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I know most don't like Gene Simmons.

#263
As has been alluded to before, I don't think even Gene Simmons himself would say that he's a world class bass player. What he would say is that KISS is a world-class rock 'n' roll act, a tremendous concept and marketing behemoth that has made a lot of people deliriously happy over the years. Ain't nothing with that, for sure!

I think Gene's basslines are fairly standard rock 'n' roll. He's certainly solid and entirely adequate. It may not be the most inspired bass playing I've ever heard, but it succeeds in propelling the song where it needs to go, connects the drums to the other instruments, and provides the needed groove and foundation.

I would be bored playing that style of music all the time. But if Gene doesn't mind, and he's able to make prodigious amounts of money doing it, then more power to him.

Not bad for an Israeli kid born with the name Chaim Wintz who came to the United States when he was 9. From what I've seen of Gene in shows like Family Jewels and The Apprentice, he seems a little full of himself but basically a solid, decent human being and a caring dad. I should be so lucky!
 
#264
JimmyM said:
slight disagreement here. peter is a very good meat and potatoes drummer, and gene loves to completely ignore what the drummer is doing sometimes. so if there was any difficulty "locking in" (an imho pointless concept because i hear so many examples of bass and drums not playing lockstep with each other that sound amazing, especially on old kiss songs), it was gene's doing. but it was gene's and paul's band and they're not going anywhere so the blame got heaped on peter.
Click to expand...

From Guitar World, Sept 1996:

GW: Peter, did you usually lock in with Gene as a rhythm section?
CRISS: in the old days, I used to follow Ace more than I would Gene or Paul, probably because I had always followed what the lead guitarist was doing, even in my earlier groups. These days I play much more with Gene, which is the way it should be.
SIMMONS: [to Peter] your style of drumming is completely unique. People who don't know always think of Peter as a straight-ahead, rock and roll, Ringo-style drummer, but that is not the case. Peter plays these very complex drumming patterns---almost like a lunatic's drum patterns, but in a good way.[Laughs]
STANLEY: Peter would sometimes play a different beat in the second verse of a song. Sometimes when we'd play some of the old tunes with[Nineties Kiss drummer] Eric Singer, he'd say, "Peter's playing two different beats in this song---which one do you want me to play?"[Laughs]
SIMMONS: It's almost like this kind of Keith Moon, free-form, rock and roll style of drumming.
STANLEY: In the early days, Gene would never say to Peter,"What's your kick drum doing?" And that's the classic way to arrange a song because the bass generally mirrors the kick drum. But we had no reguard for that. I'd say that 9 out of 10 times in our songs, the bass had nothing to do with the kick because Peter's kick was whatever Peter had decided to play.[Laughs]
SIMMONS: And it was hardly ever the same pattern!
CRISS: [laughs] I'll take that as a complement.
GW: Gene, if Peter was playing along with Ace in the early days, where did that leave you as a bass player?
SIMMONS: first of all, in the beginning, I was out of my mind...
FREHLEY: Oh, and now you're sane?! [Laughs all around]
SIMMONS: the last thing I thought about when we played live was groove. I'd just go off into my own world.
GW: Would you stray from what you played on the record and improvise?
SIMMONS: Very Seldomly, I never intended to be a pumping rhythmic bass player. If anything, I wanted to do the more Paul McCartney-type walking basslines that don't rely as much on groove.
STANLEY: One thing that's changed for us over the years is that we're concerned now with more than tempo, with more than playing the right chords; we're concerned with making sure the song doesn't lose it's groove....


There's more, but I'm on my Blackberry and my thumbs are tired!
On thing that often gets over looked about PC is just how critical his vocals were to those old tunes(Nothing to Lose) and the songs that moved Kiss from a cult-type band to a world-wide super group were sang by him, "Beth" and "Hard-Luck Woman". Man, I wish I could sing like that!
 
#268
if anyone who is interested in hearing what gene can do when he puts his mind to being good technically, i recommend the songs "100,000 years," "ladies room", and "goin' blind." won't be scaring vic wooten any time soon, but i think they're pretty excellent basslines, especially "100,000 years."
 
#270
Not that anyone cares, but I thought this was a cool very rare clip of Gene using a THunderbird in 1992, which is very uncharacteristic of him. THey're playing to fake music but live vocals and he appears to not have a strap on and is just using his thumb to pretend to play the notes. It's not as if they COULDN"T play the music, but alot of TV appearances require them and other artists to sing live and play to prerecorded music.

!
 
#271
Noseferatu said:
Not that anyone cares, but I thought this was a cool very rare clip of Gene using a THunderbird in 1992, which is very uncharacteristic of him. THey're playing to fake music but live vocals and he appears to not have a strap on and is just using his thumb to pretend to play the notes. It's not as if they COULDN"T play the music, but alot of TV appearances require them and other artists to sing live and play to prerecorded music.

!
Click to expand...


I rather liked that. If you watch closely, his strap came off the pin at the first of "Unholy", but it was attached again for "God gave Rock and Roll to you". I was honestly expecting a "phantom of the Park" clip with him playing the black Thunderbird....Good Find.
 
#273
1975 with the Cold War ongoing:

The Altair 8800 is released, and the Volkswagon Rabbit is introduced...

Wheel of Fortune premeirs on TV....

Margaret Thatcher defeats Edward Heath for leadership of the UK conservative party...

Sentences for Watergate are still being handed out..

The Rocky Horror Show opens on Broadway with 4 performances..

Bobby Fisher refuses to defend and forfeits his title..

Bill Gates founds Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico...

President Ford pardons General Robert E. Lee thus restoring his citizenship.

NASA launches Viking 1 to probe Mars...

The London Hilton is bombed by the IRA...

Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch" is slashed a dozen times at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam....

Fugitive Patricia Hearst is captured in San Francisco...

U.S. President Gerald Ford survives a second assassination attempt, this time by Sara Jane Moore in San Francisco.

Former California Governor Ronald Reagan enters the race for the Republican presidential nomination, challenging incumbent President Gerald Ford.

NBC airs the first episode of Saturday Night Live (George Carlin is the first host; Billy Preston and Janis Ian the first musical guests)

1975 World Series: The Boston Red Sox defeat the Cincinnati Reds in Game Six off Carlton Fisk's 12th-inning home run to cap off what many consider to be the best World Series game ever played

The Irish Republican Army is outlawed in the United Kingdom.

The 1975 cult classic movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out in America.

The name "Micro-soft" (for microcomputer software) is used by Bill Gates in a letter to Paul Allen for the first time (Microsoft becomes a registered trademark on November 26, 1976)

Lyme disease first recognised at Lyme, Connecticut.

Peter Gabriel departs Genesis, and is replaced on lead vocals by drummer Phil Collins.

the Bee Gees begin their mid-1970s international comeback when "Jive Talkin'" reaches #1 and goes platinum with sales over 1 million

Peter Ham, founder of the group Badfinger, is found hanged in his London garage. His death is ruled a suicide

Pink Floyd releases their album Wish You Were Here and is a huge hit

The Sex Pistols play their first concert at St. Martin's School of Art in London.

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" goes to number one, where it remains for 5 weeks of 1975 and 4 weeks of 1976.

Bassist Steve Harris forms Iron Maiden, drawing the name from a torture device mentioned in The Man in the Iron Mask.

Ramones sign to Sire Records.

The Alice Cooper stage show for Welcome to My Nightmare becomes the largest stage spectacle of the decade....BUT! That wouldn't last long :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GKhMFAhqmk&feature=related
 

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