No regrets? A better title for Ace Frehley’s memoir might be No Consequences. Parts of Frehley’s life play out like an episode of COPS, except that the fuzz show up at a multimillion dollar mansion rather than a tenement. Cars are wrecked. Bottles of booze are chugged. Drugs are snorted. World class tools like Gene Simmons are annoyed. And in the middle of this, Space Ace manages to convince every kid with heavy metal dreams to pick up a guitar.
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 2:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
…there’s now a Kiss urn, too.
And I can’t decide if I think this is more or less offensive than the Kiss Koffin. On the one hand, spending any extra amount of money to have anything put on a box which is literally going to be placed in the ground never to be seen again strikes me as an incredible waste of resources. On the other hand, at least if you’re buried in a Kiss Koffin, your family won’t have to actually look at Kiss all the time. I mean, do you seriously want your loved ones forever associating your memory with Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen? What are you, from the Bronx in 1963?
If you really, really hate poor people and starving children and cancer research, you can purchase one of these bad boys here for a mere $650. Or you can just e-mail me and I’ll draw a picture of Kiss on a shoebox and mail it to you for sixty-five cents.
No, seriously — COREY AND ANSO FUCKING KILLED IT THIS WEEK while we were at the Golden Gods, didn’t they? I’m still catching up, but I’ve been getting a serious boner from reading all the shit I didn’t write this week. Some of my favorite pieces that neither Vince nor myself had anything to do with:
Phil Anselmo’s thoughts on weed, and, oh yeah, Corey’s update on the progress of Mr. Anselmo’s book.
I spend a sizable portion of my life thrashing the band Kiss, its members, and its fans, cuz well fuck them that’s why. Kiss reeks. Awfully. And those fuckerz are everywhere. Still! If fact, t’wasn’t long ago that we called out Kiss frontman Paul Stanley for adding a blemish to the sterling reputation of party-metal greats Steel Panther. But hey, video of Stanley’s vox on a live run at “Lick It Up” with the band seemed to suggest that their goal was to redefine the term earache. And I’m a dick for writing that cuz Stanley (above, right) recently revealed that he was born deaf in his right ear. Shit. Stanley explained in a TV interview:
Friday, October 1st, 2010 at 12:00pm by Axl Rosenberg
Sebastian Bach and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Corey Glover and, to a definitely lesser extent, Paul Stanley have all had some success doing theatrical musicals, be it on Broadway or elsewhere; now Dee Snider wants in on that action, and has joined the cast of Rock of Ages, the hit Broadway jukebox musical that incorporates 80′s music that is still remembered fondly by the bridge and tunnel crowd — e.g., Poison, Journey, etc. He’ll be in the show for eleven weeks, from October 11 through December 24.
And why not? Snider’s vocal talents were never on the level of guys like Glover and Bach, but live videos that I just watched on YouTube (like the one above) tell me that his voice is still in surprisingly good shape. Plus, he already dresses like Liza Manelli, so he’ll fit right in on The Great White Way.
And it’s a genius stroke on the part of the producers; the people who wanna see this show are definitely gonna know who Snider is, and be all the happier to buy a ticket to see him. It makes you wonder why no one thought of this sooner, or if anyone besides Snider was ever approached to be in the show.
Also, if Snider’s eight-shows-a-week (!) commitment to Rock in any way slows the production of Strangeland 2, than it can only be a good thing.
Meanwhile, it was just about a year ago that a Rock of Ages movie adaptation was announced, to be directed by Adam Shankman, the man behind such Cannes Film Festival Palme D’Or winners as Cheaper by the Dozen 2. But there’s been no news of that project since, so it’s either dead or stuck in development hell. Either way, the human race wins… for now.
On Saturday night, I ventured deep into the heart of the clusterfuck known as The Minnesota State Fair to witness the monster known as Kiss. This was my first Kiss concert, and it was quite an experience to be sure, but after the smoke finally cleared and retina-frying KISS logo was finally unplugged for the night, I was left with a single nagging question: Does Kiss still matter? Not, Is Kiss viable? mind you. Hell, this band is a moneymaking machine with a screwdriver wedged in the gears to force endless cycles of rinse and repeat. You don’t sell 100 million records worldwide and continue to pack arenas by accident. Clearly, this formula works. But does Kiss still matter?
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 2:40pm by Leyla Ford
When you go to a KISS show, you expect certain things. Explosions, blood, loud noises, drunken fist-pumping, explosions, fire, platforms, explosions, demon/starchild/alien/cat faces, obnoxious amounts of sequins, and possibly even explosions. It might seem cliché and it might seem over-done, but that’s what comes to mind when you think KISS + concert. So it’s a good thing they know that, too, because their show at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA was the loudest, brightest, most epileptic-fit causing explosion, ever.
If you haven’t read Part One of my interview with Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne, you might want to check it out before you go any further. In this second and final installment of that conversation, King Buzzo pulls no punches. See below to learn his thoughts on grunge, crabcore, and why he’d rather open for Madonna than ever play Ozzfest again.
I don’t want to jinx it, but lately it seems that society is drawing closer to a public consensus that Kiss sucks donkey ass. There’s a social parallel: Time is disposing of the fearful kooks who oppose gays/non-whites/drugs/Nergal, and as a result the day is in sight when we’ll all be cool/high with each other while enjoying scarier Behemoth records. Likewise, the time will come where no Kiss fans will walk the earth puking money into the wallet of Gene Simmons for no other privilege than to perpetuate a shitty band’s shitty brand. And really, thank you, poor deluded children of ’70s disco-rock crossover, for proudly snapping up those Kiss shirts, thongs, enemas, pizza pans, and diapers; the rest of us can identify/destroy you with none of the effort it takes to flush out a fan of, say, The Scorpions or Bullshit For ValKilmerTime (or whatever).
It’s amazing that such a charmless, joyless band could enjoy such sustained suck-cess. Cuz sane people will tell you that those Kiss records don’t even achieve the absolute bare minimum of being performed, produced, or mixed well — whether or not their cynically manufactured songs themselves are any good. (Save for the delightfully retarded “Heaven’s On Fire” and actual scores like “I Love It Loud” and “Detroit Rock City,” the entire catalog could be catapulted into the sun.) Only Earth’s most resentful and contemptuous dickfaces could charge money for such sub-garbage product. I mean, shit, I gobble Tums in the lobby of Jack In The Box, knowing that tonight’s pre-dinner will tax the capacities of my crap factory; but for my money I am certain to receive burger-shaped food. If Simmons ran that dump, you’d order and then be handed a blurry picture of a barf puddle photocopied onto a dryer sheet.
Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 4:16pm by Axl Rosenberg
I love Metal Insider‘s Bram Teitelman so much right now I could kiss him on his Quaker Jewish mouth right now (And no, I’m not kidding. And, oddly enough, Teitelman is the second Quaker Jew I’ve known. Bizarre.). See, Bram noticed what the rest of us failed to – that the riff from the new Kiss song, “Modern Day Who Gives a Fuck,” is more or less a total rip-off of The Sword’s Freya.
Think Bram is wrong? Listent to both and decide for yourself.
There’s no such thing as a war between art and commerce – or, at least, there isn’t anymore. Commerce kicked art’s ass all up and down the street, and now you have Chuck Close selling shirts at The Gap, an American film industry that is interested in making little product besides sequels and remakes… and now KI$$ are making plans to continue their “brand” with four entirely new members (see video below), so that Chaim Witz and Stanley Harvey Eisen can have an even better retirement package than the one already provided for them by album royalties (including approximately 2,376,893 greatest hits collections, allegedly-but-not-really live albums, and box sets), concert revenue, clothing sales, comic book tie-ins, horrible movies and cartoons, reality television programs, acting and voice-over work, books, DVDs and videos, games and toys, Kiss condoms, Halloween costumes, trading cards, incense, bedding, furniture, instrument endorsements, kitchenware, calendars, and, oh yeah, the single stupidest piece of merchandising in the history of stupid merchandising. (For a complete list of every fucktarted piece of shit anyone has ever made or purchased in the name of KI$$, click here).
You have to wonder with asshairs like this: isn’t there such a thing as “enough” money? I’m not so naive as to think that art shouldn’t be a business at all, but do Paul and Gene really need that extra few million dollars? Mightn’t they take a look around their mansions and say to themselves, “Hey, you know what? We’ve sold millions of records, made millions of dollars, influenced practically every rock musician who came after us in some capacity or another, fucked hundreds of gorgeous women, and pretty much ensured that our families will never want for everything… maybe, as I grow closer to death, I’ll keep my legacy in mind and I’ll at least PRETEND I actually care about music and not devalue it by making it a commodity that has nothing to do with art by shitting all over whatever is left of my good name by actively participating in turning my band into Menudo? Especially in a world where young bands that probably looked up to me when they were kids are on the verge of breaking up due to financial issues, to say nothing of the terrible poverty that afflicts so many other people throughout the world – can’t I just be grateful for my blessings and not act like a total cocksucking piece of dog shit?”
If I was an anti-Semite, Gene and Paul would be the examples I used to recruit teenage skinheads. I hope someone makes them watch while their families are dropped in boiling acid before gouging their eyes out so it’s the last thing they ever see, then cutting their dicks off so they can’t even take solace in the bed of a willing groupie. But I’d settle for an IRS audit resulting in these two smegma stains getting Wesley Snipe’d.
In the ever-growing empire of products to which uber-product whore Gene Simmons has attached his name, we present to you the brand new Kiss Toothbrush, which plays “Rock and Roll All Night” as the would-be brusher brushes their teeth.
According to a report, the song lasts for two minutes, meaning it essentially acts as a timer to keep your kids brushing. “And keeping a child brushing longer increases the odds that he or she will hit all the surfaces of the teeth. In one 2005 British study, kids spent about two minutes in the bathroom for tooth brushing, but most of the time the brushes weren’t even inside their mouths. They spent 10 seconds brushing the front teeth, 13 seconds on the back teeth…and 30 seconds biting the brush and sucking water out of it.”
Good to know that future generations of young ones will be rocking and rolling all night… or at least for two minutes. This one is definitely going on Uncle Vince’s Chanukah list.
