Iron Maiden and Kiss

I think I've written about this before in these pages (although I can't remember where) but I'm not the most technically savvy person. A friend of mine checked this blog on his phone and tells me it wasn't optimized for mobile reading. I made a face like Joey Tribbiani doing math in his head, and I still don't know if it is or isn't or what that entails. I do know that when I look at the blog on my own mobile. the whole right side of the page is missing, i.e. all the old blog links and my Table of Contents/ favorite posts:

These guys.

Is that what it means? (shrugs) Do people even look at those posts, anyway? I can never tell. Anyway, pursuant to cleaning all those up a little, I'm compartmentalizing a few of these and going to re-do some of them. So if you see a few "Table of Contents" posts coming down the pike, that's what I'm up to. Ye regular readers, feel free to skip. (I guess that goes for non-regular readers, too. Housecleaning alert!)

Anyway, if you clicked on the "Iron Maiden" or "Kiss" link in the Dog Star Omnibus Guide to Music, then away we go, below. 

1.

Here's an overview sort of post ("The Nature of the Beast.") I used to feel I needed to introduce a topic to the internet when I wrote about it. Ah, old-blogging-me! Now I can't even be bothered to provide plot summaries or tell you what comic which screencap is from. 

Here's a history of Iron Maiden Eddie, the coolest mascot going. Man I love looking at those old singles-covers. My brother and I would draw those in our art books all the time. (His were always much better - I never found the knack for illustration. Although once one of these drawings was found by my folks, who, not knowing the context, though I needed psychological help. I love telling that story.)

Here's an overview of Maiden on DVD that I think came out pretty well. That Flight 666 movie is gold. 

And finally, an Essential Maiden Albums to Own post that was meant to introduce a "Thirty Days of Maiden" month where I covered my 30 favorite Maiden songs. Which would be fun but probably tedious; anyway it never happened. 

What's that? You want to know what those 30 favorites would've been? Oh, all right. Of the Di'anno era, it has to be "Running Free," which is just a classic on the order of "Rock and Roll All Night" or any other big anthem you care to nominate. (I have a persistent movie sequence that plays out over the last minute or so, of someone running through and dribbling round the opposing team's defenses before clearing the keeper and firing one into the back of the net and then England wins the World Cup and Steve Harris becomes Prime Minister. The End.) The Dickinson era is much more of a challenge; how to pick just one favorite song? It's easier to do it by album:

Number of the Beast - so many classics. The title track and "Run to the Hills" are metal / Maiden staples. But "Hallowed Be Thy Name" is likely my favorite.

Piece of Mind - "Revelations" probably. But what an album.

Powerslave - "Back in the Village," "Losfer Words," or "Aces High."

Somewhere in Time - "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" or "Heaven Can Wait." or "Sea of Madness." Or the title track. 

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son - "Infinite Dreams" or "The Evil That Men Do."

No real favorites from No Prayer for the Dying or Fear of the Dark, although I like plenty of tunes from those. Ditto for the last couple of Bruce-led Maiden efforts. But Brave New World ("Dream of Mirrors," "Ghost of the Navigator", "The Nomad", that ending to "The Wicker Man", which I'll never forget being part of 8000 fans jumping up and down chanting that with all the lights and flames going crazy and the band on stage with big grins on their faces watching us, singing it back to them) and Dance of Death (title track, "No More Lies," "Wildest Dream," "Montségur") are both essential.

The Blaze Blazely era (see my posts for why I call him that) have a surprising amount of Maiden classics: "The Unbeliever, " "2 a.m.", "Man on the Edge," "The Clansman," and "Sign of the Cross" just to name a few. 

And:

2.

"Kiss is as American as Bugs Bunny or Indiana Jones." 

So I said in my overview post of the band (again following the since-discarded idea of "I need to introduce this concept before talking about it or the internet will be hopelessly confused.") I stand by this assertion. 

Album by album: 1974 to 1982 here, and 1983-1998 here. What about Kiss in the 21st century, you ask? No problem: please see "Kiss in the 21st Century." There will likely be a sequel to that in the future dealing with whatever DVD or CD comes out detailing their (latest and allegedly last) farewell tour. 

Here's a post on Attack of the Phantoms aka Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. 

(Gene voice) "Oh yeah!"

Each of the original members has released a memoir:

- Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley. (Lame title. I bet he was pissed the others took the titles below. That's what you get for being last, Paul.) Fun tidbit about this post: each and every week, the page-counts for this one go up by a fairly uniform amount. That could just be people finding the post, but I like to imagine Paul's long-suffering Personal Assistants required to find every mention of him on the web and refresh the page 50 times to keep active page-counts up. 

- No Regrets by Ace Frehley. Or as Chuck Klostermann called it "No Details." Ace has been writing pt. 2 of this for years. Given his memory problems I imagine this process entails getting everyone who ever knew him together and asking them what he was up to do. I look forward to reading it nevertheless. I still say a fictional biopic of an alien from Jendell would've been the better conceit, for this or the proposed sequel. Ah well. (I also did a post of my favorite Ace Frehley tunes; enjoy.)

- Makeup to Breakup by Peter Criss. Another terrible title. A raunchy, guilty-pleasure of a read, which doesn't really make its author come across too well. Ditto for:

- Kiss and Makeup by Gene Simmons. Gene probably made sure to write his memoir first so he could call dibs on that title. Like Paul says in his book, Gene's main accomplishment as a businessman (I say this as someone with zero accomplishments as a businessman, so no need to remind me of how unworthy I am in the comments; I know. Believe me, I know.) is taking credit for the work of Paul Stanley others. Whether or not this book is an exercise in such a thing, I don't know. Good read, though. (And RIP to Gene's Mom, whom I rather enjoyed getting to know in the chapters dealing with Gene's early years in Israel. Peter calls her out for not letting gentiles in her home in his memoir, but I bet it was more that she thought Peter and Ace were just a couple of scrubs and didn't want them scuffing up her furniture or urinating on the floor.) 

I only reviewed one of the "Kiss books" out there: Kiss and Sell by CK Lendt. A wonderfully dishy book on the most excessive phase of their career (surrounding the "Dynasty" era). In these days of my blogging career, I felt I had to leave lengthy excerpts from any work in question. I've given this up, but man, I remember holding this book open in my lap and furiously typing up all the sections quoted in that post. Rather ridiculous amount of hand-copied text in that post - imagine an actual book review that reproduced that much of the book! - but as a Kiss fan, I still love reading about that crap.

I also wrote a story (loosely based on "The Beard Hunter" by Grant Morrison from his stint on Doom Patrol) about a man who hunts his enemies with knock-out darts and then face-paints them in Kiss designs, before being hired by the Kurt Cobain Died For You Society to take out Dave Grohl. I came close to getting this one published a couple of times but it was never meant to be. Of any of the stories I sent out during that period  (2005-2007) this always got the most fun responses. No takers, but a lot of bemused back and forth with submissions editors. 

~

There! Now when I re-do the Music post, I don't have to include separate links to all the above but can just link to one (this) post. Mission accomplished.