Know who should've played

Actualy Queen were quite good at the 46664 Concert a couple of weeks back and despite forgeting the lyrics on "One Vision" (it's OK Paul only around 300,000,000 TV/internet viewers saw it LOL) Paul hardly disgraced himself. Still, he was no Freddie...

I'm sorry but I really don't "get" Kiss. I find their music trite and uniteresting. I like good metal (Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Metallica up until the "black album", Black Sabbath, Guns 'n' Roses, Megadeth, Exodus...) and good hard rock (Slade, Big Country, Bon Jovi (well albums 3 and 4, have never heard any others by them), Def Leppard...) but Kiss for me just don't fall into either catagory.

Their live shows really don't look too inspired either. Example:

Back in the early 90's before I got a lot more choosey about what gigs I attended I saw 3 arena gigs with initial impressive stage sets, these being ZZ Top (a scrap yard with complete with cranes and car crusher), Billy Idol ("apocalyptic landscape" complete with massive moving staue of Billy) and AC/DC (masses of ramps for Angus to run around and 16 working cannons), but once the shows got underway nothing particularly interesting happened, a crane might move, smoke may below from a chimney, the statue's arm may move and point at the audience, the canons go off at set points in the set but so what? The rest of the time we were stuck watching 2cm high (if we were lucky enough to be close-ish to the stage) people moving around occasionaly. They did't even have video screens at 2 of them, and at the one they did all they ever showed was 3 beardy blokes standing around playing their instruments. Pretty underwhelming concert experiences in all 3 cases.

I have a feeling Kiss' shows would be like that for me. Gene Simmons (or is it one of the others) spits blood, some things onstage explode sometimes, the brumkit lifts up on a hydrolic ramp, etc. Concidering that I don't like the music I have a feeling it'd all be just a big bore for me.

I don't know if your American so I don't know if this argument counts but here goes. I think there is also a cultural thing, that Brits tend not to "get" Kiss, but then again Yanks don't "get" Status Quo. Brits don't "get" Alicia Keys, Yanks don't get Take That. Swings and roundabouts...

For what it's worth I'm into all sorts of music. At the momment (ie the last couple of days) I've listened to a lot of David Bowie (mostly "Young Americans", "Lodger", "Station to Station" and "Low" but other stuff as well), Tiny Tim, just discovered Robin Gibb's 80's solo LPs, probably lots of other things too. In general I like psychedelic music (in it's broadest sense, though I very much tend to go for the weirder stuff (Basil Kirchin's "Quantum" LP, "Electrical Storm" by the White Noise...)), jazz (mostly free jazz), lots of stuff.

I disagree completly with what you say about bands/computers. I've used this argument before in that if you listen to the intro, first verse and first chorus of "Biology" by Girls Aloud you'll hear more inspiration and imagination than say Razorlight, the Fratellies and the Editors (or whatever indie band the quality press are pushing this week) will ever manage in their entire combined careers. Listen to "the Richard D. James" EP by the Aphex Twin and you'll hear more ideas than if you listened to 200 of the latest CDs by the latest underground death metal bands.







"I think you're a load of old crap too, Mr Mulligan."