From the band that brought you locker room sex rock...DISCO!
Jun 29 '05
Author's Product Rating
Pros
Paul Stanley is the only thing keeping it afloat. Peter's song is acceptable.
Cons
Gene and Ace sound like two buzzards fighting over an armadillo carcass. Too much filler.
The Bottom Line
To call this their disco album is an offense to disco. Their few forays into that realm are preferable to the crappy rockers they'd already done a million times.
Full ReviewYesterday, I did a review of an album by Goblin, one that saw the Italian prog-rockers take on disco with satisfying results. Tackling a musical style outside one's usual genre is nothing new in the music industry, and was actually some sort of rite of passage that many bands in the 60's/70's went through. Just think of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and countless others who dabbled in exotic or unexpected sounds from time to time, just to keep things interesting.
Some bands, however, recognize the danger of straying outside of one's comfort zone. AC/DC, for instance, is a band that made millions of hard-earned mullethead dollars by recycling the same themes and power chords for thirty years. If they were to release an album of jazz-inspired ditties or sitar-based ragas, my bet is that the results would be catastrophic (and they're aware of that). Some rock n' rollers are just happy doing what they do best and nothing else besides, at the obvious risk of releasing the same record twenty times over.
Of course, the world of rock is a free one (until you learn that the entire music industry is actually ruled by iron-fisted business f*cks who bully and browbeat the creative urge right out of artists), and bands are entitled to drive their careers off the rails by diversifying (or, conversely, sticking obstinately to) their sound if they choose to do so. Kiss decided to jack with their day job during the late 70's, which many feel caused their kabuki-painted empire to come crashing to the ground. My theory is that their experiment with dance music didn't go far enough; the real cause of their ruin was that people had had enough of them and their arena rock.
If you've read my review of "Love Gun", you'll know that except for two or three songs, I find that highly-acclaimed album to be highly sh*tty. They were already starting to spin their wheels a mere four or five years in, which of course means that they've long since burned the rubber off the rims. The fact that they're still alive and playing is proof that capitalism is just an evil market-driven thing with no sense of taste or aesthetics.
"Dynasty" was released in 1979, at a time when the band was in a state of commercial triumph and personal disarray. Follwing the huge yet inexplicable success of "Love Gun", Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter flooded the market with a double live album, a greatest hits compilation, a solo effort from each member (which I'm convinced was either done on a bet or as a way to see which guy was most popular), and assorted toys, lunchboxes, movies, TV specials, customized vibrators, and surface-to-air missiles. Kiss may have been more of an economic force than most nations at that point, but they were quickly becoming an obnoxious omnipresence. The modest turn toward disco masked an even more serious problem- they were running out of ideas at a crucial time(of course, that never caused AC/DC to stop releasing records or go polyester).
Internally, they were falling apart, mostly because Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were acting like normal rock stars, which was apparently offensive to the puritan sensibilities of the Paul and Gene, the Jewish, sex-fiendish board of directors of Kiss, Inc. In fact, Criss's behavior became so bad that he somehow botched the "Dynasty" tour, and became everybody's scapegoat for the diminishing fortunes of the band. He had nothing to do, however, with the fall of the "Dynasty" TV show- that had everything to do with the TV producers' refusal to show Heather Locklear naked.
In addition to a wildman on the drum throne, Kiss also had to contend with the emergence of disco, a movement that encouraged commoners to dress up even sillier than four New Yorkers in platform shoes. People wanted to dance, snort a little blow, and get their pistols shined in the bathroom stalls, not salivate at the feet of sweaty man-beasts with comic book aspirations. Kiss, ever the businessmen, tried to maintain their popularity by going with the disco flow while still hanging on to their heaviness. Their refusal to commit to either path was a sign of insecurity in the face of shifting musical trends.
To say that "Dynasty" is predominantly a "disco album" is not really accurate, since only one or two songs really go in that direction ("I Was Made For Lovin' You" and maybe "Sure Know Something"). Surprisingly, those are the two best tracks. What really made the album such a lump of raw sewage was the increased vocal presence of Ace Frehley (the only man in the world who is arguably a worse singer than Gene Simmons) and the high percentage of boring dick-rock retreads. I've said it before and I'll say it again- the penis is a difficult subject to repackage after five or six albums.
Topically, "I Was Made For Lovin' You" doesn't differ from anything else they've ever done. Paul sings in a sexy voice (even going falsetto at times) about wanting to "give it all to you" and laying it "at your feet", but at least the music has a cool, driving feel to it. The melody is infectious as well, like chlamydia or genital warts.
Ace, who never sang a single tune prior to the "Love Gun" album, starts off his first of several on this album with "2000 Man". It's a cover of a Rolling Stones number, and while the original may possess something charming, this lame rocker doesn't do a thing for me. Same crap they were pushing out on "Love Gun".
Then it's back to quality with the sexy "Sure Know Something". Paul sings pretty about wanting some lady (or guy) late at night, which is not an unusual message for him to convey. It's a fairly dynamic and effective pop attempt, with backing vocals galore. Paul's voice always gives a song a certain amount of grandeur.
Peter didn't actually perform the drums on "Dynasty" (they were played by session drummer/future David Letterman mainstay Anton Figg), but he did contribute vocals to "Dirty Livin'". It's an urban moment that reminds me of something Glenn Frey would've recorded in the 1980's. Peter expresses his desire to escape from the sleazy lifestyle that's dragging him down. Paul and Gene were likely making him feel guilty about his substance problem (while they were banging every third woman in the northern hemisphere). Still, it's not too terrible.
"Charisma", on the other hand, blows harder than your cousin Candy behind the tool shed. This big dumb rock grunt, sung by none other than Gene "look at how my tongue doth flicker" Simmons, finds the man wondering what lies at the root of his appeal. Is it his fortune and fame? His personality? His sexuality? I haven't figured the answer out myself, but I have determined that the song's chorus is retarded and the really low vocal harmony he does near the end just...sux. After the first few albums, Gene's voice took on the quality of a homeless man in heat and just became unbearable for me.
A mid-tempo Paul affair called "Magic Touch" rescues us from the sweaty, spunk-stained clutches of Gene. It's passable, if maybe a bit too much like "Sure Know Something". It never really takes off, and gets all soft and girly during one brief part. Like Paul Stanley himself.
Then Ace comes back with "Hard Times", a mindless ding-a-ling that wasn't working anymore. His voice, as always, has the sweetness of a Holocaust photo, and can best be compared to a really bad Alice Cooper song. "Hard times are gone but they made me strong", he says, but this song damn near kills me off. And that which doesn't kill me only gives me cancer.
Gene returns to keep alive the "Who sucks more- Gene or Ace?" controversy on "X-Ray Eyes". It should've been called "Bad Bon Jovi Demo", and even makes the piano an accessory to its crime. Just pure testosterone and Gene with X-ray eyes- my God, what an atrocious thought.
Sailing us through to the end of the night is "Save Your Love". Ace's voice ranks up there with the sound of bison having their legs gnawed off on "Things I'd Like To Hear", and Paul's backing vocals sound bored and brain-damaged. Sure, there's energy, but that doesn't stand alone in the absence of good hooks or any other notable elements of interest.
Three Ace songs, two Gene, three Paul, one Peter. Does that tell you anything? This was a band torn between their hard rock tendencies of yore and a desire to keep the people coming with a little dash of disco. They were confused, bickering, unable to cope with the thought of no longer being gods, and rather hairy and ugly beneath the make-up. "Dynasty" marks the point at which the Dark Ages began for Kiss, and they didn't really regain their footing until they took the facepaint off.
"Dynasty" somehow managed to chart rather high, which apparently means that people still had faith that Kiss could deliver; the pitiful sales of their following albums proved that they couldn't. More musical missteps, personnel changes, and bland compositions awaited them, though they mysteriously remained huge in places like Brazil, the real home of heavy metal. When they finally did become relevant in America again, they had taken off their disguises and revealed themselves to be just another mundane hard rock band that looked like ugly Greek women.
Jun 29 '05
Author's Product Rating
Pros
Paul Stanley is the only thing keeping it afloat. Peter's song is acceptable.
Cons
Gene and Ace sound like two buzzards fighting over an armadillo carcass. Too much filler.
The Bottom Line
To call this their disco album is an offense to disco. Their few forays into that realm are preferable to the crappy rockers they'd already done a million times.
Full ReviewYesterday, I did a review of an album by Goblin, one that saw the Italian prog-rockers take on disco with satisfying results. Tackling a musical style outside one's usual genre is nothing new in the music industry, and was actually some sort of rite of passage that many bands in the 60's/70's went through. Just think of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and countless others who dabbled in exotic or unexpected sounds from time to time, just to keep things interesting.
Some bands, however, recognize the danger of straying outside of one's comfort zone. AC/DC, for instance, is a band that made millions of hard-earned mullethead dollars by recycling the same themes and power chords for thirty years. If they were to release an album of jazz-inspired ditties or sitar-based ragas, my bet is that the results would be catastrophic (and they're aware of that). Some rock n' rollers are just happy doing what they do best and nothing else besides, at the obvious risk of releasing the same record twenty times over.
Of course, the world of rock is a free one (until you learn that the entire music industry is actually ruled by iron-fisted business f*cks who bully and browbeat the creative urge right out of artists), and bands are entitled to drive their careers off the rails by diversifying (or, conversely, sticking obstinately to) their sound if they choose to do so. Kiss decided to jack with their day job during the late 70's, which many feel caused their kabuki-painted empire to come crashing to the ground. My theory is that their experiment with dance music didn't go far enough; the real cause of their ruin was that people had had enough of them and their arena rock.
If you've read my review of "Love Gun", you'll know that except for two or three songs, I find that highly-acclaimed album to be highly sh*tty. They were already starting to spin their wheels a mere four or five years in, which of course means that they've long since burned the rubber off the rims. The fact that they're still alive and playing is proof that capitalism is just an evil market-driven thing with no sense of taste or aesthetics.
"Dynasty" was released in 1979, at a time when the band was in a state of commercial triumph and personal disarray. Follwing the huge yet inexplicable success of "Love Gun", Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter flooded the market with a double live album, a greatest hits compilation, a solo effort from each member (which I'm convinced was either done on a bet or as a way to see which guy was most popular), and assorted toys, lunchboxes, movies, TV specials, customized vibrators, and surface-to-air missiles. Kiss may have been more of an economic force than most nations at that point, but they were quickly becoming an obnoxious omnipresence. The modest turn toward disco masked an even more serious problem- they were running out of ideas at a crucial time(of course, that never caused AC/DC to stop releasing records or go polyester).
Internally, they were falling apart, mostly because Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were acting like normal rock stars, which was apparently offensive to the puritan sensibilities of the Paul and Gene, the Jewish, sex-fiendish board of directors of Kiss, Inc. In fact, Criss's behavior became so bad that he somehow botched the "Dynasty" tour, and became everybody's scapegoat for the diminishing fortunes of the band. He had nothing to do, however, with the fall of the "Dynasty" TV show- that had everything to do with the TV producers' refusal to show Heather Locklear naked.
In addition to a wildman on the drum throne, Kiss also had to contend with the emergence of disco, a movement that encouraged commoners to dress up even sillier than four New Yorkers in platform shoes. People wanted to dance, snort a little blow, and get their pistols shined in the bathroom stalls, not salivate at the feet of sweaty man-beasts with comic book aspirations. Kiss, ever the businessmen, tried to maintain their popularity by going with the disco flow while still hanging on to their heaviness. Their refusal to commit to either path was a sign of insecurity in the face of shifting musical trends.
To say that "Dynasty" is predominantly a "disco album" is not really accurate, since only one or two songs really go in that direction ("I Was Made For Lovin' You" and maybe "Sure Know Something"). Surprisingly, those are the two best tracks. What really made the album such a lump of raw sewage was the increased vocal presence of Ace Frehley (the only man in the world who is arguably a worse singer than Gene Simmons) and the high percentage of boring dick-rock retreads. I've said it before and I'll say it again- the penis is a difficult subject to repackage after five or six albums.
Topically, "I Was Made For Lovin' You" doesn't differ from anything else they've ever done. Paul sings in a sexy voice (even going falsetto at times) about wanting to "give it all to you" and laying it "at your feet", but at least the music has a cool, driving feel to it. The melody is infectious as well, like chlamydia or genital warts.
Ace, who never sang a single tune prior to the "Love Gun" album, starts off his first of several on this album with "2000 Man". It's a cover of a Rolling Stones number, and while the original may possess something charming, this lame rocker doesn't do a thing for me. Same crap they were pushing out on "Love Gun".
Then it's back to quality with the sexy "Sure Know Something". Paul sings pretty about wanting some lady (or guy) late at night, which is not an unusual message for him to convey. It's a fairly dynamic and effective pop attempt, with backing vocals galore. Paul's voice always gives a song a certain amount of grandeur.
Peter didn't actually perform the drums on "Dynasty" (they were played by session drummer/future David Letterman mainstay Anton Figg), but he did contribute vocals to "Dirty Livin'". It's an urban moment that reminds me of something Glenn Frey would've recorded in the 1980's. Peter expresses his desire to escape from the sleazy lifestyle that's dragging him down. Paul and Gene were likely making him feel guilty about his substance problem (while they were banging every third woman in the northern hemisphere). Still, it's not too terrible.
"Charisma", on the other hand, blows harder than your cousin Candy behind the tool shed. This big dumb rock grunt, sung by none other than Gene "look at how my tongue doth flicker" Simmons, finds the man wondering what lies at the root of his appeal. Is it his fortune and fame? His personality? His sexuality? I haven't figured the answer out myself, but I have determined that the song's chorus is retarded and the really low vocal harmony he does near the end just...sux. After the first few albums, Gene's voice took on the quality of a homeless man in heat and just became unbearable for me.
A mid-tempo Paul affair called "Magic Touch" rescues us from the sweaty, spunk-stained clutches of Gene. It's passable, if maybe a bit too much like "Sure Know Something". It never really takes off, and gets all soft and girly during one brief part. Like Paul Stanley himself.
Then Ace comes back with "Hard Times", a mindless ding-a-ling that wasn't working anymore. His voice, as always, has the sweetness of a Holocaust photo, and can best be compared to a really bad Alice Cooper song. "Hard times are gone but they made me strong", he says, but this song damn near kills me off. And that which doesn't kill me only gives me cancer.
Gene returns to keep alive the "Who sucks more- Gene or Ace?" controversy on "X-Ray Eyes". It should've been called "Bad Bon Jovi Demo", and even makes the piano an accessory to its crime. Just pure testosterone and Gene with X-ray eyes- my God, what an atrocious thought.
Sailing us through to the end of the night is "Save Your Love". Ace's voice ranks up there with the sound of bison having their legs gnawed off on "Things I'd Like To Hear", and Paul's backing vocals sound bored and brain-damaged. Sure, there's energy, but that doesn't stand alone in the absence of good hooks or any other notable elements of interest.
Three Ace songs, two Gene, three Paul, one Peter. Does that tell you anything? This was a band torn between their hard rock tendencies of yore and a desire to keep the people coming with a little dash of disco. They were confused, bickering, unable to cope with the thought of no longer being gods, and rather hairy and ugly beneath the make-up. "Dynasty" marks the point at which the Dark Ages began for Kiss, and they didn't really regain their footing until they took the facepaint off.
"Dynasty" somehow managed to chart rather high, which apparently means that people still had faith that Kiss could deliver; the pitiful sales of their following albums proved that they couldn't. More musical missteps, personnel changes, and bland compositions awaited them, though they mysteriously remained huge in places like Brazil, the real home of heavy metal. When they finally did become relevant in America again, they had taken off their disguises and revealed themselves to be just another mundane hard rock band that looked like ugly Greek women.
