, I took in the show from the arena’s uppermost back row, just as my friend Tom and I did at our first Kiss concert in 1979 at Municipal—although then it wasn't by choice.  My assigned seat this time was in the second row of the upper deck, toward the back of the arena, but I decided to stake out my own space in a sparsely-filled section near the edge of stage right (Gene Simmons’ side) in the back row, and it was quite a view, in spite of the severe angle.  No sooner had I sat down, then did this elderly four-foot-nothing usher woman come up to me and try to check my ticket.  I shit you not, this gal stood eye-level with my chest—yeah, I can just see her trying to break up a brawl in the stands!  Anyway, when she saw I was downgrading my seat location, she left me alone.  Up until now, I had not heard a lot of good things about our fancy new arena’s acoustics, but I thought the sound was outstanding throughout this show.  I understood every word Paul Stanley spoke between songs, and the guitars sounded crisp and clear.  The bass could’ve been a bit louder and the overall volume could’ve been bumped up a skosh, but I was quite pleased with the audio in the building—a major upgrade over Kemper Arena.  I never thought I'd say this, but I did miss one aspect of the Kemper Corral—the parking!  It took me forever and a day to escape the bowels of the Power & Light District parking garage I paid ten bucks to park my car in, whereas the gravel Kemper lots were usually a snap to get out of.  Oh well, at least no one stole anything out of my vehicle here...

Opening the night's festivities were a local band called the Dead Girls, who won some radio station contest to open the show in place of the originally-slated Chuck Berry—er uh—Buckcherry.  While neither deceased nor female, the Dead Girls weren’t terribly impressive—just another bland slacker group.  In the classic penthouse-to-outhouse scenario, they followed this triumphant gig the next night at a hole-in-the-wall toilet of a place called the Brick.

When I last did a Kiss concert in Ames, Iowa in 2000 on the “Farewell” Tour, I truly thought it was indeed my final Kiss show.  As the '00s progressed, I bristled at the fact that Frehley and Criss were no longer with the band, and I refused to attend subsequent K.C. Kiss concerts because they seemed more like a Kiss tribute band than the real deal.  But as with Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, Kiss pulled me back in!  In retrospect, maybe it’s just as well Ace and Peter did leave—neither of their hearts have been in this thing for a long time anyway.  Meanwhile, it’s amazing that at their advance ages, Simmons (60) and Stanley (who turns 58 next month) can still perform at such a high level, and Kiss is a much tighter unit on-stage with the more youthful Thayer and Singer rejuvenating the band in place of Frehley and Criss.  Even after 30 years and 16 concerts, this never gets old!  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Kiss show #17 is in the offing somewhere down the road…

SET LIST:  Deuce/Strutter/Let Me Go, Rock 'N' Roll/Hotter Than Hell/Shock Me/Calling Dr. Love/Modern Day Delilah/Cold Gin/Parasite/Say Yeah/100,000 Years/I Love It Loud/Black Diamond/Rock And Roll All Nite  ENCORE:  Shout It Out Loud/Lick It Up/Love Gun/Detroit Rock City

My Life In The Kiss Cult, Part C, Section 4

Before I finish the countdown, a little housecleaning first:

—A belated Happy Blogiversary to me, as Da Comet turned three on Sunday.  Hope it’s been as fun for you to read as it’s been for me to write.  Muchos gracias to all my faithful followers and readers.  Unlike other bloggers, I have no intention of cutting back on this activity or dropping it altogether—it’ll take a lot more than Facebook to kill this blog!

—I forgot to mention in the Revenge review in Section 3 that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley decided to let bygones be bygones and throw Vinnie Vincent a bone or two (since his solo career didn’t pan out quite so well) by collaborating on a few tunes for the album, including “Unholy” and “I Just Wanna”.  Alas, being the megalomaniac that young Vincenzo is, he took the words to “War Machine” to heart (“Gonna bite the hand that feeds me”)and sued the other two again for this, that and the other.  Ol’ Ankh Head is a VERY talented songwriter, but he’s stepped on his own dick (while wearing spiked golf shoes) more than anyone in Rock history this side of maybe Axl Rose.

—Creatures Of The Night was noteworthy for being the first Kiss album to include printed lyrics to all the songs contained within.  Destroyer did indeed have the lyrics to “Detroit Rock City” in it, but I guess they figured we were on own for deciphering the rest of the album’s words.  Now I remember why I bought all the Kiss sheet music books back in the day (never mind that I can’t read sheet music to save my soul)—they had all the lyrics in them!  COTN was also the final Kiss album released under the Casablanca imprint, as the once-mighty Casablanca Record & Filmworks empire was on its last legs by 1982, and put to bed for good with the untimely passing of founder and president Neil Bogart, who sadly died of cancer that year.  Here’s lookin’ at you, Neil…

—Here’s a little countdown within a countdown:

TOP 10 KISS ALBUM COVERS OF ALL-TIME:
10) Kiss
9) Hot In The Shade
8) Alive!
7) All four solo albums
6) Dressed To Kill
5) Hotter Than Hell
4) Creatures Of The Night (original cool make-up cover)
3) Love Gun
2) Rock And Roll Over
1) Destroyer

AND THE BOTTOM FIVE:
5) Creatures Of The Night (unnecessary bogus non-make-up cover w/Bruce Kulick on it)
4) Animalize
3) Revenge
2) Asylum
1) Dynasty

Alright, enough B.S.—I now give you the Final Four:

4) Rock And Roll Over (1976)  A review I read at the time (in Creem I want to say) said something to the effect of “This album can cut it without the make-up, which is something I’m sure they’re just itching to try!”  That’s a pretty accurate statement, too, as RARO was one of the most consistent and hardest-rocking Kiss albums ever.  With producer Eddie Kramer back at the helm, Kiss hired out the Nanuet Star Theater in downstate New York—a theater-in-the-round type place—instead of a proper recording studio in an effort to re-create their live sound without a live audience, and it worked, for the most part.  If only those first three albums had been recorded in this manner, but that’s another story.  All ten tracks are quite good here, although for whatever reason, none of them were penned by one Paul Daniel Frehley* for the second straight album.  No matter, this one cooks from start-to-finish.  Rock was Paul Stanley’s finest hour, to date, with his classic “I Want You” kicking off the proceedings.  Track two, the vastly underrated “Take Me”, was even better, as was the album’s closer, “Makin’ Love”.  Only problem is those songs never came off well live because of the high backing vocals on “Take Me” and the echo effect on “Makin’ Love”, so in a way, Kiss got a little too cute here, but we’ll take it anyway.  G. Simmons brought another strong batch of tunes with him this time, especially “Ladies Room”, “See You In Your Dreams” and the hit single, “Calling Dr. Love”, which remains firmly ensconced in the Kiss live set to this day.  And for the first time since Hotter Than Hell, Peter Criss gets two lead vocals on a Kiss record, having earned his stripes, so to speak, with the unprecedented success of “Beth” earlier in the year.  Pete does his best Rod Stewart impression on Stanley’s “Hard Luck Woman” and his best Joe Tex impression on his own composition “Baby Driver”.  “Mr. Speed” and “Love ‘Em And Leave ‘Em” didn’t suck, either.  Rock And Roll Over was a very solid effort that came along while Kiss was still on the upswing at the end of the Bicentennial, and it’s a classic.  Second-coolest album cover in Kisstory, too—I recall many’s the hour I spent in Junior High tracing that cover in pencil, then coloring it in and affixing it to my various school books.

*=I’ve also seen Ace’s middle name listed as David in some sources, but haven’t confirmed which one is correct yet.

3) Ace Frehley (1978)  This album would’ve done Gomer Pyle proud:  “Surprahz! Surprahz! Surprahz!”  Seemingly everyone—including his own bandmates—were convinced that Brother Frehley’s solo album would be a pile of steaming yak excrement, but boy, did Planet Jendell’s favorite son prove them wrong!  Unquestionably the best of the four solo albums—this dude had been holding out on us all that time leading up to it, because we finally got to see what the Space Ace was capable of when properly motivated and/or allowed free reign.  Great songs, sizzling solos, crunchy riffs and even some fairly decent vocals (Ace’s weakest link) all added up to an excellent record.  Lots of good stuff to chew on here, like “Rip It Out”, “Speedin’ Back To My Baby”, “Ozone” and “What’s On Your Mind?”.  Ace picks up where he left off in “Cold Gin” about his preoccupation with getting fucked-up on tunes like “Wiped-Out” and “Snow Blind” (not to be confused with the Styx song of the same name) and closes the album with “Fractured Mirror”, the first of a series of “Fractured” instrumentals featured on his future solo efforts.  Ironically, what was probably the weakest track on the ’78 album, Ace’s remake of Russ Ballard’s “New York Groove”, wound up charting the highest of all singles from the solo albums (reaching #14 in Billboard).  So much for all of Gene’s delusions of grandeur in having all those hit singles, hmmm?  Gold Star for Mr. Frehley this time.  Pity he hasn’t come close to equaling this album since…

2) Destroyer (1976)  It’s amazing to think back now how Kiss’ supreme recorded achievement (in the studio) faced a very severe backlash upon its release in the spring of ’76 from both critics and fans alike.  I loved it from the get-go, but many fans were initially repulsed by the slick sound and special effects found on Destroyer, not to mention not one, but TWO ballads!  And then there was the scathing review by critic Robert Duncan in Circus magazine, where he pretty much ripped the album to shreds, then suffered some backlash himself from those Kiss fans who'd seen the light and realized what a gem of an album we had on our hands.  Duncan later praised the band no-end in the biography book he penned and reaped profits from about a year later—douche-bag!  In case you haven't noticed, I loathe music critics in general, but I digress.  Producer Bob Ezrin certainly took this band by the balls and showed them how to really make a record, to the point of alienating Ace Frehley (already an alien anyway).  I have to admit that even I recoiled a bit when I first heard “Beth”, but that one didn’t throw me half as much as hearing my new idol at the time, the great Demon himself, singing a wimpy ballad like “Great Expectations”, which made me do the Tim Allen caveman “HUH?!?” thing upon first listen.  I warmed up to “GE” over the years, and it was a mere blip on the radar in comparison to the rest of the album, which was absolutely stellar.  “Detroit Rock City” is far and away my favorite lead-off track on ANY album, and my favorite Kiss song, period.  I just love the way it shoots out of the gate and keeps you glued to your seat throughout even though the lyric invites its listeners to leave their seats.  "DRC" also includes one of my all-time favorite guitar solos.  I always assumed it was Gene Simmons doing his Kent Brockman/Tom Tucker impersonation delivering the evening news in the bit leading up to the intro, but I later read that it was Mr. Ezrin doing the honors.  A bitchin’ car crash ensues at the end and Ace’s long sustained note leads right into the sequel, “King Of The Nighttime World”, another classic.  Most people (me included) assumed that Gene Simmons wrote “God of Thunder”, being’s how he sang it and how it makes him sound all high and mighty, but Mr. Stanley Harvey Eisen authored this one, and was kinda peeved at first when Ezrin gave it to Simmons, but the Starchild realized eventually that it was the right move.  Paul sounded so much better anyway on Side 2’s opening track, the majestic-sounding “Flaming Youth”, which is an underrated Kiss classic, even though it has a calliope in it.  Gene’s “Sweet Pain”—also quite underrated—is another fave of mine, as he sounds eerily close to Cheech & Chong’s Alice Bowie character in places.  And then comes my #3 favorite Kiss song of all-time (“Deuce” is—fittingly—#2), “Shout It Out Loud”.  Featuring some Spector-esque Wall of Sound sound, "SIOL" is 2:45 of pure bliss, complete with excellent call-and-response vocals (a technique I really like), and I’ve always thought “Shout” was a far superior anthem to “Rock And Roll All Nite”.  Stanley closes this qualified masterpiece with “Do You Love Me?”, a song that gets better and better as the years go on.  What I’ve never understood is why Ezrin chose to lop off the nifty coda to the song that you hear in live concert versions of "DYLM" in favor of that lame coda loop of Paul exclaiming “…looks like we got ourselves a Rock ‘N’ Roll party!” ad nauseam.  Still, there’s no question that this was Kiss’ finest hour in the studio—I’d put Destroyer up against Zeppelin's or Aerosmith's best any day!

1) Alive! (1975)  Well, what other album were you expecting to land here?  I spent practically the entire summer of ’76 listening to this behemoth front and back.  Since I’ve already praised it profusely on this blog, I hereby direct you to my Best Live Albums post from earlier this year—Alive! finished # 1 there too.  Yes, I know it’s not all live, but it ain’t like Kiss is the only band who’s doctored up their live records—Cheap Trick, W.A.S.P., et al, atten-SHUN!  No one seems to have a problem when a woman wears hair extensions and has breast implants and a facelift—none of that stops you from looking at her, right?—therefore, even though I know Alive! has been tweaked here and there, it doesn’t stop me from enjoying it today.  It’s one of my top three albums of all-time, period, along with Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and The Who’s Who’s Next.

Coming soon to a blog near you: My all-time favorite Who album countdown—even though I think I just gave away what #1 is!