Paul Stanley: You Haven't Aged A Bit Since 1974

At the age of ten, I walked into the green shag-carpeted family room of my best friend and flipped through his record collection.  Walt Disney soundtracks, Sesame Street Disco, Village People, and - what the hell was this? 

The album that caught my eye was emblazoned with a red and blue, stylized double lightning bolt S logo and four small pictures of what looked to my sensibilities at the time as comic book characters.  I turned the album around to see the back cover which had the same pictures, only bigger.  There was a pretty man who could very well have been a woman superhero, a cat guy, a spaceman, and a nightmarish sweaty creature with bloody dripping from his mouth and smeared across his face as if he might even be bleeding from his eyes.  I immediately opened the double album to reveal the centerfold - the same four characters on a multi-level Dante's Inferno-motif stage that was consumed with sparks and mushroom clouds of fire.  I was transfixed, fascinated, obsessed, possessed....I hypnotically asked my buddy to put the record on..."YOU WANTED THE BEST, YOU GOT THE BEST...."

To say that my life changed at that moment may seem like hyperbole, but that afternoon during my summer vacation between the fifth and sixth grade was the pivotal moment when I went from being a little kid who listened to music that my Top 40-loving mom liked to an independent-thinking big kid who inadvertently got a taste of something new...rebellion and possibility - and I loved it.

I listened to the songs on the album obsessively and repeatedly.  I learned every single word.  King of the Nighttime World.  Calling Dr. Love.  Ladies Room.  Love Gun.  Rocket Ride.  I had no idea what their lyrics actually meant, but that wasn't important.  I suddenly wanted to read everything I could about these guys, find out when they would next appear on TV, and plot how I would one day talk my parents into letting me see them in concert.

I didn't just want to follow them.  I wanted to be them.  I couldn't look like them because...well, my parents weren't going to tolerate that (although I was the Spaceman a year later for Halloween).  So I asked them for a guitar the following Christmas.  The moment I strapped the guitar around my neck, I wanted one more thing those guys had on the cover of Love Gun...

...A bevy of worshiping, hot, semi-naked women at their feet.  Suddenly, the girl who lived across the street from me..."looked good.  She looked Hotter Than Hell"...


In the ensuing three decades, the music of this band has played in my head like a soundtrack on an endless loop, and motivated me to live out my own rock and roll fantasy - not just in my pursuit of music, but in life, in general...and that grand sense of possibility.

Happy 60th birthday, Paul Stanley!

First to Review New Springsteen (Without Bothering To Hear It)

The Greatest Springsteen Album Since His Last Greatest Album

I wanted RTunes68 to be the first blog to review the upcoming Bruce Springsteen album Wrecking Ball.  So here it is:

The Boss returns with the greatest rock album since....well, his last greatest rock album.  Bruce really speaks to the everyday man - his concerns, his plight - and...speaks truth to power!  The album is breathtaking, lyrically and musically.  I would bestow the monicker "Bob Dylan" on Bruce if there weren't already a Bob Dylan - that's how brilliant The Boss is.

If there were a Rock And Roll Hall of Fame for members of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce should be inducted now.

I speak for all music critics when I say that our only complaint about Springsteen is that he's too great.

(...See, I've just made all the reviews that surely will inundate the media in the weeks ahead entirely redundant.)

Roman Polanski's "Carnage" And Claustrophobia

I confess that I saw Roman Polanski’s Carnage on a whim…and slightly buzzed on pinot noir. Polanski once again treads in a familiar territory as this film is a study in claustrophobia, and the pinot buzz, if anything, heightened the sense of entrapment.

                                                         © 2012 Sony Pictures

In the opening scene, the viewer witnesses a minor playground scuffle where a boy hits another with a stick. The next scene – which comprises the rest of the movie – is the consequence of that one action wherein the boys’ parents meet and are trapped in the tight confines of an apartment to discuss how to resolve what some of them see as a monumentally significant incident. What ensues is biting commentary of the self-righteousness and self-adulation of over-involved – yet, realistically, absentee – parents in an era when playground play and scuffles have been replaced by supervised play dates and adult over-supervision.

When the two sets of parents, played by Christopher Waltz and Kate Winslet, and John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster, first meet, it’s all Upper East Side urbanity and liberal politeness. Yet after more than a few rounds of whiskey and fruit cobbler of questionable quality, all their affected sophistication and civility descends into a drunken display of hypocrisy, phoniness, pettiness, repressed anger, and cracks in the pavement of relationships the size of potholes. In effect, what transpires is the comedic equivalent of what happens weekly on Jersey Shore or Real World (Season 52?). To play along and not blow the sophisticated self-image of the two couples, let’s just say that similar territory was covered in the 1960s classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Based on Yasmina Reza’s play, Carnage the film remains a one-scene play. However, without the air, space, and din of a live audience, Polanski’s adaptation forces the viewer to feel like a trapped fly on the wall of an apartment where over-reaction and “carnage” transpires.

If you are the busy parent of playground-age children today, this film may be a bit too close to home to fully appreciate. However, if you’re friends with such parents – or if you’re thankfully a self-aware parent – Carnage is a darkly hilarious movie with several unsettlingly all-too-familiar moments.

The subtle punchline/astute concluding observation occurs during the ending credits…

The Girl With The Immigrant Song Tattooed In Her Head

Whenever I hear that someone has covered a Led Zeppelin song, I reflexively cringe.  I've heard many a cover rendered by everyone from nameless bar bands to established stadium-filling mega-artists and almost every one of them falls horribly short of the original.  To paraphrase Robert Plant from Song Remains The Same, "Does anybody remember laughter?" 

Does anybody remember Encomium?  If that officially-sanctioned tribute album proved anything, it was that encomium could be paid to Led Zeppelin, but no one can duplicate or surpass the original...

...Enter Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Karen O....

If anyone had a snowball's chance in Valhalla (does that even make sense?) of doing the Immigrant Song justice, it would have to be someone who approached it over, under, sideways, down.  That's exactly what Reznor, Ross, and O have done.  Rather than replicating the obvious - mimicking Plant's banshee falsetto wails or Jimmy Page's driving guitar riff or John Bonham's trademark drum sound - Reznor, Ross, and O make the song almost a new creation entirely.  All that's left of the original is the pummeling feel - with the drums playing what used to be the guitar riff - and Viking lyrics.

The result is debauched, almost-human, industrial-techno, calculated mayhem that's as dark, stark, and ominous as a girl with a dragon tattoo in the icy-cold winters of Sweden...

Enough with the verbose encomium, check out the song! 

                                                    ©2011 Sony Pictures

Max Zorn: If MacGyver Were An Artist

If Banksy's work has become too conventional for you, check out Dutch street artist Max Zorn.  Using nothing more than brown packing tape and light, his film noir-ish portraits and scenes are both innovative and stunning.  You can also stick his work in your city. 

                                                         Max Zorn