Gene Simmons: Rock Is Finally Dead

[uwe]

Nonsense, Rob, rock has all the world to do with fast cars, wimmin, alcohol and drugs, don't be silly.













Your sanitized concept of rock frightens me: No cars, no wimmin, no drink, no drugs, no dry ice and lasers, just playing music together and posting it on Youtube with organically bleached flyers from renewable forests at living room concerts, in that case then the Kelly Family is rock too.



Rock without fast cars and other immature things is like omelettes without eggs.

[Basvarken]

Haha. Neither of those bands were singing about buying a Ferrari.
Plus; a souped up Ford is a whole lot cooler in my book than a Ferrari 


This is Rock today Uwe
And there even is a (not necesarily fast) car in it

[westen44]

LMFAO!!  The Kelly Family and rock. 

[uwe]

Incest is a terrible thing and a crime against future generations!

[westen44]

Whatever it was that happened, if that alien song is any indication, it was something pretty freaking bizarre. 

[gearHed289]

No cars, no wimmin, no drink, no drugs, no dry ice and lasers

90s "alternative" bands took the fun out of rock and roll.     

[uwe]

So true. And did they elicit notable audience reactions



or fly their own planes,



much less develop new means of communicating with the media?



Nuff said.

[lowend1]

Tsk, tsk, tsk - Blackmore on lead guitar, Ian Paice on drums and Jon Lord on keyboards. Derek Lawrence who had high hopes with Boz used them as session musicians just shortly before they recorded as Deep Purple.

Then you are unaware of this as well? 



Lord on keys, Ashton on vox, Ralphs on guit, Burrell on bass and Kirke on drums. Only Rodgers is missing!

Guilty as charged. I am shamed.
To be fair though, on the first one - Blackmore machen mit der "wau-wau"?

[uwe]

You mean his wah-wah phase? Yeah, he had that up to the early seventies and then he discarded it completely since everyone did it. The third epynomous DP album is referred to in DP fan circles as the "wah-wah album", he was all over with it. He had a whammy bar phase too (before, again, discarding that completely). The only technique he's stuck with throughout his career was his unique style of slide playing (on a regularly tuned guitar).

[Dave W]

"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?

LOL! None of Shakespeare's works were copyrighted! The world's first copyright law (the Statute of Anne) wasn't passed until nearly a century after Shakespeare died. And yet he was able to profit from the performance of his plays. Likewise composers were able to profit before musical compositions were covered by copyright (1830s in the US) and record companies sold millions of records before sound recordings were covered in 1972.

Thanks for demonstrating my point. 

Libertarian? Not hardly. Unfortunately most libertarians have bought into the absurd notion that a government-granted monopoly is "property."

"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.

I'm not sure whether you're being obtuse or just misunderstood the context, so let me rephrase: he performs for the sole purpose of getting paid. That better?

Of course everyone likes being paid, I wasn't implying otherwise. Simmons has no other purpose. And that's why he has no artistic integrity.

[Highlander]

... The only technique he's stuck with throughout his career was his unique style of slide playing (on a regularly tuned guitar).

Not that unique, Guv...!

I remember when Warren Haynes stepped into Duane Allman's boots (last time I saw ABB was with him and Woody) he learnt all the slide solos on standard tuning before he found out DA used "E" tuning...!

[uwe]

I didn't mean the standard tuning was unique (Blackmore doesn't like alternate tunings, that's all), but his slide approach and phrasing. With Blackmore you can sometimes not tell whether he is playing slide or not (the scalloped neck can allow for a slidy tone in notes even without the aid of a slide). He's a bit like George Harrison in that way as they both tend to avoid the "noisiness" that often comes with slide playing and don't yank the bottleneck around to cover too much of a distance between notes on the fretboard. They are both rather unbluesy slide players and have more of a steel guitar player approach.

Blackmore also doesn't slide chords in general, it's either single notes or his trademark double stops. Like he does here when at 5.24 he starts playing the riff with a slide. Now that doesn't exactly sound like when Johnny Winter or Rory Gallagher dig out the slide, does it? Most people don't even realize that it is slide playing at this point.



Or here at 1.14, that doesn't sound like it came from a Mississippi Delta blues shack either:



And finally here, he switches to slide at 3:10, the difference to his non-slide playing before is not that stark (and later on proceeds to play Beethoven's Ninth with the slide):

[uwe]

Point 1: LOL! None of Shakespeare's works were copyrighted! The world's first copyright law (the Statute of Anne) wasn't passed until nearly a century after Shakespeare died. And yet he was able to profit from the performance of his plays. Likewise composers were able to profit before musical compositions were covered by copyright (1830s in the US) and record companies sold millions of records before sound recordings were covered in 1972.

Thanks for demonstrating my point. 

Libertarian? Not hardly. Unfortunately most libertarians have bought into the absurd notion that a government-granted monopoly is "property."

Point 2: I'm not sure whether you're being obtuse or just misunderstood the context, so let me rephrase: he performs for the sole purpose of getting paid. That better? (Uwe: Naw, by your own high standards still weakish.)

Of course everyone likes being paid, I wasn't implying otherwise. Simmons has no other purpose. (Uwe: Sez who?) And that's why he has no artistic integrity. (Uwe: Ah, now I understand, like Chuck Berry then, who has for decades declared that he only performs for money. Chuck Berry has no artistic integrity, you live and learn!)

Objection!

Point 1: The might and clout of the sixties and seventies record industry wasn't so much based on the copyright regime but on the lack of technical means to get 100% copies of almost any music within seconds. If you think copyright laws were their secret recipe, then that is a simplistic monocausal explanation. It's just that copyright laws are your pet hate subject! 

Point 2: Conjecture! You don't know what's going on in Herr Simmons' mind when he plays. True, he has always downplayed the musician in him (leaving that role to "artsy" bleeding heart musician Paul Stanley), but that is just because of his act as Mr Nasty with the inconvenient truths/soundbite chef in Kiss. The truth is: If he disliked playing bass and performing, he could have stopped doing both long ago and just live off the royalties of Rock'n'Roll All Night. What makes you think that he is not enjoying himself here?



Maybe, just maybe he likes all  five: bass playing, making loads of money, sex, putting on make up and putting you off! 

[lowend1]

 

[lowend1]

I think Blackmore's slide playing is more of an outgrowth of his affair with the cello, as is the octave effect.