I almost forgot to post something today, but I have a good excuse: Today was also my fiancee’s bridal shower, and guess who had to schlep gifts back and forth in his car? Yep…

I should note that for the past few weeks I’ve been – on top of planning towards the wedding and subsequent move into mine and my wife-to-be’s new apartment – finishing up the novel (yeah, still… but then again if I didn’t have to hold a day job it would have been finished already), working on a screenplay for Script Frenzy, working on a couple of reviews for this blog (they’ll be up this week), and working on my guitar.

And last night, boy, did I work on my guitar… I got this thing (Epiphone Les Paul) a few months ago, but I never changed the strings until last night. Such was my Saturday night:

And to keep things J-pop related, here’s another part of what helped keep me sane, especially today:

Besides, I couldn’t figure how to equal or better the live MoMusu and Stooges clips from last year! But what I can do is (even though I didn’t get this finished until after midnight when the 11th became the 12th) update a list I posted two years ago on my second blogging anniversary at MotokoAoyama.com, which would make this “A List That Took Four Years To Make”:

Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Four laptops (Don’t get me started…)
Two iPods (and I’m planning on finally upgrading soon… I have more music on my hard drive than can fit on my present 60GB model!)
Morning Musume and AKB48 both making their American concert debuts (come back here, both, er, ALL of you!!)
Thirteen Morning Musume singles
Eight personnel changes in Morning Musume
Two personnel changes in C-ute
No personnel changes in Berryz Koubou
More personnel changes in AKB48 than anyone can keep up with… (and don’t even get any serious AKB fan started on those team reassignments!)
Six and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Twelve Berryz Koubou singles (double the amount from two years ago!)
Three and a half Berryz Koubou studio albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Eleven C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Four and a half C-ute albums (I still consider ? mini ~Ikiru to Iu Chikara~ to be an EP)
Four Koda Kumi studio albums (I lost track of compilations and singles!)
Two Ayumi Hamasaki albums (Go ahead and yell at me, Vee…)
One and a half Maki Goto albums (That first one for Avex is pretty much an EP…)
One and a half SCANDAL albums (Again, the half-album is an EP…)
Three post-Whiteberry EPs from bands led by Yuki Maeda (One Yukki, two The Husky)
Seven Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power, and counting the forthcoming deluxe reissue of the original Bowie mix of Raw Power)
The entire Koharu Kusumi solo discography
The entire Buono! discography to date
The entire AKB48 singles discography to date
Five New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of all three studio albums)
Seven Puffy AmiYumi albums
Five Mission of Burma albums (three of them being the new vinyl reissues on Matador)
Two Panic! At The Disco albums
Two Meat Puppets albums
Four Hank III albums (counting the Assjack album and his forthcoming The Rebel Within, of course)
Two copies of Flyleaf’s first album (one autographed)
Three autographed Sick Puppies CDs
One guitar autographed by Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers
One Asheton brother being transferred from the Stooges to Rock N’ Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band (I’m sure Ron is trading Mike Watt stories with D. Boon!)
James Williamson rejoining the Stooges
The Stooges finally making the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame (Next targets: The New York Dolls, Black Flag, and The Minutemen… and that’s a fucking vow and a promise from me!)
Lux Interior being transferred from the Cramps to Rock N’ Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band
A Sex Pistols reunion
A Public Image Ltd. reunion
Malcolm McLaren, the former Sex Pistols “mis-manager” dying of cancer… followed by Johnny Rotten NOT singing “Celebration” or “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” (good on ya, Johnny…)
Seven books autographed by Henry Rollins
One book autographed by Sen. Arlen Specter
Three e-mails from Henry Rollins
Two e-mails from Jello Biafra
Three day trips to New York where I spent over $700 combined in one store (Virgin Megastore) alone
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
Five day trips to Philadelphia
Two day trips to Syracuse, NY
One Stooges concert
One Bon Jovi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two Flyleaf concerts
Two Evanescence concerts
Two Sick Puppies concerts
Two 3 Doors Down concerts (Which makes four times I’ve seen my fiancee’s favorite band, versus zero times I’ve seen my favorite band… that’s gotta be corrected quick-fast)
Two opening sets prior to 3DD by Hinder (Most boring band not named Nickelback or Daughtry, by a long shot)
Two Breaking Benjamin concerts (and unfortunately, although they played well as always, the sound at the second sucked! What was up with that, Ben?)
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
One missed Morning Musume concert (yes, that concert!!)
One missed Mike Watt & The Secondmen concert (sorry, Mike… still!!!)
Four 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Three Blackberry smartphones (no, I’m not getting an iPhone)
Four SD cards
Three phonograph needles
Morning Musume CDs finally being released in the United States (the flipside… well, I’ll get to that soon enough…)
Nine WordPress themes
Seven domain names (on top of the previously mentioned ones, there’s TGML’s URL, the one for the Meetan blog, and a second one for the Reina blog)
Two different Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp header graphics at MotokoAoyama.com (Vee improved on the original)
Ai Kago finally making a comeback
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
One Guns N’ Roses album finally being finished, handed in, and released!
Ace Frehley beating his ex-bandmates to record stores with new material… and not having to sell out to Wal-Mart to do it!
Six Mike Watt-related albums recorded during this blog’s and its predecessor’s lifetime waiting mixdown or release
Two animes with Reina Tanaka doing voice work
Two knocked-up MoMusus
Two instances where I bitched about Nozomi Tsuji getting knocked up
Three instances where I remarked about what a lucky bastard Taiyo Sugiura is
Three snarky remarks made by me about Avril Lavgine
One snarky remark made by “Reina” about Jamie Lynn Spears
One snarky remark made by me to “Reina” about Beyonce Knowles
Countless snarky remarks about American Idle
More American Idle contestants losing their recording contracts
Five Reina Tanaka photobooks
One tire
Two illnesses
Two back-to-back NaNoWriMo wins
Three book projects (two simultaneous, one on hold)
One published short story (”The Man In The Hummer” in Deliver Us From Evil, available from Jaded Silence Press)
All four versions of American Wota
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
Two jokes stolen from Jeff Dunham
One joke stolen from Nothing Nice To Say
Three times I got under the skin of Tony Brummel at Victory Records… that I know of. (Might as well make it four: How does it feel to lose Silverstein AND Bayside on top of Hawthorne Heights and Atreyu, baldy? I hear Aiden’s next…)
Five times my partner at My Sweet Meetan, Chris (CK) went to Japan
Reina Tanaka’s 18th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 19th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 20th birthday
My 40th birthday… I stopped counting after that.
Mike Watt’s 50th birthday… and counting
Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday… and counting – face it, he’s one unstoppable motherfucker, for which we should all be grateful.
Several boxes of CD sleeves
Countless mouse and camera batteries
Countless VitaminWaters
Countless instances where I took to heart David Peel’s adage that “fuck” is not a dirty word
A year and a half of lost blog archives (Don’t trust your webhosting to anyone who stage-names himself “Vikki Stixx”… or for that matter your real estate matters)
Not enough trips to Starbucks or Sonic (yeah, N.E. PA got one of those last summer!)
More money spent at CDJapan than at Gallery of Sound
Not as much money spent on vinyl since 2008, at least I don’t think so… but then again I’ve still taken that option whenever offered)
Virgin Megastore going out of business in 2009
Three Record Store Days (counting the forthcoming one this Saturday, which I’ll be honoring)
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée and soon to be upgraded to wife on 6.26.10

For the first Cake Day in 2008, I posted two MiniMoni baked-goods-related videos – and a naughty pun that Brother Ray Mescallado appreciated about the kind of “pie” two lucky bastards were getting from Ai Kago and Nozomi Tsuji at the time – at this blog’s predecessor MotokoAoyama.com, and a YouTube clip of Reina Tanaka working in a restaurant for a TV skit at So Hot She Shits Fire.

For the second Cake Day in 2009, I posted a different kind of baked good: my smoked paprika chicken thighs recipe here at TGML, and some “cheesecake” (i.e. some bikini shots of Reina) over at SHSSF.

For the third Cake Day, I didn’t know what to do. I cook, but I don’t usually bake (my sole baking attempts have been a couple of instances of buying Pillsbury Snoopy Christmas Cookies and following the package directions), and I could never top my blogging BFF and fellow Cancerian VeePinku’s Yuke Yuke Monkey Cake. Then my fiancee Tara came to the rescue with something she makes on the regular…

Tara makes the best goddamn motherfucking brownies I have ever eaten in my life. Granted, she starts out with a boxed brownie mix, but whatever she does in the process, they come out absolutely moist and brilliant. Say they’re made with love, if you will, but she does these brownies very well.

Of course, to frame Tara’s brownies, I had to represent in true The Groove Music Life style. Grabbing something MoMusu or Reina would have been expected of me, so I figured I’d flip the script and show off something I’d been trying to nail on eBay for months: a Koda Kumi plush bear! (At least, I think it’s a bear. I know Kuu-chin designed it…) Throw in a coffee table book of THE BAND THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME A LOT SOONER THAN THIS PAST MONDAY NIGHT and the assembled version of the pyramid from Ace Frehley’s Anomaly album, and I figured that would make a perfect trio for Cake Day III. (Also, since Gene Simmons admits to having a notorious sweet tooth, I figured the Ace Frehley pyramid would be to “The Demon” what garlic is to vampires…)

Last year, the coincidental back-to-back release of Ace Frehley’s fourth solo album Anomaly and KISS’ first studio album in 11 years, Sonic Boom found themselves in my CD player and in review form here on TGML. Granted, Ace’s album was the one I was more interested in, and it got a well deserved five-star review here because of the contents. But I found myself compelled to spring twelve bucks for the KISS album in spite of what was an iffy track record in the wake of their post-Dynasty releases, and I felt compelled to give an honest review of the album that I too, still hold to six months later (In short, Paul’s songs are the strongest, Gene’s are a small improvement on his post-’78-solo-album auto-pilot output, and Tommy Thayer can emulate Ace’s soloing style well, having imitated him in a KISS cover band years and years before, but can’t sing worth a fuck.)

A few weeks ago, after a little overindulging in the first two KISSology DVD collections, I decided to man up and add the third one, since it was loaded with footage from the reunion gigs done by the original lineup. Out of curiosity, I took a peek into the DVD’s commentary tracks done by Paul and Gene – and got immediately pissed off. So pissed off that I ejected the DVD from my player and shelved the set along with the first two volumes. What pissed me off? A lot of commentary downplaying Ace’s and Peter Criss’ role in the success of the Reunion Tour.

I suspect that Paul’s part of the commentary in question sounds somewhat forced compared to Gene’s tongue-wagging. Furthering this theory is something Paul said a little more off-the-cuff in the same set’s commentary track: That Paul was all for bringing Ace and Peter back into the fold, while Gene was rather reluctant. This should not come as any surprise to longtime fans of the band. Gene was the one most reluctant to record a new album after the Psycho Circus debacle – a debacle spurred by the absence of Ace and Peter on all but three cuts on the album – and on only one of those – Ace’s sole songwriting contribution to the album – did they play their assigned instruments (a session player filled in for Peter on the rest of the album, while Thayer played uncredited guitar solos). [And with the exception of noting that Sonic Boom’s relative quality made up for how shitty Psycho Circus was in my review of the former album, the only time I’d thought about Psycho Circus in recent times was when Vee referenced it in a recent post at Pink Wota – and in conversation she agreed with me that Psycho Circus was a lame album, too!]

Gene also falsely accused Ace – who in reality honored his five year contractual commitment and chose to step away and decompress before restating his solo career – of “shooting himself in the foot again” in his second book Sex Money KISS by not participating in what became the Alive IV: Symphonic KISS album. In short, Gene is out to make himself look good and the rest of his associates (at least the ones who aren’t willing to kiss his ass) look bad for the sake of his own ego:

Despite a post-Hollywood, self-proclaimed “refocus” on KISS around the time of Revenge’s creation, Gene Simmons is still interested in putting his ego and interests ahead of the group. Granted, at times, he is willing to make himself the butt of a joke – witness his first Dr. Pepper Cherry commercial, in which his son Nick interrupts his characteristic bombast, as well as many of the setups portrayed in his A&E TV series – as long as it’s for a profit. It’s highly doubtful a blooper like this would have ever made an installment of KISSology, even as a hidden Easter egg:

I am of completely mixed emotions about the band that first led me to want to pick up a guitar back in 1978. All of the classic-era albums are on my laptop and iPod, but only a few random tracks from the albums since then are there. I went AWOL from the KISS Army and started waving the Black Flag bars, but I still owe the band that much credit. But I will say without a shadow of a doubt that I will run, not walk, when Ace Frehley – the man who directly influenced my choice of instrument – comes around my neck of the woods on tour, as opposed to seeing KISS themselves live because I don’t want to see someone else wearing Ace’s makeup and playing his songs and solos.

NOTE TO LONGTIME READERS: Reviews coming of a few albums over the next week. I had to get this shit out of my system first. Thanks for your patience.

Oh yeah, there’s that little interruption.

Truth be told, I’m already planning ahead, and not just for that. I’ve already anticipated that there’s going to be a short break in blogging action around the last week of June and going on for at least another week. Which only means one thing: I intend to stay as busy as possible, trying to post as much as possible here and at So Hot She Shits Fire (and whenever I can at My Sweet Meetan), while also going into final preparations for the wedding, getting the last scenes folded into Here Is The Wonderland in the immediate weeks to come, thus finishing that long-in-the-making first draft before plunging into the second, which should only take a minuscule fraction of the time it took to complete the first draft. And also upping my guitar skills.

What?

Yeah, I got a new electric guitar over the Christmas holidays. I don’t think I will be discussing it much here – this blog is meant for serious music discussion, and personal ramblings about trying to re-master the pentatonic scale or getting a better handle on sweep picking don’t really belong here, so there may be a little place somewhere where I’ll let those out of my system. (Updates about my personal life don’t belong here either, of course. I might refer to them in vague here or in “conversation” at SHSSF, but that’s another story, and I already have places for that.)

This, in a nutshell, is as personal as I intend to get, and I’m keeping it in topic: 2010 is going to see a lot more activity here. Beyond that, I’m not hard to find, as the list of “personal” links that has always existed here and at this blog’s predecessor will attest. With one of the series that I hinted at back in November (the Best Albums of 2009 series) out of the way, the other one will be starting next week to formally kick off blogging activity here at TGML for 2010. For now, I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend decompressing from New Year’s Eve/Day.

Other than that (and my wedding), I don’t know what’s going to take place in 2010. Hell, I didn’t know when 2009 started that Morning Musume were getting ready to announce their American debut and that Ron Asheton was going to be transferred from the Stooges to Rock N’Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band either.

Stay tuned. Things are only going to get insane here. But in a good way, of course.

SLAYER
World Painted Blood
(American/Columbia)
Available on CD, 180-gram LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
SUNN O)))
Monoliths and Dimensions
(Southern Lord)
Available on CD, 180-gram double LP, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic

First of all, the Slayer record is a Slayer record. You’re either going to buy it or you’re not. They’ve been the most consistent band in terms of personnel (only the drum chair has gone through turmoil a few times), and ever since founding member Dave Lombardo resumed his place behind the aforementioned instrument, fuggedaboutit. Nothing is ever going to out-heavy their classic Reign In Blood, but this came so close that it was breathing down that album’s neck.

If you want heavier than even that, here’s your new favorite band: Sunn O))). Live, they’re just two guys with robes, downtuned Les Pauls letting out droning riffs, and a shitload of vintage tube amps turned up to 20 (they’re probably the only band I know of that has their own branded earplugs!) and ready to reconfigure your DNA after the first two chords. While that’s a set up that some armchair amateur wannabe critics love to mock (do a search for the band on YouTube and you’ll see quite a few parody videos), it makes for some intense music. With this new release, the band adds to their studio sound with a female choir, horns (including Sun Ra Arkestra veteran Julian Priester), strings, and sometime Mayhem lead vocalist Attila Csihar. Best listened to in a dark room late at night – or when it’s morning and you don’t want it to be morning yet. And don’t be surprised if it puts a smile on your face. This was my first Sunn O))) album ever, and it won’t be my last. And if that’s not convincing enough of an endorsement of this album for you, let Anthony Fantano from the video blog The Needle Drop explain further:

ACE FREHLEY
Anomaly
(Bronx Born)
Available on CD, double-LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3

It’s amusing how Gene Simmons must have thought that laying Wal-Mart’s money on the line would result in Kiss’s best album ever in the hype that led up to Sonic Boom (which did make it into Billboard’s Top 5, despite the fact that, as noted when I reviewed the album, it’s a rather weak effort that’s only a shade or two better than their previous two studio releases, the boring Carnival of Souls and the quick-buck-fake-reunion exercise Psycho Circus). As revealed a month prior to Sonic Boom’s artistic bust, Ace Frehley had something more valuable to lay on the line with his first solo studio album in twenty years: his balls and his word. And he delivered simply by putting the music first. The result? A reminder of the one element that attracted a great deal of people to Kiss in the first place – as well as of the fact that you can stick a six-figure salary, a few Les Paul guitars, and a Space Ace cosplay kit into the hands of a former hair-band failure turned Gene Simmons lackey, but he’ll never play, sing, or write even a fourth as good as one Paul Daniel Frehley. Or in other words, this was a repeat of how badass Ace’s first solo album in more ways than one – he outshined his (now-former) bandmates yet again.

From the Detroit Free Press:

No fun? Yes, fun!

The list of other bands to be inducted at ceremonies in New York on March 15 couldn’t provide much more contrast with the Stooges: artsy progressive rockers Genesis, Swedish pop kings ABBA, harmonizing rockers the Hollies and ska-reggae star Jimmy Cliff.

James Williamson, the other Stooges guitarist (he played guitar on Raw Power while Ron Asheton played bass) added his own view on the long-overdue induction on his Facebook page:

“Tonight I’ll be raising a glass to an awful lot of people…secretly I believe we were chosen to balance the choice of ABBA getting in…I do take some pride in getting in over KISS, but am saddened that the great singer/songwriter Laura Nyro wasn’t selected although she was hardly ‘rock and roll’, but then she`d have to stand in line on the point.”

KISS
Sonic Boom
(Kiss Records [North America]/Roadrunner [elsewhere])
Available as a 2CD/DVD set in North America and as a single CD elsewhere.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Kiss fans have had every right to be skeptical over the past decade or so. The band’s last studio album, Psycho Circus, was really a “reunion” album with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss that had very little Ace Frehley and Peter Criss on it. They embarked on a “farewell tour” at the turn of the century that turned out not to be a farewell after all. And – most damningly – after the reluctant-to-repeat-himself Ace Frehley chose to depart the band in order to decompress before resuming his solo career, Gene Simmons made the controversial decision to replace the influential guitarist with ex-Black & Blue guitarist and sometime Simmons lackey Tommy Thayer without initially telling the public. (Peter Criss, “the most miserable man on the planet” according to Simmons, was already on the shitlist of his ex-bandmates during the so-called farewell tour and was replaced by Eric Singer.) Follow all that up with Simmons claiming in his autobiography that there was no longer a market for a new Kiss studio LP, and it’s understandable to think why an album called Sonic Boom might easily be dismissed – like some fans who heard a leak of the album on the heels of the release of Frehley’s Anomaly album already did – as sonic bunk.

But in the wake of Paul Stanley recording a follow-up to his 1978 solo album (and touring behind it) and Frehley working on Anomaly since 2007, it probably doesn’t take an Einstein to presume that Simmons was full of shit when it came to the Kiss Army wanting new material rather than another repackaging of back catalog.

In advance press when the album’s recording was announced, Stanley – who took the producer’s chair for the project – boasted that the album would have no ballads or outside writers, and would hark back to the band’s “glory days” both musically and sonically. Similar claims (sans the no-ballads comment) had been made about Psycho Circus. Here we go again?

Paul Stanley’s songwriting contributions are, like most Kiss albums since Dynasty onward, amongst the strongest on the album. Advance single “Modern Day Delilah” opens the album with a groove more in line with the band’s mid-80’s work than their classic 70’s releases. “Never Enough” employs a riff not dissimilar to Poison’s “Nothing But A Good Time” – an irony given that Poison had stolen half of the riff to “Calling Dr. Love” for one of their early album tracks. “Danger Us” employs a guitar figure that normally would have been employed with a ZZ Top-ish blues shuffle feel, but instead gets forced against a more rigid, stronger hard rock beat; the song’s chorus lyric of “Danger you, danger me, danger us” smacks more of bad hair-metal cheese rather than Paul’s more clever lyrics, though. “Say Yeah” closes the album out with a combination of Animalize/Asylum riffing and a chorus that borrows heavily and unashamedly from early Beatles (a not unwelcome lift given the band’s open early battle plan was to be a hard rock equivalent).

Gene’s contributions on Kiss albums were pretty much on autopilot after his first solo album, with an average of at least one decent track and the rest of his songs being weak for album after album, until he changed his tack with Revenge and came in with “Unholy” and “Domino”. “I’m An Animal” – co-written with Paul and Tommy Thayer – is the best of Gene’s Sonic Boom songs, merging his onstage makeup persona with the more streetwise attitude of his Revenge compositions. “Russian Roulette” comes in second but threatens to teeter into bad clichés lyrically. “Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect)” boasts humorous lyrics but has nothing memorable musically, while “Hot and Cold” sees Gene going into autopilot and is the weakest of his tracks, especially in the lyric department. Lyrics about being a world champion cocksman and banging girls the average age of Morning Musume and AKB48 members doesn’t work very well when you’re a 60-year-old father of two young adults.

Paul and Gene combine both vocal and songwriting duties for “Stand”. It’s always good to hear them write and sing together – they haven’t done it much over the past 20 or so years – but the song, while written well, misses the anthemic status it tries to reach, and comes off like a bad outtake from Hot In The Shade.

Having to cosplay as Ace and Peter’s old stage personas has to be taking some sort of creative and psychic toll on guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer. Each of the two junior members gets one track apiece on the album. “All For The Glory” – written for Eric by Paul and Gene – is a decent tune but suffers from a weak chorus; Eric should be allowed to sing like himself instead of aping Peter Criss’ raspy blue-eyed soul voice. Thankfully, throughout the album he still drums like himself, straddling the line between the styles of both Criss and the late great Eric Carr perfectly.

Tommy Thayer may be able to ape Ace Frehley’s lead guitar style to a tee – his solos throughout the album prove that. Unfortunately, he can’t write songs like his influential predecessor, not even with Paul’s help. “When Lightning Strikes” in title alone is a bad attempt to claim Ace’s “Space Ace” persona and lightning bolt motifs as his own. To top it off, Tommy can’t sing worth a shit. It is only the apparently need to present and portray a “united front” is why this song is on the album.

While Paul was enthusiastic about the band using analog tape for the Sonic Boom sessions, unfortunately the use of this vintage technology in the 21^st century is hit-and-miss. Like the Stooges’ The Weirdness before it, the use of analog tape in a digital age to record a timeless band like Kiss hinders more than helps the album. Analog tape falls apart – and Kiss’ music, even at its weakest, should not sound like it is falling apart. The general production value of Sonic Boom thus ends up lying somewhere between the near-lo-fi sound of their first two albums (produced by the never-heard-from-again Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise) and Kiss’ studio work with Eddie Kramer (Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun) in sound quality. The bonus CD of rerecorded “Kiss Klassics” (released in Japan as Jigoku-Retsuden), apparently recorded digitally a year prior to the Sonic Boom sessions, further underlines this.

Speaking on Kiss Army levels: Is Sonic Boom a much better effort than Psycho Circus? Yes. Is this the direction the band should have gone in musically after Revenge instead of Carnival of Souls? Absolutely. Is it better than much of their 80’s output? Try right next to or above Creatures of the Night, Animalize and Asylum. Can it sit on a level with their classic 70’s discography? Almost – it could see the taillights of their last solid original lineup makeup-era album Love Gun, maybe.

If the band decides to do another album, they should do the following: One, keep the songwriting quality up and then some; Gene in particular should concentrate on his songwriting at the expense of his TV show and other non-Kiss ventures and projects for at least six months straight. Second, they should forget about analog tape and record with ProTools or Logic Pro for the sake of the songs’ clarity; the rerecorded “Deuce” and “Hotter Than Hell” on the bonus CD underline just how much better those songs would have sounded if the band weren’t stuck with horrid producers in bad-sounding studios the first time around. And – onstage makeup and costumes be damned – Singer and Thayer should be allowed to be themselves in the studio, rather than just a kitten and a space-deuce (and don’t ever let Thayer sing lead on a song again unless he works with a vocal coach for at least a year beforehand.) If they don’t do another studio album again, at least Sonic Boom give Kiss’ studio discography a better ending chapter than Psycho Circus.

3½ out of 5 stars.

Author’s note: Since the second disc of re-recorded Kiss classics is only a bonus disc in North America, was recorded a year earlier, and was released in Japan on its own in 2008, it was deliberately not reviewed as part of this release. The bonus DVD in the North American edition was not reviewed due to time constraints.

ACE FREHLEY
Anomaly
(Bronx Born Records/RED Distribution)
Available on CD, 2xLP, iTunes (with bonus track), and AmazonMP3.com
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I picked up the guitar because of this man back in 7^th grade. There were a few others that were pushing me in that direction (Rick Nielsen and Pete Townshend come to mind), but Ace Frehley and his smoking guitar (onstage, literally, thanks to his fertile imagination and the breeding ground KISS’s early stage shows provided) lit the fuse. Granted, that guitar stayed in my hands a couple of years down because of the likes of Johnny Ramone, Steve Jones, Greg Ginn, etc., but by that time (1982), Ace was already walking away from the band.

Ace’s self-titled 1978 solo album is an underrated, five-star classic that has never gone out of print. His post-KISS output – two albums and a live EP under the Frehley’s Comet moniker and a “second” solo album, Trouble Walking – were welcomed by fans happy to hear from the “Space Ace” but were not as consistent as they should have been. Still, even though he didn’t record anything since 1989, he still kept playing, touring on a regular basis to the delight of diehard fans and being an almost regular presence in Guitar World magazine and its then-sister publication Guitar School. (At one point during this period, Ace rebutted some comments Gene Simmons had inaccurately made to the same magazine about Frehley’s guitar skills in his post-KISS work).

Of course, Ace participated in the reformation of the original KISS lineup, making the band one of the biggest concert draws for the next five years. But the band only did one studio album in that time (Psycho Circus, which only really had Ace on two songs – Tommy Thayer played the rest of the solos). The group then stayed in back catalog land with their set list, something that didn’t completely please Ace. He left KISS for the second time after what was supposed to be their farewell tour, taking a little time off to recharge, explore a few other artistic avenues (including acting), and get sobered up (insert smartass remark incorporating the phrase “being driven to drink” and the name “Gene Simmons” here if so inclined).

When talk of a new Ace Frehley solo album, twenty years after Trouble Walking, came to pass, fans had reason to be skeptical. Ace had been talking about putting out a new solo album for years, especially after walking away from what was rapidly becoming an oldies act (albeit one that puts asses in arena seats rather than state fair bleachers). There was also talk that the album was going to “go back” to the style and attitude of the ’78 album. Thankfully, none of it is talk.

Anomaly is indeed everything it has been promised to be. Much of the album is the same five-star quality rawk and then some that Ace delivered 21 years ago: Out-of-the-box rockers (“Foxy and Free”, first single “Outer Space”), generous helpings of Frehley brand humor (“Pain in the Neck”, “Sister”, iTunes-exclusive track “The Return of Space Bear”), an Ace-ified cover version (Sweet’s “Fox on the Run”), and a closing instrumental in Frehley’s “Fractured series” (“Fractured Quantum”). Added to the mix this time around are a couple of introspective tracks and two more instrumentals. On “Too Many Faces”, Frehley appears to address with his lyrics the kind of second thoughts he was having near the end of his second tenure with KISS, while on the acoustic-based “A Little Below the Angels” he references his bouts with alcohol and (for the second time, counting “Rock Soldiers” from Frehley’s Comet) his related DWI and reckless driving incidents. He delivers a bit of lyrical inspiration with “Change the World” and “It’s a Great Life”. The two instrumentals, “Space Bear” and “Genghis Khan”, are two fine excuses for Ace to stretch out with his much-lauded guitar skills. His vocal skills, once a self-admitted weak point, sound much more confident than ever.

Ace didn’t miss a beat with Anomaly. Like the recent return-to-action albums from the Stooges, New York Dolls, and Mission of Burma, it was worth the decades-long wait. Five out of five stars.

(Special side note: Check out a podcast interview with Ace about the album from PodKISSt.com here!)

…and to me, who turns 42 today (my last birthday as a bachelor!). AKB48′s new single “Namida Surprise”, with its appropriate chorus and bridge, came out just in time:

…and to the late great Ron Asheton of the Stooges, who would have been 61 today.