irst of all, too many songs. Like the emperor summing up Mozart in AMADEUS: “Too many notes.” Well, Hot In The Shade does not have “too many notes” – that would be Animalize – but it seems like producers Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons crammed every sticky-sweet, trashy-funk, dirty-glam, sweaty-shoed cockrocker they could find into this 15th studio KISS album (23rd overall). Hmm, 15th album – 15 songs… Was that the concept?

Lacking cohesion or direction, Hot In The Shade is a Hot MESS In The Shade. The band that had found direction (on Crazy Nights – even if that direction was simpering and obsequious) was flailing again. They had definitely made a choice to throw out the stringpads (the only songs featuring keyboards, Hide Your Heart and Forever), so the harder rock direction was welcome, and the sonic quality of the album was raunchy, as was Eric Carr‘s urgent drumming, and Bruce Kulick rattling off consistently stunning solos that seemed effortless; it is simply just a lack of good songs. Where did all these duds come from?

I can see the reason many fans complain this album is made up of demos. However, being demos is not the issue (sometimes the demonstration version of a song IS its best version); civilians were mistaking the lack of quality songwriting for lack of production. Grasping an aspect of the music industry they thought they understood, they complained Shade was “made up of demos.” What they’re saying is that some of the songs sound half-baked and scattershot. (Then again, when listening to that lack-of-fills drum track on Love’s A Slap In The Face, we wonder if it’s because Gene wanted Eric to emulate AC/DC’s Phil Rudd, or because he just couldn’t program that drum machine…) When listened to in a complete block, the songs don’t do the album as a whole justice, but if listened to individually, each song has its own cool space; they just don’t fit together as a unit. There’s also something to be said for the album title spelling HITS as an acronym, but that’s probably just coincidence… for a band that meticulously crafts all its marketing gimmicks… yeah, just coincidence…)

Posterity has been cruel to this album, the only songs remaining on live lists being the two singles Forever and Hide Your Heart. Admittedly, those two songs shine out like musical beacons amongst this bland-rock desert. On KISS Kruises and at KISS Conventions, the band regularly perform deep cuts from their full catalog for the fans, but they can safely avoid this album’s deep end; no one is requesting Betrayed or Silver Spoon any time soon.

KISS Live 1989: The Sphinx named Leon.

Rise To It. A powerful riff-rock opener that belies the weakness of the album compleat. Paul Stanley – for the 178th time on record – once again sings about his erection.

The video to Rise To It took our breath away. Or more correctly, the INTRO to the video. Now keep in mind this is the era when the legendary KISS makeup was completely lost to the past, dead to the world, and in the intro sequence we see a title card: BACKSTAGE 1975, and then we see – Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons sitting at a dressing room mirror applying the Starchild and Demon! Two faceless guys in the background are Peter and Ace. Paying tribute to their past? A peek into the Reunion future? Ironically, while they apply it, they’re talking about removing it.

Then they perform the song – but out of makeup, with Kulick and Carr. A soft-focus “live” gig for a small audience, with no lightshow and MTV crash-cuts. And for the first time in a long time – KISS look cool! At last settling on faux-street clothes and cohesive hairstyles that bespoke their rock god status, simultaneously making them seem like accessible regular guys.

The video is bookended by Stanley and Simmons in full makeup and costume leaving the dressing room to the roar of the mythic crowd. (And the chagrin of fanboys – though the title card said 1975, Paul’s costume is from 1977 and Gene’s is from 1980!)

On Betrayed and Prisoner Of Love, Gene uses vocal techniques he first revealed on Unmasked – that high clean hard palate voice that enables him to sound like any old eighties hair-vocalist; he gains range but loses individuality with that voice. The rest of the album is in his usual growl. Now this could be construed as variety or diversity – after all, we don’t want to hear 6 Simmons songs that sound all the same – but it comes off as lackluster lack of direction. His third song on Side 1 sits better with us – Love’s A Slap In The Face – because it’s Gene doing Gene, rather than Jani Lane.

Read My Body. What is that little temple-block in the intro? Like KISS meets Tainted Love. A guilty pleasure that Paul funks out, with its share of piggish bits (those rap-style shouts at the end of every line of verse) and catchy choruses that imply – unsurprisingly – having sex with Paul.

Hide Your Heart. One of the most “cosmopolitan” KISS songs, as it involves three gang teenagers in a love triangle, a topic far removed from KISS’s usual fare – Paul’s and Gene’s crotches. Originally written for Crazy Nights (by Stanley, Desmond Child and Holly Knight) and rejected, the song was then shopped around, and four other artists bought it and recorded it (Bonnie Tyler, Molly Hatchet, Robin Beck, and – the ex-spaceman himself, Ace Frehley, for his 1989 album Trouble Walkin’!)

KISS’s video for Hide Your Heart was another first, as it featured a completely secondary story to the shots of the band performing the song. That other story, shot in black and white, featured three Latin teens getting tangled; contrasted with the full-color band playing atop the Hotel Royale in Los Angeles. Censors in the States edited out every gang shot where a gun could be seen, so the story must have seemed piecemeal to American viewers, but everywhere else in the world we clearly saw the shootout atop that roof. America – gun-death capital of the world – with censors too gutless to show guns in a music video… Ironic, no?

KISS in the studio with Dean Martin producing.

Forever. Stanley co-writes with Michael Bolton. Yep, even that guy with the soppy ballads has a one-degree connection to KISS: Bruce Kulick was in Bolton’s 1979 band, Blackjack. Reaching #8 on Billboard charts, Forever would be the band’s highest charting single since Beth. Miles above its surrounding material, we can hear the craft that has gone into this lachrymose wailer, with surprisingly heavy drumming that somehow works.

Kulick would track an admittedly super electric solo, only to be told by producer Stanley that he needed to rethink it as an acoustic solo! He relates he was pissed, but – professional craftsman that he is – laid down an evocative acoustic gem.

The sepia-tone video showcases the band looking casual, big bouffant hairdos, at last at ease with their non-makeup personas, not trying too hard to be colorful or look-at-me; Gene sits on a stool, while Paul’s voice careens; Eric’s hair shaggies and Bruce fretboards nirvana; camera moving amongst the band in a room lit like a cathedral.

Gene’s driving Cadillac Dreams features a well-arranged horn section.

Vini Poncia (the producer responsible for Dynasty and Unmasked) co-writes with both Stanley and Simmons, but turns out better material with Simmons; his output with Stanley ends up resembling those vapid disco ducks (King Of Hearts, Silver Spoon).

The Street Giveth And The Street Taketh Away. Gene co-writes this song and Betrayed with the KISS go-fer at that stage, a young guitarist named Tommy Thayer. Each verse starts with a “Hey, man!” very very very reminiscent of Bowie’s Suffragette City. To add to the Bowie evocation, one lyric mentions “rock and roll suicide” (the name of the song that closed the album with Suffragette on it, Ziggy Stardust). (Okay, for the purists: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Happy?)

You Love Me To Hate You. Interesting harmonies keep this Paul contradictor from suffering at the hands of this album.

Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell. One of the albums catchier songs, composited from War Machine and that song we just heard, Love’s A Slap In The Face.

Little Caesar. Eric Carr’s one and only lead vocal contribution to KISS is probably the best song on the album! Written by Carr and tightened by Simmons and Adam Mitchell, it’s a punchy funky walking riff about being a man in a cruel world, Carr’s scratchy vocals lending it all the street it needs: “Well they tried to tell you that the world is rough / But they never rocked it hard enough!” Based partly on Gene’s love of old movies (Edward G. Robinson’s 1931 film of the same name) and Gene’s nickname for Little Eric, it should have closed the album on its E power chords. Instead, a Gene throwaway throws away the impact…

Little Eric Caesar: rocking the world hard enough…

Boomerang. Nice guitar sound, with Kulick sounding like a more sensible Mark St. John. A tuneless Simmons double-kick extravaganza that goes nowhere. But it goes there really really fast.

The album cover was a little lackluster – the Sphinx wearing shades – but it was a tie-in with the Hot In The Shade Tour, which featured an awe-inspiring giant Sphinx head in place of the KISS sign, nicknamed Leon (of course). Complete with his complement of lighting in his head-dress and explosive eyes.

The material might have been at a low ebb, but KISS were on their way back visually, with Gene already tilting toward that scruffy leather street-cred he would adopt during Revenge. Little did we know it, but they were on their way back musically as well. Sadly, this would be Eric Carr’s last full album with the band, as cancer would come calling before the next album’s tracking sessions. How amazing then, that at such an emotional nadir, that next album would be one of the finest of KISS’s career.

END

KISS 1998: Two ringmasters, two clowns…

You Wanted The Best — You Got… a facsimile thereof.

  drummer that forced hotel staff to put tinfoil on his windows that faced a certain direction and a lead guitarist that would rather play cards with his friends than catch a plane to a gig with the biggest band in the world. It truly was a…

Psycho Circus.

Did Paul Stanley name the first and only KISS Reunion album in honor of his wackadoodle bandmates, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley?

Psycho Circus followed on the heels of The Reunion Tour 1996, which was touted as The Return of KISS. But KISS never went away. (It should have been called “The Reunion Of The Original Members Tour” – but how do you print that on a ticket and stay fashionable?) What was regarded as “the return” by only diehard purists (and people who hadn’t followed KISS’s post-makeup career), was actually The Regression of KISS – from a fully-functioning, four-wheeled juggernaut (Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer) to a dysfunctional pushcart with two of its wheels rolling smoothly and the other two crooked and squeaking and constantly falling off their axles.

After the success of KISS: MTV Unplugged in August 1995, where past KISS members Criss and Frehley joined the current KISS lineup to jam on some KISS oldies, “Reunion” fervor had reached a peak. Entrepreneurs Simmons and Stanley saw the glut of money that could be made – and the 1996-1997 Reunion Tour aka KISS Alive Worldwide would be the most successful KISS tour to that date. Touring spawns talk of a new album. KISS (i.e. Simmons and Stanley) saw more dollar signs, more product.

That resulted in the psycho circus that would become Psycho Circus.

Y’see, Peter and Ace, tasting relevancy by being included in the KISS machine once more, instead of being thankful they had been pulled from obscurity (Peter especially!), had long since reverted back to their idiot selves, allowing lawyers, girlfriends and card-playing buddies to sway them to whatever worked worst. Nothing went smoothly with the recording process. Both Criss and Frehley were only used sparingly on the album, for various reasons (deadlines to be met, lack of ability, tardiness, erratic behavior, lawyers interceding), and many session players were hired to complete their parts… YET… Psycho Circus (either despite its adversity or because of it), is one solid KISS mamajama.

Produced by Bruce Fairbairn, Psycho Circus does in fact capture some of the KISS magic of old – but not because the original lineup is (supposedly) performing on it. It’s because Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons were still in the zone of writing excellent hard rock material (coming off Revenge 1992 and Carnival Of Souls 1995), and the session players they used (notably, drummer Kevin Valentine and lead guitarist Tommy Thayer) did such remarkable jobs. Circus hums with a vitality and energy on par with the best KISS material from the 70s and 80s. With a few juvie elements thrown in.

Psycho Circus. “…the makeup runnin’ down my face / We’re exiled from the human race…” I love that line and its context and innuendo. Paul Stanley’s voice in fine form, belting the opener to the album.

Within. A Gene Simmons scowler, using both high and low registers of his voice, at one point, overdubbing both ranges simultaneously in two separate, eerie vocal passages! Song even switches to a surprising 6/8 passage midway. Opening backwards-guitar passage by Bruce Kulick (leftovers from Carnival).

I Pledge Allegiance to the State of Rock & Roll. This is what I mean by juvenile. A solid Stanley rocker, with a nostalgic construction, but with that puffball red meat title. I guess I was looking for less fist-pumping redneck titles in an album that followed the mature Carnival Of Souls…

Into The Void (not to be confused with the Black Sabbath song of the same name) is a Frehley song that somehow sounds like one of his solo efforts; one of the few tracks he plays lead guitar on. Tommy Thayer (ex-Black and Blue guitarist, now KISS gopher, making his presence felt as tour manager, videographer, editor, and Frehley’s guitar tutor for his own songs!) did all the lead work that Frehley did not have songwriting credits on.

We Are One. This nostalgic Simmons track always brings me to tears. WHY? Simmons opts for his human AOR voice (the same one he used on The Elder), rather than his demon growl, and I think that’s a crybaby factor for me. Because it reminds me that one day this is the ONLY voice Simmons will be able to use, when we’re all too old for this game and gaze longingly back, with this song in the background… “Everywhere I go, everyone I see / And I see my face looking back at me…” That makes me cry, because of the gigantic legacy Simmons has created. He looks out at a sea of faces, and his creation, his persona looks back at him through the makeup on hundreds of faces. What must that be like?! To BE Gene Simmons or Paul Stanley.

“What I know is true/ Every one of us lives inside of you…” It IS true. KISS lives in each one of us, yes, even those unfortunate few who are NOT KISS fans, because their influence has affected others around you all around the world in myriad indescribable, inexplicable ways. You know that one in four people in Australia owns at least one KISS album? Influence like that is dangerously close to godlike. A butterfly flaps its wings in China — hurricanes in Nebraska. A KISS record is burned in Ohio — a stadium is sold out in Chile.

You Wanted The Best – a self-referential, high-heeled juvie stomper, written by Simmons, that reminds us of hip hop artists touting themselves as badass on their own records. “The fans wanted us to play / We hear and we obey / You wanted the best / And you got the best.” It’s a lame concept, and a lame attempt at getting the band to sound like they’re all together in the studio having a lark. The whole band takes turns on lead vocals, one line each. It’s nice to hear them do this – but it’s all fantasy. They were not functioning as a “real band” – not in that traditional sense where they would create music together and then go for pizza and hookers; they were not even unified in a business sense, where they were all contracted to do an album so worked hard together to produce the best rock and roll around. What is this – Bunny Week? We all know Frehley and Criss, like any old session musicians, are contracted to Simmons and Stanley, who run the KISS Corp. We all know anarchic Ace was late and left early, and poseur Peter brought a chick to the studio to see how tough he looked, and then had to be taught the melody line over and over by Simmons…

Raise Your Glasses. Another superbly-constructed song by the master songwriter, Stanley. “I shot my arrow at the mark / And hit it.” Nice to hear a retrospective that isn’t moaning about loss or soul-searching, but celebrating unbridled success, with a snappy Ace-like solo by Tommy Thayer. An awesome look back at his own career: “We struck our matches / Set the world on fire,” yet the lyrics must have given Stanley pause when considering his two re-recruited bandmates didn’t deserve all the accolades he was showering upon his band; some accolades, yes, but not everything that he and his brother-in-arms (“Went into battle with a force of thunder”) had to live through to that moment.

I Finally Found My Way …to Alice Cooper’s How You Gonna See Me Now. Written by Stanley and Bob Ezrin, this classically structured, piano-based ballad (sung by Criss), sounds at first like something off the good Peter Criss solo record (the 1978 one he made while still nominally in KISS), until we realize it sounds like Alice – because of Ezrin! Ezrin didn’t write How You Gonna See Me Now? but he worked so extensively with Cooper in his heyday that he unwittingly put that stamp on this song.

Criss would complain that he hardly played on anything. Fact is, he played on nothing except Into The Void. Because he was a furball of his former self. Stanley would write in his autobiography years later that Criss could hardly hold his sticks. Drummer Kevin Valentine’s original interaction with KISS was hiring and operating the P.A. for KISS Conventions. A veteran of Donnie Iris, Graham Bonnet, Cinderella, et al, on Eric Singer’s referral, Valentine was hired as drum tutor for Peter Criss for the Reunion Tour. [Scene Missing] Next stop: ghost player on Psycho Circus.

Speaking of Alice Cooper: Cooper’s lawyers sued Paul Stanley and Bruce Kulick for Dreamin’, which sounded too close to I’m Eighteen for comfort. It was settled out of court.

Journey of 1,000 Years closes the album, a thoughtful, introspective Simmons chugger that develops into something quite epic, with a string passage that emulates the guitar solo from the opening track, nicely book-ending the album and making this song sound nostalgic – when, in fact, you were experiencing deja vu because you had just heard that motif at the head of the album! – with Simmons’s voice rising in intensity as it progresses to a climax, and fades into an uncertain future.

The CD was released with a lenticular cover that showed alternating images of an evil clown dominating the band’s faces, and the KISS logo. Like the cover, Psycho Circus was a façade. It sounded cohesive, and actually does achieve greatness in parts, but it was a fragmentary offering from a COMPANY, not a band. But we can understand why it was sold as a band renewed. The public wanted that reality so much that they MADE it reality in their heads, ACTUAL reality be damned!

Now that’s psycho!

END

KISS 1980: Color me disco.

More lick-ass than kick-ass.

nmasked should have been called Guilty Pleasure.

With its sanitized disco pop and bubblegum bop, Unmasked was a calculated sequel to 1979’s Dynasty. But someone calculated wrong. Because 1 (album of shit) + 1 (album of shit) = more minus-fans than plus-fans. It was the first album since 1975’s Dressed To Kill that would stall at Gold status, rather than rise to platinum or beyond (as had been the convention of KISS albums since 1975’s Alive!).

It was big in Norway, where math was optional.

The good songs were eminently catchy ditties, even though they were lighter than KISS’s usual hard rock candy, and the bad songs were just stinkers. As soon as the opener whipped in, Is That You?, we could hear the problem. They’d taken everything that was wrong with Dynasty – and multiplied it by Donna Summer. The hall reverb and slap delays were out of control! Paul Stanley, his usual masculine tenor hardly recognizable with all the coquettish squeals and mmm’s and oowoah’s, wails, “Write on my mirror with your lipstick / Much too vain, got scatterbrains…” I love that line and its delivery, but it’s a stylistic departure many KISS fans were not ready for. He’d used more falsetto than usual in Dynasty, but never stepped this far into womanhood.

Then – an even GAYER song! Shandi. Producer Vini Poncia co-writes with Stanley to produce a fantastically-constructed ballad that sounds like a summer jazz festival meets a disco girl group from the 70s. With guitars that resemble synthesizers and synthesizers that resemble crappy violins, Shandi would produce another soft-rock hit for KISS. All brought to you by The Underrated Mr. Paul. (Wikipedia: “Although all four band members appear in the video, only Paul Stanley was involved in the recording. Anton Fig plays drums, KISS roadie Tom Harper plays bass, and songwriter Holly Knight plays keyboards, while Stanley sings lead and plays all guitars.”) Stanley openly admits his inspiration for Shandi is The Hollies’ version of Bruce Springsteen’s 4^th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).

The Shandi video shoot would be the last time the band would see drummer Peter Criss until the KISS Unplugged era. In keeping with the album title and its cover cartoon, there’s a great twist at the end of the video.

Followed by the best song on the album, Ace Frehley’s hit single Talk To Me, an open-G tuning rocker that exemplifies simplicity producing stunning, catchy results. Frehley’s confidence as a lead vocalist must have been soaring by now, as Talk To Me was one of three singles, none of which featured Gene on lead. Matter of fact, the third-best and fourth-best songs on the album are also Ace’s: Two Sides Of The Coin and Torpedo Girl (and dig that syncopated Anton Fig opening drum pattern!). These kinds of hard facts/contention make KISS diehards wonder what the band might have been had Simmons and Stanley deferred more to Frehley’s rock judgment…

Stanley’s Tomorrow is the second-best song on the album (also a single), and has a touch of that classic Dressed To Kill vibe, but with funny little tootling things and rubbery guitars instead of Les Paul crunch. With Paul providing a guitar solo that we would never be able to tell was not Ace Frehley.

Touring Unmasked in France. Fig in the Studio, Cat on the Cover, Fox on the Run.
On July 25, 1980, Eric Carr was introduced to the world as the new KISS drummer, The Fox,
at the Palladium in New York City.

Two Sides Of The Coin, another open-G, breezy Frehley rocker with a catchy chorus – and a neck-snapping syncopated drumming interlude that made all of us musicians, no matter how great a KISS fan we professed to be, look sideways at each other and say, “That ain’t Peter Criss…”

It was drummer Anton Fig again, who also performed 90% of the drums on their last album Dynasty. Here – 100%. There are NO Peter Criss songs, credits or drum tracks on this album. The only sightings of The Cat are on the cover cartoon, and his mimed drumming performance in the Shandi video.

KISS continued the lie they propagated with Dynasty – that it was still Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter (IMPLYING the hell out of Peter still being in the band), yet in all Unmasked promo appearances and performances, for TV, festivals, interviews, etc. there was a foxy new boy in Criss’ stead – powerhouse drummer and all-round baby-faced, big-haired nice guy, Paul Charles Caravello aka Eric Carr.

Speaking of inconsequential, Gene Simmons is meant to be a Demon – not a Ghost. His offerings on Unmasked are so watery, they are almost see-through. Naked City, She’s So European, and You’re All That I Want, which features lyrics so banal I almost bought a Shakin’ Stevens record: “And if you leave me, don’t say goodbye / ‘Cause you’re all I need to get by…” What the–?! Does it even make sense that not saying goodbye has any bearing on the fact that she’s all he needs to get by? And why is he telling her this if she’s already gone? Oh, that’s right – he doesn’t know she’s gone because she didn’t say goodbye, as per his request. And rhyming “bye” with “by”?! Did Gene’s gardener write this? Now no one said these songs weren’t enjoyable guilties, but so lacking in demon-depth that Barry Manilow might have put on Gene’s stack heels and no one would’ve noticed. Or Gene’s gardener.

frehley’s side of the coin

Tangled up in electric blue

Over the course of this album and the next (The Elder), Ace Frehley would meander out of the KISS fold. He lost the gig/ resigned/ was fired for myriad reasons. No matter what you read or hear, it was never as cut and dried as KISS or Frehley make it out to be. One word: CONTRACTS.

Yes, Frehley was over-indulging in drugs and drink, but it was hardly just that, because he was always doing that; no, the split came about gradually due to a combination of divergent musical visions, disagreeable business decisions, losing his confidant Criss, thereby losing his vote (now it would always be him against Stanley and Simmons), being unreliable, tardy, lazy, not keeping up his chops (check YouTube – if I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’), and then ADDING the drugs and drink on top of all that.

Frehley grew apart from the band’s marketing savvy. Stanley’s and Simmons’s ethos was to follow the money – Adapt Improvise Overcome. If disco was big – start dancing; if hair was big – start spraying, if marketing was big, start hawking… Frehley, great guitarist though he was, wanted none of that; he just wanted to play rock and roll and stay true to his roots, which is commendable. But it doesn’t make for a good working relationship with an organization that needs you to cooperate with their international strategies. Frehley simply lost interest in being in the Biggest Band In The World. However, he was in a legally-binding business relationship with the KISS Organization, with contractual obligations to fulfill, so he couldn’t just disappear cleanly – he had to make video appearances, live shows, interviews, provide his visage for promo, etc. before he could end the relationship without being sued. In other words, he was wearing his makeup under duress. He didn’t WANT to be the spaceman any more, yet he had to grin and bear it because his contract said so.

Stanley has a point against all those numbnuts purists who keep maintaining Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer are “impostors.” Those who don’t wish to be in the band and yet wore the makeup for financial reasons or contractual obligations – are the ACTUAL IMPOSTORS! Frehley and Criss came to HATE playing with the band, therefore, were disdainful of the makeup and all it stood for, with Criss disrespecting the KISS legacy so avidly he would actively ruin shows, whilst Thayer and Singer PROUDLY wear the makeup and love their jobs and perform them to perfection every night without giving Stanley and Simmons agita. Hey KISS-LOONIES, who exactly are the impostors?

In the final telling, the impostors are the unmasked.

END