Rain

I don't disagree. That being said, Ace and Peter sold their trademark make up, for cheap apparently, and I see KISS as a business. Maybe from all the time I spent around Cirque, I've become very aware of the business/corporate dimension of entertainment, to a point where it's hard for me to see anything else and, for some strange reason, I've learned to appreciate that dimension, as foreign as it is to me. It's not entirely new either, as Ace and Peter had their face on albums where they didn't play a note, and even a early a Destroyer, other guitarists subbed for Ace and judging from his autobiography, he never seemed to be bothered by that. Paul Stanley always says that it was an error for them to create new personas for Eric and Vinnie. Utlimately, whether I agree or disagree is unimportant. It's his and Gene's band, and they've kept the KISS brand alive, and a lot of people are willing to pay for that brand. From a business point of view, it makes sense. The Mötley Crüe case is a bit more complex for me. Seems that Mick did not actually opt out of the band as Peter and Ace did, he simply wanted to quit touring, so there's all sorts of legal ramifications to it. That being said, I like John 5, he's great. IMHO, him touring with those guys is a bit like putting a Ferrari engine in an old Pinto, but from the videos he posted on Instagram, he is doing his usual excellent job.

Grammarly is now mandatory at work, and as depressing as that announcement was, I can certainly understand why when I go through emails sent by colleagues. We've lost the there-their-they're battle, and the whole darn war. I guess we "should OF known". Likewise, chats are automaticallly translated, so anyone can answer to any user. Heck, French is my language and I no longer bother because switching the keyboard configuration back and forth between chats isn't worth the effort anymore. But one crucial factor that we must keep in mind is human stupidity. It may be a while before AI manages to make sense of all the stupid questions that really make no sense. Those requestd that make me bang my head against the desk may very well represent our last best hope. Until they can come up with Artifical Retardation, us humans are virtually irreplacable. It may even be impossible to outstupid us.

I've been reading mostly history books in recent year, but this is on biography I don't want to miss. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/geddy-lee-memoir-title-release-date/

I wouldn't want to be a youth in 2023. That being said, I could never really decide what I wanted to do, so I studied literature, and for a while considered majoring in philosophy, which was more like a commitment to indecision. When I stream on Tubi and Freeve, I see lots of ads for Doordash and stuff like that. My first reaction was to think that it wouldn't look very good on a resume when you get a big job interview. Previous experience: never actually got a real job, just Doordashed through my 20's. But then, the market has changed so much. People my age grew up without much in terms of safety nets. If you didn't have a proper job, you couldn't just drive for Uber until you figure out something else. So you held onto a job, even a bad one, and we've kept certain intincts I suppose. But nowadays, it's a gig economy and the youth has adapted to it. That's why attrition levels are inconceivably high in so many places. I am guessing that older people like myself are much more worried about AI taking away jobs than the youth is.

Celtic Frost - Mexican Radio

Wall of Voodoo - Mexican Radio

Nirvana - Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

Alice Cooper - Give the Radio Back

Cheap Trick - On the Radio

I am a big fan of Ace in the early days - he played with a swagger that could never be duplicated by the guitarists who replaced him. And he was so freakin' cool... But I think that nowadays, 99% of the time, Tommy is a better Spaceman than Ace himself could be. Not to mention that he's solid, reliable, and consistent. If I had to share the stage every night with someone, these are qualities that would by far eclipse the occasional night of magic. And then there's all the offstage drama. Some people accuse Paul of taking shots at Ace in his biography, but having read Ace's own biography first, I could see how Paul was making many very valid points. I'd always thought of Ace as the cool one, and Paul and Gene as the square, control freaks - but reading Ace's own account of the story, I realized how awful it must have been to put up with him and Peter. Not that Gene and Paul don't have their own faults, but I've been in enough bands to know that people like Ace and Peter are usually the ones who make my life impossible and make me want to hit them in the back of the head in the hope that it will trigger a reset. Paul's voice has been busted for nearly 20 years now, but to be honest, watching bits of Ace live, I doubt that anyone would care if he wasn't Ex-KISS Ace Frehley. The performances I've seen mostly ranged from bad to mediocre. I see people, including firends of mine, my KISS-pals, getting all excited, but I can't help thinking that they're not being very objective. If they walked into a bar and heard an unknown playing like that, they would probably boo him off the stage. I think that Paul is correct, not because he himself is still good, but in that Tommy and Eric are holding the band together musically. KISS could not (barely) get away with it if Paul and Gene didn't have those two and tapes. And the same goes for Ace - if he wasn't backed up by solid musicians but by pople of his own calibre, his band would sound pretty awful.

Alice Cooper - I'm Alive (That Was the Day My Dead Pet Returned to Save My Life)

April Wine - I'm Alive

Judas Priest - Eat Me Alive

My dear long lost slightly older but not too much and still cool AF brother from another mother and another country! In 2020, I finally had the opprotunity to start catching up a little with my generation, but Rocky Horror is still on the unwatched list. I also caught up with the Marvel Universe, although I'm not sure that's a good thing. Honestly, I'm not sure I'll have time for Rocky Horror it in this life. When I'd tell them I'd never seen Breakfast Club, or the Goonies, or Back to the Future, or Rocky Horror, or Alien, or whatever people my age consider classic, they'd look at me as if I'd walked right out of an Amish community. But then alot of them have never seen Chaplin's Gold Rush, or Keaton's The General, or even Browning's Dracula. Or read a book, for that matter... When people get a little too excited because I've not seen Rocky Horror, I tell them that I've never seen Clockwork Orange either. Then they ask why, and I say it's because I hated 2001. Which is actually very true. They leave me alone... (No they don't - they want to argue. But I ignore them and it's their fault, so essentially it's the same).

As impersonnal as it may sound, content creator may indeed be the most appropriate label for people assembling sounds without really investing their heart and soul into a particular project. It's a mercenary approach. Which can be hard to undertand for old-school people who have more of a samurai heart when it comes to music. We think art, they think product. Considering oneself in terms of brand and a product is no longer the prerogative of prostitutes in the age of social media, and not a source of shame either, and our contemporary understanding of music reflects the times we live in. I remember when a friend who was getting into podcasts mentionned that she had been shopping for some royalty-free music and I realized that there were people out there just pumping out music, dumping it online for people to browse through, and purchase the bits they liked. Content seems like a very adequate description for that. I guess it's not unlike back in the days when I spent time writing and recording music in all kinds of genres for presentations, to show potential cutomers what I could do. Except that nowadays, it's all about "monetizing", so they skip the presentation part and just sell that material directly. And I guess it makes sense. People who would have paid independent little guys like myself even just a bit of money to write and record original music specifically for their little documentary know that most people don't hear the difference, so they might as well save themselves some dough and pick some royalty-free generic music for peanuts. Worst case, they can even assemble loops in GarageBand themselves. Anyway, with AI, even content creators are likely to be replaced by content generators (I'm guessing that's also already a thing, but I prefer to stay behind the times and let them lemmings run off that cliff w/o me).

Thank you, Craig! That might be an idea. ? Sometimes I listen to silly little things like this one that I put together for fun while I was tipsy and I realize that they probably sound better than the stuff I put my heart into and agonize over. Go figure.

Thank you, my friend!

Read the news a bit earlier. What a loss!

And a bit of pseudo self promo. I always thought it would make a nice cover for Metallica, so I rolled my own one night for fun after a few too many beers - I think I nailed that annoying Kirk Hammett slopiness rather well with that improvied solo, too.

I'm here to fix this. The Cure - Killing an Arab A The Cure + B Lyrics (Standing on the BEACH)

Skinny Puppy - Shore Lined Poison

AC/DC - Inject the Venom

Does that work? Venom - Aaaaaaarrghh

When the other guitar player left the band in the 90's, I had to make adjustments to my sound - I was playing through a 59 Bassman, those cleaner patterns, and that sound sat really well on top of his Mesa Boogie, which provided the foundation. But with him gone I needed something to fill all the empty space, and I had no budget, I was still paying the Fender, so I got myself a little Marshall Valvestate VS15R that I ran in parallel. It made playing as a trio much easier. Previous generations of Valvestate had left me unimpressed but I really liked this one. When I started recording, it's the only thing I used - recording the Bassman in an apartment was unthinkable. Using just my strat, between that little Marshall, a wah, a Boss Flanger, and the tape echo on the Sony open reel that I used to record, experimenting with mic placment, I learned to create all kinds of sounds. I eventually gave it to a friend after I got my first POD, but I often miss it. It wasn't as good as my old Master Lead Combo (my first decent amp) but I'd like to grab one even if just to see if it was as nice as I remember.

Who really plays live with Marshall stacks anymore? This guy. Although I believe that for the last song I played there I was hooked to a Axe-FX. Honestly, I'd probably prefer to use some DI solution at this point, though. Also, notice the wall of Marshalls in the back. I think there's 4 "stacks" on each side of the drums. They're not actually fake or empty cabinets - just pictures. Looks better than a bare wall when bands don't have a backdrop, IMHO.