Showing posts with label KIss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KIss. Show all posts

Sunday, 18 August 2024

Copendium GlamRockSampler

 


Enjoying the Samplers section of "Copendium" the 700-page treatise on music by Julian Copeand we are into the third one which has twenty four tracks featuring The Move, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Kiss, and a few other familiar (to me) names.

Since the blog became about the books I am reading, this has been the most commented book and no doubt it will be finished this month.

Cope's writing at times goes absolutely but entertainingly mad by describing one band by roping in three, four or five others. 

"It's Donovan being Nick Drake singing 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' down a storm drain, as recorded as an out-take from the more outrĂ© moments on Nico's Chelsea Girls. Got me?" 

The book is printed on thick paper so it is a fairly hefty tome.



I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "King Of The Rumbling Spires" by Tyrannosaurus Rex

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer and this is her Instagram

Friday, 16 August 2024

Copendium HardRockSampler




Into the last hundred pages of 
"Copendium" the 700-page treatise on music by Julian Copeand the album reviews finished in 2010 and so far have caused me to buy three of them. Now it is a few chapters of samplers with singles from various genres the second being twenty three tracks from HardRockSampler featuring Mott The Hoople, David Bowie, Budgie, Kiss, Love and a few other familiar (to me) names. It also includes one of my favourite Thin Lizzy song, and possibly one of the greatest ever chord riffs, "The Rocker".

Since the blog became about the books I am reading, this has been the most commented book and no doubt it will be finished this month.

Cope's writing at times goes absolutely but entertainingly mad by describing one band by roping in three, four or five others. 

"It's Donovan being Nick Drake singing 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' down a storm drain, as recorded as an out-take from the more outrĂ© moments on Nico's Chelsea Girls. Got me?" 

The book is printed on very thick paper so it is a fairly hefty tome.



I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is The Rocker by Thin Lizzy

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer and this is her Instagram

 

Sunday, 28 July 2019

Millennium Post #2


I don't know whether I expected to do this many posts. I do know I expected to have a book written but the ideas come and go, and I expected to have some recordings out there and a combination of laziness and "not having enough time" , life and things have distracted me from hitting those targets.

My first Millennium Post can be seen by clicking on the link and was about eight and a half years after I started this blog. This one is about four years after the last one so the rate of posting has doubled and again I'm not sure if the quality has improved although the quantity definitely has.

One of things in the last four years I have started walking a million steps every three months on a rolling basis which was inspired by the Diabetes UK One Million Step Challenge which raises money for charity. I just did it to see if I could do it and it has helped me discover a lot of places that I would never have seen if I had not been on foot.

The fact that this has fallen on a Sunday would have some kind of divine significance for some people but lets face it there was a one in seven chance it would happen. At the beginning of the year I wanted to hit two thousand posts by the end of the year, and because I kept posting I realised I could actually hit it this month, so I have done that.

This means I will soon have the number of posts up to our number of Anno Domini years whether that's significant or not.

So nothing momentous to write about, and trying to think of a significant song for this , should we go with Pulp's "Disco 2000"  or The Rolling Stones "2000 Light Years From Home" but definitely not Robbie Williams "Millennium" (which I always thought was spelt with one 'n') or "2000 Man" by Kiss , but then I saw on "Their Satanic Majesties Request" the Stones had a song called "2000 Man" so we will go with that, with it's heavy Kinks influences. The video is full of images that appear in "The Illuminatus Trilogy" so it's strange how many things just coincide.

I thought Captain Beefheart had a song called "2000 Man" but I had got it mixed up with "25th Century Quaker" , understandable mistake.

So it's a sunny-ish Sunday have a good one and thank you for reading.


Tuesday, 22 January 2019

Tangence or Tangience


Both real word, click on Tangence or Tangience to see the definition. They came into my head because I was just again thinking of the tangential nature of almost everything to do with me. On Sunday's Post here I started on about getting up early, though my slow CD clearance via Discogs which took me on to my favourite Pirates song which led to me discovering  Sons of Pirates and then chatting with Mick Green's sons via Facebook. Almost like a Pinball game of events and connections.

Talking of Pinball, I was in The Strawberry today and they have a Kiss Pinball machine!! I mean what's that about? KIss were always the worst bandwagon jumping poodle rockers with the perfect business model of being facepainted so everyone was replaceable. The ultimate corporate toy rock band.

So I could have shared something by Kiss, but when you are talking Pinball it can only be Elton John's take on "Pinball Wizard" in Ken Russell's feature length pop video masquerading as a film (loads of highlights though such as Tina Turner's "Acid Queen". YOu also get The Who on stage too and those hilarious boots.


Friday, 7 September 2018

Even Burt Reynolds in that Black Trans-Am ......



We lost Burt Reynolds yesterday to a heart attack. Very sad as most of his films were great fun and he had a wonderful sense of humour as well as great comin timing, and on obvious model for actors such as Tom Selleck (also excellent and fun, brilliant in "Runaway" which featured Gene Simmons of Kiss and an excellent villain).

Anyway when Bruce Springsteen released "The River" it contained a plethora of amazing songs, one of which was "Cadillac Ranch" which is a public art installation in Amarillo Texas, created by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels,members of the band Ant Farm, full details here.

Cadillac, Cadillac, Long and dark, shiny and black
 Anyway one of the verses in the song ran like this:

"James Dean in that mercury '49
Junior Johnson runnin' through the woods of Carolina
Even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans Am
All gonna meet down at the Cadillac Ranch"


Reference to one of the many cars that Burt trashed in his movies, I'll let you find out which one and you can let me know. I also found a great Cadillac slideshow soundtracked by the song sto share with you and remember a wonderful actor by.

Monday, 30 May 2016

Earth, Wind and Fire



In the seventies when my major musical influences were being formed , my attention was often caught by bands with a penchant for presentation, but most of my grammar school peers were into progressive rock, while the music teachers bored us with classical , and my out of school friends were Teddy Boys and Greasers with a taste for rock and roll and hard country.

Early need to see bands were Hawkwind and Pink Floyd , I caught Hawkwind but never got to see Pink Floyd, both had light shows and multi media aspects to their shows and Hawkwind had the attraction of Stacia an Amazonian Proportioned dancer.

Then I heard about a band called Kiss , masks , flame throwing guitar, fireworks , so I checked out their albums and .... was not impressed. They sound weak , turned out to be bandwagon jumpers and just plain annoying.

EWF
But then came Earth, Wind and Fire. They had mysticism , magic in their stage shows , huge sets , amazing musicianship .... but they were disco. This was totally at odds and messed  with my brain, how could a band that looked and seemed so interesting be a disco band? Seriously.

Well forty years on I bought The Eternal Dance and I will give them a real listen, I have loved some of their stuff but my musical bigotry has stopped me from buying theor stuff.






That changed today so of course I have to include some live footage of the band from Japan in 1988 for you to enjoy. The stage set is very impressive .We didn't have this in the seventies , but we do now.

Enjoy and have a great week

Tuesday, 9 February 2016

I Was Made For Lovin' You


I switched on the the radio this morning and "I Was Made For Lovin' You" by Kiss was playing on the radio. Is this a good or bad sign? Undoubtedly Kiss's finest moment , no doubt due to the involvement of Giorgio Moroder , but that was kisses dalliance with Disco , and they were perennial bandwagon jumpers , dripping their own blood into the ink of a comic that featured them and the fact they were effectively masked by make up any member could in theory be easily replaced and disposed of. A marketing mans dream.


Gimme
The thing is they were about selling product and in that they  were no different than The Sex Pistols or X-Factor artists , it's ultimately about shifting corporate product. Bands are expected to conform and fit in and the media dictates an awful lot of what people buy. I like to think I am above that , but am I really? Having said that I went to two small gig last week and saw six amazing bands , check out here , it's a while since I have hit a big venue for a band.






Anyway I am OK with Kiss starting my day, and I hope your day starts just as well and continues in a good way. I love you all

Sunday, 19 May 2013

Black Sabbath Saved Me From Being A Kiss Fan

Not me personally , but Chris Cornell of Soundgarden who was just being intervied on BBC Radio 6 , the best radio station in the world, on The First Time show. The irony of this post post is that it's not going to be about Black Sabbath or Soundgarden or even Radio 6 but the afformentioned objects of my disdain Kiss.

When I first heard about Kiss as a teenager , it was this amazing American band with outrageous full face make up , flame throwing guitars and stage show that just had to be ssen. I assumed the music would live up to the hype....

...It didn't . Typical American AOR dross backed up by a husge amount of record company hype. Faceless formula rock such as "Detroit Rock City" or "Crazy Crazy Nights" or turgid ballads like Beth. Kiss became consumate bandwagon jumpers with their own comic featuring ink laced with their blood.. Then actually cam a halfway decent song when they jumped on the euro disco bandwagon ably helmed by Giorgio Moroder with "I Was Made For Lovin You" recently relvived for a decidedly disturbing Costa advertisment.

Gene Simmons does actually make a great screen villain as Luther in 1984's Runaway with Tom Selleck , but don't think he followed that up to its full potential.

So I had great hopes for Kiss but was so disappointed with the final product. Black Sabbath and Soundgarden are far far better.