The End of the Beginning

OP-dEaD has always been an undead blog. Now, sadly, it’s dead. At this very moment, the coroner is working on the remains, skillfully slicing his scalpel through muscly verbs, fatty adjectives and stringy adverbs. With practiced care he lifts bloody nouns from dark openings and weighs them in his scale.

Still, for all his methodic dissection, we already know the cause of death—too little time and a shift in priorities.

But even as you read these words, the contents are being put back in their rightful places, for OP-dEaD wasn’t an organ donor. And every incision is neatly sewn shut. In other words, the blog won’t be deleted anytime soon, especially since some of the posts continue to generate decent amounts of traffic. Hopefully, there’s some useful stuff here for fans of the fantastic.

Thanks for reading!

“It is not the end.

It is not the beginning of the end.

It is the end of the beginning.”

– Sherman the Robot, Millenium (1989)

Our Alfred

Here’s an entertaining clip from “What’s My Line?” (as in “of work”), with Alfred Hitchcock as the mystery celebrity. Some detective work might have turned up an exact air date, but I’m too lazy for that sort of thing today. At any rate, since he’s plugging Rear Window, it’s safe to assume that this is from August or September 1954. The great man’s droll manner and indefinable charisma are very much in evidence, but notice the bespectacled wisenheimer who fancies himself a film buff. Golly, did Hitchcock, a film director as famous and recognizable as the stars he employed, really make a habit of appearing in his own movies? Tell me more, oh infinite font of arcane movie lore! Geez.

A Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead

Many of the video mash-ups you find on YouTube are astonishing in their complete and utter ineptitude. They’re usually full of editing glitches, spelling errors and poorly synched sound. In fact, they’re so godawful that you begin to wonder how the people responsible possessed the technical proficiency to even get them online. That’s why it’s so nice, and always surprising, to find something as funny and professional as the clip below. It’s been on YouTube for almost four years now, seamlessly blending groovy sixties beats with zombie carnage from Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead Remake. It’s foot-tapping, zombie burning fun!

Soundtrack for a Missing Movie, Part 3 of 3

Part 1

Part 2

And so we arrive at the final chapter of our Music from “The Elder” retrospective. Our topic today is the most important element of any album: THE MUSIC! Near the bottom, inbetween my blather, you’ll find the three tracks that Kiss performed on the short-lived variety show Fridays. Apparently, this was the only time they ever played anything from the album live. In other words, if you like your obscure rock music, it’s historical footage!

In spite of the name, “Fanfare” starts things off quietly, with the soft tinkling of a wind chime. This is soon offset by woodwinds playing the five-note motif that will recur throughout the album. Then the soundscape swells on a rising tide of brass and drums. But at the crescendo, after little more than a minute, the noise dies down and peters out with a snatch of Gregorian chanting, long before that sort of thing was fashionable. This lack of bombast must have shocked some listeners in 1981, especially those expecting another “God of Thunder” or “Love Gun,” but it certainly sets the mystical mood.

“Just a Boy” is a pleasant ballad, sung partly in falsetto by Paul Stanley. The rhythm guitar provides background crunch when appropriate, while an acoustic guitar softens the all around mood. There’s also a brief, mellow guitar solo. (Famously, Ace Frehley was against the idea of a concept album from the get-go. He recorded all his guitar parts under duress in his Connecticut home studio and sent them to Bob Ezrin by mail! I’d like to give credit where credit is due, especially as the axemanship is superb throughout, but I honestly don’t always know when it’s Frehley and when it’s Stanley playing!)

From a lip-synched performance of "I" on Solid Gold.

Things get more grandiose with the piano-led “Odyssey,” yet another ballad but much larger in scale. For the first time, the American Symphony Orchestra really gets to shine, and the symphonic scope complements the band perfectly—the operative word here is “sumptuous.” Again, the guitar solo is ace (whether it’s Ace playing or not), and there’s even an extended, uplifting outro. Unfortunately, the high-flown lyrics of this cosmic love song won’t sit well with those of a cynical persuasion.

“Only You” has a touch of The Who, especially in the breaks. In fact, the affirmative theme and massed chorus make me think that this could easily have slotted onto rock opera Tommy without too much tinkering. Weird, huh? The fairly routine rock tricks of “Only You” segue into the album’s most commanding track, “Under the Rose.” A reasonably muted first verse leads to a thundering chorus, which is practically bellowed by a male choir: “Loneliness will haunt you, do you sacrifice? Do you take the oath, will you live your life … under the rose?” It took a while, but the song has gradually won me over. And do I really need to tell you that I like the guitar solo?

After the hefty salvo of “Under the Rose,” some listeners may be in need of respite. It’s time for “Dark Light,” the only Frehley co-composition and vocal on the album. His delivery is rather sarcastic (“You’re gonna be attacked, and you don’t know what it is!”), which could be interpreted as a veiled criticism of the project as a whole. But the demo, cut before the idea of a concept album even materialized, is equally snarky. (Visit Popdose to hear a whole bunch of interesting demos from this era in Kisstory.) At any rate, Frehley projects the vintage charm that made him such a fan favorite, the bridge breaks into an unexpected Latin beat, and the guitar solo is in danger of being gobbled up by its own frenetic sloppiness.

Although it isn’t his only lead vocal on the album, “A World Without Heroes” gives Gene Simmons a chance to really shine. Never the possessor of a great voice, he nonetheless delivers a sensitive performance. And whereas some of the other songs can’t quite reach the lofty heights to which they aspire, generally due to lyrical folly, this song succeeds by keeping it simple. The bass sounds like a heartbeat, the spare string arrangement adds an aura of desolation, and the words are genuinely evocative: “Where you don’t know what you’re after, or if something’s after you …” Some guy named “Lewis Reed” gets co-writer credit on this and two other tracks. Yes, it’s exactly who you think it is! Weird!

With Music from “The Elder” now in the home stretch, it’s time to pick up the pace. “The Oath” has a galloping rhythm guitar that’s reminiscent of “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky.” Paul Stanley demonstrates his impressive vocal range, there’s a catchy countermelody, and the lyrics are gloriously over the top: “Like the blade of a sword I am forged in flames!” (I won’t post the link here, but there’s a clip on YouTube of Kiss valiantly trying to play it at a concert after more than 25 years. The crowd is game, but the band just gives up!)

With only three tracks to go, things take a turn for the bizarre, even by the standards of this curious album. “Mr. Blackwell” is insidious, coiling venom, complete with woolly bass, some strange percussive touches, and a spot of backwards chanting. This tune feels the most like something from a musical. It’s clearly there to drive the story along, and that type of narrative burden is often the undoing of a song. “Mr. Blackwell” is perfectly okay, but there’s a randomness to it that conjures up a feeling of the odd man out. And the penultimate track, “Escape from the Island,” is a tight but somewhat ordinary instrumental … until it becomes surprisingly jazzy in the middle. Eric Carr, who had replaced Peter Criss the previous year, does a commendable job on the drums.

That leaves us with the closing track, “I.” Lively and straightforward, I called it an ode to self-empowerment in part two. Stanley and Simmons trade lead vocals, and the chorus is the very epitome of stirring. Even the corny finger snaps, which are right out of West Side Story, somehow work. Only the windup falters—we hear footsteps on a heavy stairwell, and then a spectral voice asks Morpheus if the boy is worthy of his prophesied destiny. So far, so good, but when Morpheus answers, he sounds like a bad James Stewart impersonator, and that leaves Music from “The Elder” to go out on a bum note. But that’s my only major complaint.

And that’s it. Our musical odyssey is at an end. Who would have thought I’d end up writing my longest blog post about a Kiss album? Not only that, but a much maligned album at that! Well, anyway, I enjoyed writing about this neglected bit of Kisstory, and I hope I’ve inspired a few people to go out and track the album down. Let me tell you, for all of its bad reputation, you could do a whole lot worse than Music from “The Elder.” It’s brave, harebrained, majestic, subdued, catchy, turgid and very entertaining. I even have a theory about how this might be the most personal Kiss album of all. Themes of ambition, perseverance, self-assurance and overcoming obstacles? If you ask me, that’s the story of Kiss!

Words for a Missing Post, Part 1 … of 1

Due to overhanging work commitments, the third part of my Music from “The Elder” retrospective won’t be posted until Tuesday. A big sorry to anyone who might be waiting for the concluding installment!

In other news, it took less than two weeks for my guide to Gremlins in-jokes to become the most widely read OP-dEaD post since the blog’s inception. A big thank you to everyone who has checked it out so far, mostly by way of the link I posted at IMDb!

Gizmo was very pleased at the amount of blog hits his movie got.