"I couldn't care less about the industry. I care about music. The "rock industry" and the larger music industry only cares about profiteering by locking up culture and keeping people from sharing music as people and cultures have since the dawn of time. Damned shame that we can't lock all the music industry execs and lobbyists in a condemned building and then bulldoze it to the ground."Dave, that is so incredibly naive, I can't believe you wrote it. Libertarian voodoo wonderland crap. Do you really believe Shakespeare would have written (or whoever did it for him, can of worms here ...) all his plays had he not been able to profit from his work?
"That's why I said earlier that Gene Simmons isn't a musician, he's just a jackass who performs in order to get paid. I also said that an organ grinder's monkey has more artistic integrity, but on second thought I didn't mean to insult the monkeys by comparing them to Simmons. The monkeys don't have a choice."He's musician enough for me. I bet you have never concentrated on one of his bass lines on those earlier albums. Without smoke bombs, make up, big mouth comments, just a very melodic and contrapunctual, even motownish bass line.
But that's obviously not music in your book and he's not a musician.
"A jackass who performs in order to get paid ...". A most brilliant argument, Dave, really, how can he, that then puts him in the same league as Mario Lanza, Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolf Nureyev and Maria Callas. All four, IIRC, "performed to get paid". Dis-gus-ting.
"no artistic integrity"I don't know what your definition of "artisitic integrity" is, but ole Chaim has certainly always been the most outspoken Kiss member as regards criticizing their own work. He's on record for disliking almost all their 80ies output, for straying from their initial hard rock with albums such as Dynasty, Unmasked and The Elder, for limp production (Crazy Nights), the list goes on.
Uwe
Gruppenführer of the DJDPDL (Descendants of Jewish Displaced Persons Defense League)
PS: If I could pick a rock star to have a nice dinner and some, no copious amounts of red wine with, I'd probably pick Herr Simmons ahead of all Deep Purple and Beatle members, deceased or still with us. I'm sure we wouldn't agree on many things, but it would be an entertaining night. I think the guy is cool, undiluted, tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek and pleasantly world-weary. He's by far the most interesting aspect of Kiss, musically or otherwise. And his make-up was the coolest of them all (Peter looked like a Cats Musical extra, Paul like a girl and Ace like a Marvel Comic figure), so there!
