Wednesday, October 14, 2009

TOMORROW ON OUTQ: KISS, ACE FREHLEY AND JOE PERRY

Tomorrow on OutQ, I'll be talking about
some '70s hard rock legends who are still doing it today.

As I just mentioned, I enjoy the new KISS album, Sonic Boom, way more than I expected to. With KISS, it's not just about the music, but the spectacle and what kind of splash it makes. Well, the album is really good, but to make sure it gets the right push, KISS (who don't even need to deal with record labels anymore) made a deal with Walmart, f- the middleman. It's only available there, the chain is supposedly pushing it hard, and it may result in the band's first ever #1 album in the U.S. (Although as Gene will tell anyone in listening distance, "KISS have more gold albums in the U.S. than anyone, The Beatles, The Beach Boys...") I hope they get it.

Coincidentally, former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley has just his first solo album, Anomaly. The songs that I heard were pretty good. Some people don't think it is KISS without Ace, and I get that: he adds a weird quirkly element to the band, that they lack without him. Anyway, what I've heard from this album is cool, including a cover of Sweet's "Fox On The Run."

Finally, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has a new album, Have Guitar, Will Travel. I've always been a fan of his singing voice - at least in doses - and I think it's weird that he's working with another singer on this album. The guy, whose name is Hagen, sounds a lot like... Steven Tyler. Weird. But Joe does sing on a bunch of the songs, and those are the better ones. It's cool that Joe is doing his own thing, but I hope that Aerosmith get it together. They had a disabled list that looked like a baseball team's this summer, Tyler revealed that he has a seperate manager from the rest of the band, and they ended up cancelling thier tour. Hopefully next year they will reconvene and get back with Brendan O'Brien to start working on thier next album (which supposedly will be a Columbia distributed Walmart exclusive, a la AC/DC 's Black Ice).

At my day job, I recently got to talk to Joe, who is always cool, and he told me that not only was Aerosmith planning on playing Toys In The Attic start to finish at their shows, but they were going to learn a bunch of other entire albums.

No comments: