Kiss - Music from "The Elder"
#679
November 10 1981
By Aaron Conte
Kiss
Music from “The Elder”
Genre: progressive glam rock
Allen’s Rating: 1 out of 5
Aaron’s Rating: 5 out of 5 ambitions
Standout tracks:
"A World Without Heroes"
"I"
"The Oath"
What can I say about this album that hasn't already been said somewhere, either positive or negative?
Judged by some as the worst KISS album, after giving it a few spins (a few being more than I played it in 81) I will say it is not the worst album they made by far. It is exceptionally ambitious and determined to make an impact upon the 80's where they found themselves defending the mountaintop.
Who knows what they were thinking, yet all you have to do is listen and you can hear Gene Simmons (the demon for all you non-believers) feeling a bit intimidated by the new decade. A coming of age story, The Elder takes the listener on a journey of a young man overcoming his youth and self-doubt to a place where he becomes a fully realized, self confident combatant of evil. After becoming the most popular band of the 70's, they walked into the 80's selling more records than ever and establishing themselves as actually "the hottest band in the world".
Now this came out when I was getting hooked by all the latest releases by bands I would soon recognise as leaders in the pop world; Trust/Costello, Freeze Frame/J. Geils, Escape/Journey, Abacab/Genesis, Fair Warning/Van Halen, Police, Rush and Ozzy records scattered around my room and drawn on my notebooks. From my parents' living room came the sounds of Soft Cell, The Rolling Stones, Human League, Billy Squire and ZZ Top, all of whom had new albums that year. As I have mentioned, my parents were the greatest musical influencers I could have ever hoped to have. Way more than I can say for myself with my son. If there was a Fortnite record, I'd buy it but...
My best friend and I were KISS fanatics. Freaks. Dressed up as the band for no reason at all than just to do it. Made outfits for and painted the faces of G.I. Joe, Six Million Dollar Man, Barbie and Aquaman so we could have our own KISS dolls. Built the Dynasty stage out of cardboard for them on her air hockey table and used her brother's stereo light system as their light show. We would get together every Saturday morning to watch cartoons and American Bandstand in her basement while tracing our KISS album covers with tracing paper so when we were in art class we would get it all just right. This led to me winning the sixth grade art award when I "graduated" elementary school.
She moved away the year The Elder was released but thankfully it was only to a condo across town. My mom or dad would drop me off at her place unless she and her dad came to pick me up. If the latter was the case we would have to endure her father's "A Chorus Line" cassette in their new Cadillac sound system before we could get to rock. Interesting family, they were.
We would put on all kinds of crazy stuff; The Plasmatics, Black Rose, The All Sports Band, Village People's Renaissance album, maybe something I snuck from my folks collection, definitely a National Lampoon album and probably Class Clown or The Steve Martin Brothers.
During this time of her moving away, many things were changing. We had grown up together literally from the age of five to fifteen. Walking to the bus stop for school five days a week and then home again afterwards. Weekends of music and bicycles. Tree forts and sledding. Family dogs, brothers and sisters. Christmases and birthdays. We saw KISS in concert together in 1979. We were inseparable. Everything we shared. For a visual, I was the Schroeder to her Marcy, plus I had been an only child for twelve years and now my parents were expecting a baby sister for me.
When the time came, and the move was happening, we somehow got talking about some very personal life things in her driveway. "What's going on with you?" "Who do you like?" Stuff like that. Years earlier we had already been through the differences between boys and girls, and even explored our first adult magazines together. Snuck into a neighbor's house while they were out even and ended up finding some super duper personal things in their bedroom! Have I said before, I grew up on a dead end in a very small town? We were trouble.
After some horrible screaming at each other and saying some stupid stuff, the inevitable happened. "I'm gay!" she yelled. "So what?!" I yelled back and marched my way up the street home. We didn't speak for a few weeks after that. When we did get back to normal we were in her bedroom and decided to put on The Elder. It was KISS but it wasn't. They had changed. They began reaching out into what they knew about songwriting and wanted to be different all the while still trying to fit in. Pink Floyd had released "The Wall" produced by Bob Ezrin the same guy who produced The Elder (and Destroyer for that matter; a KISS 1976 release). They were still wearing the makeup, but had different costumes as they would change it up every year but it wasn't the same. They were singing about change and moving on and growing up and it was fucking hard and painful to listen to it. This was KISS??? "Nothing to Lose" KISS? "Flaming Youth" KISS? "Makin Love" KISS? They used a symphony orchestra and had a boys choir sing. Our demon was lamenting the loss of his hero, and the ultamate sex symblol, our Starchild (that's Paul Stanley for you Eagles fans) was singing about being just a boy. No. It wasn't, but Ace still got his song and we still loved them and still put the record next to the others in our collection on the shelf, even though Peter Criss (catman drummer) was gone forever.
KISS in their first years were a simple rock band with a stage show that wowed audiences wherever they went with fire breathing, blood spitting, guitar exploding, drums rising, and songs that told you just how hot and sexy life was for them. With this album "The Elder" they had a band member leave, and opened up their viewpoint of the world to adventure fantasy and the beauty of discovery.
To this day I am still in touch with my best friend from childhood. She has a wife and child now. We trade pictures of our families, talk about our hometown, and text each other pictures of KISS old and new. Still the best of friends even if it's very different now.
I wanted to write about this album as a piece of music and about how the band I loved so much had changed during this era. New drummer especially, but as I listened to it and remembered how I listened to it when it came out and when I was "just a boy", it dawned on me that this was a much better way to review it. Metaphors are everywhere now and it's boring for me to manipulate and create them just for the sake of being clever. This one just happened to write itself.
"The Elder" album is not awful but it is not the best representation of the band. As a lifelong fan I say listen to it, but as a lifelong fan I also say they just had to figure some shit out.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1J7sLrUoYUrsjhunsgzZpL?si=Fnc_JNJOTNCLYp_N7pGPew
No comments:
Post a Comment