#11 - DynastyThis was a tougher call than expected, on account of Dynasty being worse than I remembered and The Elder being slightly - oh, so slightly overall, and Odyssey was so much worse - better than I remembered. But, in the end The Elder is pretty bad and Dynasty has two good songs and one ok one, while The Elder has two good songs and two ok ones...
Uh oh. You can thank "Escape from the Island" for this last second change.
#11 #12 - DynastyYeah, that's right, I'm demoting Dynasty and promoting The Elder. But I'm still going to write about Dynasty because that's what I'm prepared to write about.
Imagine this. It's 1979. The 70s are ending and you're a teenage boy (I wasn't), in love with, say Kristy McNichol (again, I wasn't - my dim memory is more Heather Thomas-angled than at the star of The Pirate Movie). Anyway, you dressed up as Peter Criss in 1978, not realizing he was about to be out the door. These makeup-wearing weirdos in 7" heels have been prancing around and freaking out your parents for a couple of years now.
You first had the notion that something was strange when KISS went on the Paul Lynde special two and a half years earlier. Watching the boys ham it up with the guy who played the funny-talking rat in Charlotte's Web (AND the witch from The Wizard of Oz) set off as-yet-incomprehensible alarm bells in your brain that the members of KISS were not fully committed to the rock and roll.
Like so:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgCV0efgtu8[/youtube]
And yet, and yet. Destroyer rocks. Rock and Roll Over kicks ass. Gene still spits blood and breathes fire. Those funny letters in Alive! that hinted at things involving chicks that you hoped you'd discover in school next year, because YOU would still kind of get to experience the free-lovin' era, while people who came of age just post-AIDS had to put up with... but I digress.
You probably bought the solo albums and listened to them a few times. Maybe you liked several songs on Ace's record. Paul's record has a couple of power tunes. Gene's record, sure, it includes a Jiminy Cricket number (there's that alarm bell again), but it also has some Gene rockers. I bet you only heard Peter's record once. So what, he's only the drummer. And Beth was for the chicks.
So you see the posters for Dynasty starting in, probably, March. A killer cover, with all four guys' faces on it. You aren't clever or experienced enough to realize the symbolism of how divided their faces look.
By the time it's released on May 23, 1979, there's a fever pitch. You may never have been as excited about something in your whole life as you are at this moment. You plunk down your $6.98 at Record Bar, take it home, take out the awesome poster (!)...
... and put on the record.
What's this?
A DISCO song?
The new KISS album only has 9 songs, and the first one is a DISCO number?
You're freaked out, right?
Well, you're wrong to be.
"I Was Made for Lovin' You" is one of the two GREAT songs on Dynasty. Yes, it's technically danceable. But so what? It's a great song. And more than that, a great PR move - especially if, as Gene Simmons surely understood at the time, you're living on borrowed time with your drugged out and increasingly less servile drummer (who barely plays on this record at all) and guitarist.
So Paul and his 70s writing team of Vinny Poncia and Desmond Child write a number that the kids can dance to. And they're rewarded with a #11 single. KISS singles were always screwed up, anyway. "Beth," a song that has nothing to do with KISS (or at least the Gene, Paul and Ace parts), is your top single ever?
Dynasty had to do well. Gene and Paul and the label knew by '79 that the solo album idea was garbage and had split the band. So why not throw a hot disco track on, release it as a single, and get some attention? Gene didn't like it, but he surely liked cashing the checks. Probably.
For the second song, why not let Ace cover a little-known Rolling Stones song about the future and computers? "2,000 Man" is actually pretty good, although it seems that someone in KISS (Ace, perhaps?) didn't understand that 2000 refers to the year 2000 and therefore should not have a comma.
Ace's take on "2,000/2000 Man" works well. It's faithful to the original while being a lot heavier. Hey, it's a hell of a lot better than the crap on side 4 of Alive II.
Song 3 is "Sure Know Something," which belongs up there with the best stuff that KISS ever did. It has honest to God sentiment, and while, yes, it's about a chick, the chick actually was in the dominant role this time. Rarely do Gene and Paul write about women who do anything but jump in the sack (see "Love 'Em Leave 'Em" for the credo), but this woman treated Paul's singer a lot like "Maggie May" treated Rod Stewart. Paul should have done more stuff like this for his later power ballad stuff.
The rest of the album is terrible.
There's the standard Peter Criss track, "Dirty Livin'." It's awful. Just awful. If Enrico Morricone was beaten for two weeks, left in the dark, transported to the late 70s, and immediately forced to write background effects, he would have come up with something very like this. Thankfully, this is Peter's swan song with KISS. Who knows what levels of craptaculance he could have produced for Unmasked?
Ace gets two more songs - "Hard Times" and "Save Your Love." The first is just mediocre. A long-haired junior high friend of mine was very indignant when I said I preferred Run-DMC's "Hard Times" to Ace's "Hard Times," but it's really not a tough call. "Save Your Love" is an unfortunate prelude to what Ace would produce on Unmasked.
That the guy who did "Fractured Mirror" one year earlier could now produce this dreck is proof enough that you should stay off the drugs, kids. And don't get signed into indentured servitude to an Evil Genius, either.
Gene has only two songs on Dynasty. "Charisma," which is very repetitive and features the most off-key (again, I don't actually know what a key is) chorus on any makeup era KISS album. It also features a weird vocal effect, doubling and distorting Gene's voice. Not really good. The other song is "X-Ray Eyes," which almost sounds thoughtful, although it still kind of sucks.
"Magic Touch," Paul's third song on the album, sounds a whole lot like an outtake from his solo record, so I assume that's what it is.
The home stretch beckons.
Please honor Paul Lynde's memory by purchasing the DVD below:
http://www.amazon.com/Lynde-Halloween-Special-Billy-Barty/dp/B000TEUSMC
