Wednesday, February 23, 2005
KISS On My List
OK, if you're the president of the Hall & Oates Fan Club, I apologize for misleading you with today's title. Everybody else should know that I am in the process of ranking every KISS song in order of my preference.
This has proven to be a much more involved project than I originally thought. My list is almost complete; I will begin the countdown in the next update, probably Friday. In the meantime, I will make some clarifications and disclaimers to save time later on. In no particular order, then, I bring the following to your attention:
1. "Rock And Roll All Nite" will only appear on the list one time, despite appearing in various forms at least 73 times on different albums, what with live versions, re-mixed greatest hits packages, acoustic versions, and so on and so on and so on. This applies to all songs that make multiple appearances in the catalog. Which brings me to...
2. There are exactly 200 songs in all. In addition to not counting greatest hits and live version duplicates, as mentioned above, the magic number of 200 also does not include any songs from the infamous 1978 "Solo Albums." Although all 4 members of the band released solo projects on the same day, and all 4 albums featured the KISS logo and are considered in most quarters to be part of the KISS catalog, I don't feel they belong on this list. Because at the end of the day, they are still solo albums. For the curious, if I had included them, you would see most of Ace and Paul's albums near the top of the list, and Peter and Gene's at the bottom. Really no middle of the road stuff in there.
3. While generally regarded as a real creative slump in their career, Unmasked and Music From The Elder actually fair very well on the list. I found a lot of really solid tracks here, more than I thought I would.
4. On the flip-side of the above, while most credit the removal of the make-up in 1983 with a creative resurgence, I found a whole lot of shit here. With the exception of the singles that were in fairly heavy rotation on MTV, there's not a lot of redeeming stuff to be found from the mid-80s era.
Of course, record sales show that I am very much alone with the above two opinions. Which just proves the old adage about opinions: Everybody's got one, and this asshole is going to give you his next time.
This has proven to be a much more involved project than I originally thought. My list is almost complete; I will begin the countdown in the next update, probably Friday. In the meantime, I will make some clarifications and disclaimers to save time later on. In no particular order, then, I bring the following to your attention:
1. "Rock And Roll All Nite" will only appear on the list one time, despite appearing in various forms at least 73 times on different albums, what with live versions, re-mixed greatest hits packages, acoustic versions, and so on and so on and so on. This applies to all songs that make multiple appearances in the catalog. Which brings me to...
2. There are exactly 200 songs in all. In addition to not counting greatest hits and live version duplicates, as mentioned above, the magic number of 200 also does not include any songs from the infamous 1978 "Solo Albums." Although all 4 members of the band released solo projects on the same day, and all 4 albums featured the KISS logo and are considered in most quarters to be part of the KISS catalog, I don't feel they belong on this list. Because at the end of the day, they are still solo albums. For the curious, if I had included them, you would see most of Ace and Paul's albums near the top of the list, and Peter and Gene's at the bottom. Really no middle of the road stuff in there.
3. While generally regarded as a real creative slump in their career, Unmasked and Music From The Elder actually fair very well on the list. I found a lot of really solid tracks here, more than I thought I would.
4. On the flip-side of the above, while most credit the removal of the make-up in 1983 with a creative resurgence, I found a whole lot of shit here. With the exception of the singles that were in fairly heavy rotation on MTV, there's not a lot of redeeming stuff to be found from the mid-80s era.
Of course, record sales show that I am very much alone with the above two opinions. Which just proves the old adage about opinions: Everybody's got one, and this asshole is going to give you his next time.
