Chris Preston and New Aquarius Online

Well, at least if you’re a musician engaged in self-promotion. I’ve come to believe that the philosophy of the “artist as open book” is terribly flawed. If you pollute your mind with the prevalent electronic chatter about the new music business made possible by “direct-to-fan” solutions, social networking and all that rot, you might be led to believe that using technology to get as close to your “fans” (what an awful word) as possible is the goal. Though I use these tools in the promotion of my music and recordings, I’ve been thinking about how it can blow up in your face too.

Two bands I’ve written about here, Led Zeppelin and Kiss, would have ruined their careers by becoming too intimate with their audiences. Yes, perhaps things are different now, but what would these two bands have been if the lives of their members had been documented in a readily accessible resource by the members themselves?

In the mythology of Led Zeppelin, you had deals with the devil, obscure symbols to represent the members of the group, drugs, disasters, groupies, and music that was, according to a documentary I saw about them, “Howlin’ Wolf meets the Loch Ness Monster.” I don’t believe a single one of these particular entrapments was ever addressed directly by the group. I don’t think they ever published an informal piece to “set the record straight.” The audience was left to imagine just about anything. The myth grew and grew. It was anything you wanted it to be, except like you. There were no limits to what you could discover in Led Zeppelin. It could not end because it wasn’t real in the first place. Opening the book would have blown it all to hell.

Even Led Zeppelin album cover art kept the band at a distance. They seemed to live on a planet designed just for them, a mystical place that featured monuments to gods whose names you dared not speak and rolling green Celtic geography that was literally hell and gone from Main Street USA or Times Square. They managed to perpetuate an image of dark magic, without saying a word about it.

If it existed, what could Jimmy Page’s blog have said that wouldn’t have ruined everything?

“Had a costume fitting today. I hope they get the dragon right this time. I like dragons.”

“I took a plane to Los Angeles after the show to meet this 13-year-old model I’m just mad about. I know what it looks like, but she’s just incredible.”

“I want to thank all you guys for coming out to the show tonight. Percy, Bonzo, Jonsey and I had a blast. We can’t wait to come back to Pittsburgh.”

“I’m thinking Peter needs to lose a few pounds. I’m worried about him.”

“I’ve got such a headache today. I must send Coco out for some more aspirin before we leave for soundcheck.”

“Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been soooooo busy with the new album. We can’t think of a good title for it though. I want to use freaky drawings and a tarot card for the cover, but Jonesy thinks it’s a stupid idea. Maybe it could be a contest! Leave your suggestions for the name of our fourth album in the comments. If we use your title, we’ll send you a signed copy a week before it’s released to radio!”

“I can’t stop thinking about burgers! Damn this heroin!”

I’m pretty good with the language, but I can’t think of an appropriate superlative to describe the lameness that would have ensued. Good Christ, Jimmy Page wasn’t human like us! He didn’t eat breakfast or get up for school or go to the dentist. He just made otherworldly sounds with guitars and laser beams went off behind him in all directions when he did it! A blog would have ruined him. A superstar must be a mystery. Maybe that’s why we have so few of them now.

Kiss might have blogged in character, which could have worked, but judging by those fake letters in Kiss Alive, the blogs probably would have been written by someone in the Glickman/Marks office and sucked.

Insert palaver about being rich and famous, hyper-sexual, demonic, from another planet, and something about cats and junk here.

It was so much better to wonder who they were under the makeup. Were they murderers? Was Satan involved? Was the drummer really rescued from death by a panther? Again, the mystery of Kiss made it work. Gene Simmons has stated since the 90s that Kiss were trying be the heavy metal Beatles. They never said it in the 70s though. On planet Kiss, the Beatles did not exist. Get it?

Kiss was best served by others writing about them (provided they could nudge the writers in the right direction). Every time Gene was pressed to explain the meaning of the fire and blood tricks, he could never make sense of it, even when he was in character. A personal blog would have muddied the waters even more. Without the distance, Kiss could never have been superheroes.

So, since I’m at least as interesting as Jimmy Page and Gene Simmons, I have to be careful when I blog. I could ruin everything. It’s a good thing that I do this telepathically. And since I’m getting off of all those pills it’s going so much faster now. Thanks to Satan and his hounds, Myra and Otis, I’m well protected here. I can almost see Earth, though these lasers cast quite a shadow across the great billows of rainbow smoke that surround the palace when I awaken. Regardless, at all times, music flows from me as breath, surrounding you with love.

This is an idiosyncrasy of mine. The most seemingly insignificant object or experience can send me into full-on Charlie Brown/Pig-Pen mode. I’m referring to a scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas, in which Frieda is complaining about the dust coming off of Pig-Pen and ruining her naturally curly hair. Charlie Brown responds to her complaint with an alternate, more romantic bent, suggesting that she look at Pig-Pen’s filth more subjectively. He proffers, “It staggers the imagination. He may be carrying soil that was trod upon by Solomon…”

That’s what happened to me this week when I was counting my change and discovered that I had received a well-worn and decidedly filthy quarter minted with the year 1974. In 2010, one almost never receives a coin of such vintage! My mind immediately began to race with the possibilities. Oh I would that I had the extra-sensory ability depicted in science fiction and paranormal dramas in which the hero can see the history of an object merely by touching it. What turns of happenstance led this aged coin into my possession?

1974…

The year of Todd Rundgren’s Todd album and the first Kiss album. I measure my whole damn life by records. No. To consider the circulation life of a quarter, one must concentrate on more mundane things. How many pockets has it been in? On how many dressers and nightstands? How many diner tables? In how many toll baskets? Public phones? Vending machines? Sofas? Piggy banks? Guitar cases? How many times has it been dropped from the roof of a skyscraper?

I received this coin in New York City. Had it ever left Manhattan? How many New Yorkers have been in possession of it? What were they doing? Where was it during the blackout in the summer of 1977? Who was holding it the day John Lennon died? How many times has it been some kid’s last quarter? (I mean, who cares how many people have held a $20? If you have a $20, you’re OK.) How many important calls have been made with it? How many times has it fallen to the sound of an operator asking for more money, long before the girl on the other end has forgiven the caller? How many winning tickets have been scratched off with it? How many losers? How long has it lain dormant in the muck under subway tracks or in a storm drain? Who found it and how? Who got it moving again?

How the world has transformed around this little piece of metal. Hell, I’m not even using the same teeth as when this coin was stamped. I got it as change when I bought my coffee, a large half-caff with milk. When this quarter was new, I doubt you could even buy coffee in more than one size. The closest you could get to decaf was Sanka. Still, it’s the same quarter from 1974 and it survives.

Coins are seldom considered this way, but they can have a value that nearly invalidates the monetary one. In the sound of them when they fall, in their lustre or dullness, in their durability, they are a freely floating symbol of undocumented human history and experience. When you hold one, you are instantly connected to all of those people and events. You become part of the continuum in a such an authentic way, yet it’s so easy to miss it.

Historical sites and monuments are the bold statements we make to ennoble and commemorate ourselves, but everyday life, simply surviving and learning what we are here to learn, is no less noble and no less worthy of commemoration. Goals and milestones are the stuff of $20s, $50s and $100s. Real life is a quarter. 

Another October, another Kiss record. Their last new album (back in the 90s), Psycho Circus, came out in the fall too. This week, Sonic Boom was released. I was very intrigued by this album, but not because of the music. I was sure from the first time I heard about a new album by the band that it would be just another pile of Klassic Kiss Krap, as I like to call it. Kiss falls into the “lunk rock” category for me. Lunkhead music. I can’t expect too much from it in the way of lyrical substance, but I cannot deny its significance in my life.

I was watching this release because with it Kiss has finally figured out that they don’t need a record deal in order to release records. The packaging of this one indicates that it’s a release by Kiss Records. Nice. Obviously, I think that’s the way it should be. I’ve written before about other artists whom I believe should be doing that too. Todd Rundgren, for one. The distribution of Sonic Boom is being handled exclusively in the US by Walmart. I’m not a Walmart customer (I refer to the store as the “Palace of Depression” for what I feel are obvious reasons.), and I managed to acquire the new release this week without setting foot in one.

Regardless of how I feel about the store they made the deal with, I think it was a great move to distribute the album through a single store. I feel that music retail being what it is, there is absolutely no point in trying to make a new album available on as many shelves as possible. Distributors will take a piece and as a result, you’ll make less per sale. Why should profits be cannibalized by unnecessary middlemen? Kiss isn’t the first group to do this. I think AC/DC did it too. Kiss will always sell records to Kiss fans. People who want their records will do what’s required to get them. Walmart is an omnipresent American retailer. The record is available enough.

Another detail about Sonic Boom that stands out is the value and price. Not only is the new album offered in the package, but another disc of re-recorded hits they’d only previously released in Japan and a short DVD of selections from a Buenos Aires concert they played on the last tour as well. These items, along with a sizeable insert booklet only set you back $12.99.

OK, so they re-recorded the hits so they could license them for TV and film. The disc was just hanging around anyway. I’ve also heard that the items can chart independently or some other such nonsense, meaning that one sale=three sales, enabling ol’ Gene and co. to inflate sales figures, but I don’t care about that either. (Who cares about charts in 2009? Casey Kasem doesn’t even have a show anymore. I don’t think you can spark significant new sales today by telling people that your record is “climbing the charts.”)

Sonic Boom simply impressed me because Kiss, who clearly have a lot to unlearn about the old record company machine, still managed a very creative and price-competitive release strategy. Of course, they have special store displays and all kinds of other garbage to sell you, but that’s Kiss too.

The album is available by download at Walmart’s site too, but you don’t get the video portion. I was surprised to see that, since I’ve heard Gene criticize the whole idea of downloading as a distribution method. Granted, when I heard him in those interviews, he sounded more like my dad when he talks about the president than someone who worried about being ripped off by pirates, but I still thought it wouldn’t happen. I guess there was enough money in it.

A Sonic Boom screw up, as I see it, was what happened when I dropped the CD into my CD drive. Media Player didn’t automatically download track information or cover art. I listened to the first tune looking at a blank window that said, “Unknown Album, Unknown Artist.” How could that be? I searched around and couldn’t find this album in any database. What a stupid oversight! How could they have dropped the ball on that? That was too easy to get right. I guess they haven’t gotten the whole “Kiss as record company” thing down yet.

Oh yeah, the music…

Sonic Boom features higher quality lunk rock than was available on Psycho Circus, to be sure. They are trying to reprise their 70s thing. They only made it back as far as the 80s in most cases, but they tried. I hear what sounds like Kiss, but also what sounds like Def Leppard and Ozzy Osbourne (I’m only saying “Flying High Again” because I don’t have the heart to say “Nothin’ but a Good Time" by Poison, which is what I should be saying.). For Chrissakes, the verse for “Hot and Cold” is actually “The Real Me” by the Who. Other than those blatant lifts, there are just little riffs and structures that are reassemblies from other records I’ve heard. On the upside, there are many vocal surprises in the way of harmony and arrangement on Sonic Boom. There is a tremendous fugue-like vocal section on “Stand” that took me by surprise.

My God, these lyrics are stock. Ridiculously stock. Gene’s are nothing short of laughable. He’s dispensed with the demon character entirely in favor of ego-embracing after thoughts that simply embarrass the listener. Even the vocal ad libs are lifted from other records. Paul does a “Just look over your shoulder!” betting on us not having heard the Jackson 5. It didn’t even fit the context in which he used it. They also didn’t seem to notice their tendency toward belting “yeah” or “yeah yeah” on measure two or four of so many songs. (Remember “Lick It Up”?) Whatever. I know what we’re dealing with here.

The most troubling aspect of this recording is the quality of Paul Stanley’s voice. He’s making it happen, but there’s a low growling quality under the notes that sounds either like he had a cold or that he has done some serious damage to his voice after all these years of screaming. It’s hard for me to listen to. It’s like watching an athlete trying to play with an injury. With every passing bar, I’m dreading what Paul might be doing to his voice, pushing and pushing to sound like he’s still 30. I’ve read reviews already this month about his vocal problems in concert. I can’t imagine what the tour will do to him. Another band could evolve and record material that suits their maturity, but that’s the drag about being in Kiss. Even when you’re 60, you have to be Paul Stanley even when your body wants to turn back into Stanley Eisen.