Results for Kiss

How does a cutting-edge '70s hard-rock sleaze band wind up featured in a Holiday Inn TV commercial 30 years later? By being incredibly recognizable by sight if not sound, that's how. Outrageous makeup was the band's signature for what became a Kiss-camp following that has endured much longer than the group's musical creativity. Original members Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss hit upon an Alice Cooper-style and dressed it up with power guitar, crashing lyrics and blood-spitting, smoke-swirling, migraine-inducing light shows that had worried mamas checking their kids' backpacks daily for zinc oxide and black grease pencil. Kiss's original fame was guaranteed with Alive and Destroyer, which included top-single "Beth" and later "Lick It Up," a release from their no makeup period. To date, the band has endured the not uncommon changes in line-up, a few solo releases by original members and reunion tours. The band's emphasis on marketing, the excess of which is considered a flaw in their approach by music critics, has kept them an obvious player in the "name that band" game....more

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  • Add It Up: Angst in the Music of Violent Femmes and Langhorne Slim

    by Cyrus PhilbrickJuly 9, 2008Comments (1)

    All I know is that Violent Femmes are the angstiest (whatever the hell this really means) band I’ve ever heard. And, unlike some metal and hair bands, they didn’t rely on cheap methods of constructing this feeling, such as loud guitars and screeching. Angst coursed through the veins of their music. Brian Ritchie’s bass, spasmodic but persistent, captures the adolescent paroxysms that come from (read more)

  • Rediscovering Rock and Roll, A Journey: Chapter Seven

    by Paul WilliamsJune 18, 2008Comments (2)

    In the future, perhaps, everything will be digital, and we’ll be able to order videos of individual songs, which will be instantly transferred over phone lines to our combination personal computer/music disc/video disc player (and billed to our credit accounts at the same time). There will be a broadcast service, so we can be exposed to new product in the first place, but they’ll figure out some way that you can’t copy (read more)

  • The Arm of Fun

    by Max MobleyJune 18, 2008Comments (4)

    With vinyl, music becomes tangible, certainly less ephemeral. When it slides out of the sleeve, it’s like you’re holding the song in your hands, don’t drop the song, man, they shatter. (read more)

  • Scott Kempner

    by Denise SullivanJune 11, 2008Comments (4)

    "you can't hold it against Kempner for seeking redemption through real rock 'n' roll" (read more)

  • Life After Whiskeytown: Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary

    by Geoffrey HimesJune 11, 2008Comments (1)

    It may be true that Adams has more talent. He is able to mimic almost any rock star of the past 40 years—not only as a singer and guitarist but also as a songwriter—and he is astonishingly prolific. He certainly has more charisma. With his tousled hair, leather clothes, legendary drinking bouts, grainy voice, and heavy-lidded insouciance, Adams has impressed (read more)

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