Rock Music

www.KISSopolis.comToday in KISStory - May 23, 1979: KISS release "Dynasty"."Dynasty" is the seventh studio album by KISS. It was produced by Vini Poncia and released on Casablanca Records on May 23, 1979. "Dynasty" marked the first time that the original four members of KISS did not all appear together for the entire album. With the exception of his song "Dirty Livin'", Peter Criss does not appear on the album, and he would not perform on another KISS album until 1998's Psycho Circus. Drummer Anton Fig played on all the other tracks on "Dynasty"."Dynasty" restored KISS to commercial prominence, reaching #9 on the US Billboard album chart. It was certified platinum by July by the RIAA.

Hollow - Better Than Ezra (mp3)"You know, people are in a constant state of impression management. They've got their true self and the self that they want to project to the world. And we know that the body displays things that sometimes people try to keep contained.” -- Arthur “Skip” Rizzo, psychologist, USC Center for Creative Technologies, from an interview on NPRFor a four-week stretch this spring, I didn’t derive much joy from anything. I would disappear in a decent book or TV series, or engage in some spirited competition with friends, or sit at lunch with friends or dinner with family, or play outside or on the Wii with my kids, or walk with my wife, and in medias res it felt OK. In the moment, there was this sense of almost-joy not dissimilar to the sense of Paris one gets from looking at a postcard of Paris. Once the event passed, however, and my mind was no longer engaged in that event, I found myself again feeling this gnawing emptiness. What I’d hoped was a full meal had come and gone faster than a Taco Bell burrito.In that hollow aftermath, I’d try to suss through why I couldn’t sustain any sense of satisfaction or contentment. I’d get angry with myself for being ungrateful, for being a sourpuss, for being weak. I had no excuses to feel down or empty, I’d tell myself with an interior monologue of some bitter football coach whose veins pop through his beet-red neck. My life and virtually everything about it is, simply, blessed. Shame shame on me for that emptiness, the inner coach would yell. Yet that empty feeling persisted.I put on a good face through it, though. Other than a few passing comments to a friend or my wife acknowledging being “a bit down,” I mostly acted like I was expected to act around others. I clung to my daily and weekly routine like a life vest, hoping that no matter how banal it seemed, it would keep me afloat until the sun came back out. Now, being free from these “doldrums” and looking back, I mostly think my routines and givens -- work, friends, familiy, love, hobbies -- are precisely what kept me from sinking deeper, from despairing more. While I failed to derive the level of enjoyment I was accustomed to from these givens, I had an equally strong sense that losing those experiences would not fix what ailed me.And I listened to “Hollow” by Better Than Ezra about twice a day. It’s not a perfect song, to be sure, but that chorus was a balm, my friends.All my rage sits insideAnd even the finest things leave you hollowAll my days left behindAnd even the finest things are leaving you hollowIt sounds cliche to say a single flawed song can help heal our wounds, but I know of no single better salve for my wayward mind than the right song at the right moment. The lives they made. Life is richer in a minor key.I kept listening, and I kept acting, and I got better.“Impression Management” sounds like a bad thing. It is, by its very definition, disingenuous and inevitably deceptive. It's Anti-Dr. Phil. Yet I’m pretty sure it saves more people than it destroys.When married couples are struggling, they often go out and play the part of Mostly Happy People. Even if others at the party or gathering know the truth, that everything is in crumbles or on the verge of falling off the cliff and into the ocean, they engage in Impression Management. Some couples split anyway, but some don’t. In fact, many stay together.Isn’t part of Impression Management the belief that, if we can create and maintain a certain version of ourself, if we can aim for some idealized version of Who We Are long enough and with enough accuracy, that we might just become what began as a pretend identity? Or at least get close enough to be a better or improved version of our crappier selves?In The Messenger, Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is engaged in a deeply internal struggle, fighting a post-Iraq war despair bordering on outrage while desperately clinging to some form of Impression Management, holding onto his identity in publi

Review by tarkus1980 — If you're only going to buy one Steve Hackett live album, then this is the one to get. That's not to say that it's anywhere near a good representative of Steve's whole career, but it does match well with my notion that the only periods in Steve's career that really matter are the early period (through Defector ) and the late period (roughly Dark Town onward). Actually, Steve goes even more extreme than that; the late period is represented by two tracks from To Watch the Storms (an expansion of "Pollution B" called "Pollution C," and "Serpentine Song" which is called "Serpentine" here) and a whopping six from Tunnel (all but "Nomads" and "Last Train to Istanbul"), with nothing from Dark Town or Wild Orchids , while the early period reaches back to his Genesis days and stops, as mentioned, with Defector (though it totally ignores Please Don't Touch ). The only acknowledgement of Steve's middle period comes from a snippet of "Myopia" at the beginning of "Los Endos," and otherwise this is a pretty cut-and-dried "play the classics and promote the album" kind of affair.It's a really good one, though. Initially, I actually listened to the versions of Tunnel tracks on this album far more than I did to the studio versions, and while I eventually came to prefer the originals on the whole, I still have a strong fondness for how the tracks are done on here. "Sleepers" and "Still Waters," in particular, breathe in a way that they didn't in studio, and they absolutely sound like classics in this context. As far as the older solo material goes, there aren't really surprises (I guess "Slogans" is pretty surprising, though), but the material is all done well and feels very at home with this lineup (which says something given that it was tailored to accommodate the Tunnel material more than the older material).Oh yeah, there's also Genesis material. The inclusion of "Los Endos" near the end isn't really a surprise, and it's done pretty closely to how he'd started playing it during the Genesis Revisited era (aside from the new inclusion of the "Myopia" introduction), but the other performances deserve special notice. "Blood on the Rooftops," if you'll recall, was never performed live by Genesis, and it was only after the Genesis reunion (without Steve) had come and gone that Steve apparently decided it needed to make it onto the stage. Well, I'm glad it did. The drummer, Gary O'Toole, is nowhere near as good of a singer as Phil from a technical standpoint (even Phil on Wind , where I feel he's not that great), but the deeper, rougher, more clearly British voice helps a lot, and he throws a lot of passion into his part. The use of saxophone in some of the spots that had previously been keyboards is a nice touch, too. Elsewhere, "Firth of Fifth" is done pretty closely to the original, albeit with sax replacing flute, and people who didn't like the Revisited version will be plenty happy here. And finally, they do the "Fly on the Windshield/Broadway Melody of 1974" medley (starting from just after the vocal part in the original "Fly"), and it sounds great, with just a little more primal power in the drums and a little more bite in the guitar (which was fine enough in the original), and O'Toole does a great job on vocals in the "Broadway Melody" part as well.Quite honestly, I probably listen to this more than any other Hackett album, and while somebody who isn't predisposed to enjoying live albums might find this a bit high of a rating, I find that there are sufficient amounts of surprises and reinventions (mostly mild, but sometimes not) of older material that a rating like this is justified. And besides, while it may not quite work as a Tunnel replacement (I just couldn't go without "Nomads") it does make for a nice set of alternate versions.

Review by BORA — Same old cliche - slightly better delivery.One can easily reach saturation point with TD over their zillions of releases, few of which stand out. Lets face it, who could write a review on every sequenced piece that sounds just like the one before and remain original?I am less than half-way through their official material, searching for the odd, memorable tune - with little success. That's not to mention the TD Fan Club live material that may take some months to absorb.This performance is notable - if only because Jerome Froese was held back, preventing him to turn it into - yet another - Techno "offering". Linda Spa on saxes plays well, but still fails to engage my attention. I just don't enjoy her approach. Meanwhile, hired hand on guitar Zlatko Perica steals the show - when he is permitted to shine.Lacking depth, still a reasonable performance, but still very, very far from the band's true potential. 3, perhaps 3.5 at best.A question. Why would any respectable artist keep releasing sub-standard material, knowing that it eats away their fan base? Still, this piece is better than some before, but great it isn't.

Review by sinslice — I'm pretty surprised at how little attention has been given here to this very good work. As I always say or write, depending on what you want to hear, it is a very good choice for the genre. Amarok plays mostly instrumental music in this album. And, as its name suggests, with some subtle hints or not so, the style of the great Mike Oldfield. There are also some shades of Pink Floyd. I do not think that this approach is detrimental to the product, on the contrary. The acoustic and electric guitar is the main instrument here, with a transparent sound and neatly executed. A good dose of violin and flute add color and depth to the music. Fildmour part I and part III are extraordinary. Aqu, Meriba, Seya and Massa are other highlights, to name a few more. The album is balanced. The cover photograph is appropriate, and outlines a good idea of ​​what is presented in the music. Later, Wojtas was looking for something different other sound. Neo Way is less original and Metanoia too experimental, at least for me. I came by chance to listen to the first installment of Amarok, and welcome. I?m pleased.

Review by Tarcisio Moura — For their sophmore LP, this Genova based band decided to shed away most of their heavy rock elementsand jump into the symphonic prog rock bandwagon with full force (even if some of their earlypsychedelic sound is still present, most notably on the title track). The result is good in generaland very good at times. While they are surely excellent musicians, their capacity of writing suchcomplex prog stuff as their main competitors at the time is doubtful. Giorgio Usai keyboards playingis the main atraction here, with lots of Hammond, mellotron and moogs on the way, although ClaudioGhiglino's guitar lines are also of note. New singer Antonello Gabelli is not much different fromthe group's former frontman and does a good job too. Some vocal arrangements do give some extracharm on few tracks.Don't get me wrong, the songs are good, the perfomances are very well done and I found nothing hereto complain about the album itself. However, nothing really excites me either and it's easy to seewhy Mr R. Jones was not a big hit at the time. There were several other italian bands putting outmuch stronger material at the time. However, the band would include the heavy rock edge back to theirsound for the next release, their best and most original album, Clown. Unfortunalty it would also be their very last. All in all Mr. E. Jones is a very nice straight RPI CD by this obscure group. Nothing to write home about it, butnice anyway. If you like the style and already have all the classic stuff, you certainly shouldcheck this out.Rating: 3 stars. good, but non-essential in any way.

Review by tarkus1980 — This is the point where Steve's late-period resurgence went beyond a nice story and became a little terrifying. To Watch the Storms and Wild Orchids (and to a limited extent Dark Town ) had been very nice additions to Hackett's catalogue, but they were just that: nice additions to a career whose center of relevancy still ultimately belonged to a handful of albums from the late 70s and early 80s. This album, and its eventual successor ( Beyond the Shrouded Horizon ), managed to completely rewrite the general arc of Steve's career; rather than following a path marked by an early prime, a shift downward and a nice shift upward at the end, Steve's career now had to be viewed as having two distinct primes, roughly 30 years apart. On here, and on Horizon , much of the material feels central to Steve's legacy, and while there are enough small details on each to keep me from giving them even higher grades, they are both essential albums for anybody who considers themselves a Hackett fan.The first two songs on here have to be numbered among the best songs Hackett ever did, and oddly enough they're also the two where Yes bassist Chris Squire makes a contribution (he doesn't make his presence obvious, but there's a lot of power in the bass playing on these tracks). "Fire on the Moon" is a distillation of everything great about this era in Hackett's career; the verse melody is quiet but intense, growing out of a quiet music box melody (he used a similar trick to start off Wild Orchids , but it's more effective here), the "chorus" is huge and anthemic with wordless harmonies, and the two extended instrumental passages are led by monumental guitar passages that each have their own distinct personality and vibe. "Nomads," then, is Steve revisiting his fondness for middle-Eastern music, and it really comes across as the kind of song that "The Gulf" could have been if it hadn't gotten too stuck on its typically 80s synths. Much like with "Moon," the melody is a big ball of tension, reaching points of near ecstasy every time the "It's a cry from the heart, it's a crying soul" line pops up, and the climactic instrumental passage, growing out of a frantic acoustic part into a searing electric part, is sheer bliss to my ears. The final repetition of "It's a cry from the heart" might be somewhat predictable, but it's soooo necessary and satisfying.Naturally, the album can't quite hold onto this level of enjoyment and intensity throughout, but it holds a pretty decent level nonetheless. "Emerald and Ash" really shouldn't be nine minutes long; the ballad portion (the "Emerald," I suppose) and the noisy rocker portion (the "Ash," I suppose) don't fit well together, certainly not as well as "The Fundamentals of Brainwashing" and "Howl" did. Still, I quite like the "Emerald" portion, which is awfully dark and moody for a track whose first lyric is "Sugarplum fairies on parade." The following instrumental "Tubehead" is basically just a noisy shredfest (with pounding up-tempo bass pushing it forward), and I kinda feel like its effect is muted a bit by coming right after the "Ash" portion, but it's definitely a lot of fun.As far as multi-part epics go, "Sleepers" is much more impressive than "Emerald and Ash." The lengthy acoustic introduction gives way to an unsettlingly calm (and surprisingly memorable) verse melody, which in turn gives way to an intense darker melody (featuring a great lyric in one stanza: "Surveillance camera in the sky/Big big brother telling you why/Too many saviours on my cross/Might as well worship the Wizard of Oz"), which in turn gives way to an anthemic climax, culminating in the "All the sleepers send you their dreams" repeated line. If this track isn't in the top tier of Hackett tracks, then it's knocking on the door.The album finishes quite strong as well. "Ghost in the Glass" makes the transition from moody acoustic instrumental to moody electric instrumental impeccably; "Still Waters" is

Review by SouthSideoftheSky — "This is no recreation people, this is absolute live sensation. This is no means of passing time, we are living on the front line." (Though not really) In 1998, when this live album was recorded, Jump was at the uppermost height of their career. They had just released, what is in my opinion, their best album, Living In A Promised Land, and before that four other good albums, including the excellent ...And All The King's Men. There simply couldn't have been a more perfect time for Jump to record their first live album. In the light of this, I must say that the resulting record falls far short of the massive potential. It could have been, and should have been, a lot better than it actually is. Before I elaborate further on why I think this is so, I wish to point out that this is by no means a bad live album. The band is full of talent and the performances are both energetic and passionate.Some live albums run like "best of" collections, pulling together all, or at least many, of a band's best songs on a single release. Freedom Train is not such an album. With the exception of the brilliant The Pressed Man from Living In A Promised Land and Shed No Tears from ...And All The King's Men, the songs elected for inclusion on this live album are not obviously the best choices. Rather few of my favourite songs from the band's five or six first studio albums are actually present here. As such, the songs on this live album do not always well represent the respective studio albums from which they are taken and nor do they represent the best side(s) of the band as I know them from the studio albums. Two songs from the band's 1991 debut The Winds Of Change are included here. The Lightbox is a good choice and the sing-a-long-friendly The Freedom Train of course gave its name to this album. The latter is not a bad song, but I wish they would abstain from the embarrassing political agitation! From World Of Wonder comes only one song in the Reggae-influenced Poison In The Sea. While I do like this song, I think that there were several better songs on that album that I would rather have heard in a live setting. This is especially so as there was room for improving those early songs. Two songs from ...And All The King's Men made it onto here one of which I've already mentioned, the excellent Shed No Tears. The other one is Judgement Day which, though it is not a bad song, is not among the best songs from that great album. There are many others that I would rather have heard played live. The Myth Of Independence is allowed three selections in On My Side, Valediction, and Keep The Blues. While the first of these is indeed excellent, at least in the verses, and one of the better songs on this live album, especially Keep The Blues is not a favourite of mine. Here too, there are other songs that I would rather have heard. Finally, Living In A Promised Land is represented by two tracks in the aforementioned The Pressed Man as well as Used To The Taste. The latter is a good song too, but possibly the least good song from that otherwise excellent album! I guess I will have to "get used to the taste" of the band members regarding which of their own songs are better, which obviously differs from my taste. Of the remaining four songs, two would end up on the forthcoming Matthew album (which was presumably under production at the time of this recording, and subsequently released in the year 2000). The other two, A Nation Of Friends and Personal Revolution, are of unknown (to me) origin. These are rather unremarkable and not up to par with the better songs from the band's studio albums. My advice is to get the studio albums first, before moving on to this live album. The Freedom Train is indeed enjoyable and a good live album in its own right, but the set list is nonetheless slightly disappointing relative to its potential. I have no complaints about the performances themselves or the quality of the recording, but personall

Review by VOTOMS — (According to the PA, Blackpool Cool was released on their own label Head Records) Oh yeah, better than Red Dwarf. This time, Head returns in a different way, more zippy and active. I will highlight John Davies, the multi-instrumentalist, playing and destroying the trumpet and keyboards. Sometimes, it reminds me of early King Crimson stuff. The general performance is very creative and great. My favorite song here is Kick Me Quick, maybe because of the dissonant trumpet improvisated solo, and of course, it have a hot blooded crazy swing. Trust me, you will not get wrong with this.

Manzarek is pictured on the far left Back in the late 60s I listened to The Doors largely because of Jim Morrison's big, booming voice. He remains, to this day, one of the great rock singers of all time. However, over the years listeners discovered just how much the late Ray Manzarek (who passed away this week) contributed to the sound and overall success of the band. When you listen beyond the vocals it becomes obvious that The Doors' first single and most famous song, "Light My Fire," is really a vehicle for keyboard player Manzarek to show off his stuff. As the album version's mid-section of the song morphed from the single into an electric organ fueled jam session that was never heard on Top 40 radio you realize just how talented he was. With his ability to improvise Manzarek could have been a fine jazz musician. To me, Manzarek's greatest moment came on "Riders on the Storm." He played some very spooky electric piano that perfectly complemented Morrison's vocals and the thunderstorm sounds that were a major part of the piece. Close your blinds, turn out the lights, and listen to "Riders" in total darkness. Manzarek's playing helps make the song totally, perfectly eerie. The Doors were one of the rare major rock bands to not have a bass player. Manzarek often played bass with his left hand on a Fender Rhodes bass keyboard while playing organ or piano with his right hand. While Morrsion, The Doors' most prominent and controversial figure, became headline news Manzarek goes down in history as one of the few keyboard men to consistently use his instrument as a centerpiece of their repertoire. He contributed as much to The Doors sound as Morrison ever did. It's easy to visualize that without Manzarek The Doors may not have become the huge legends they are more than forty years after their first hit.