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A review by bent
They Just Seem a Little Weird: How Kiss, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll by Doug Brod
2.0
Full disclosure - I'm more a child of the '80s than the '70s, so that may have effected my reaction to this book. I had heard of Starz because [a:Martin Popoff|34704|Martin Popoff|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1331675676p2/34704.jpg] has written about a couple of their albums in his Ye Olde Metal series. That's where I've also heard of Angel. But otherwise, I would never have heard of either of these bands, and now that I've checked out their music a bit, I don't think I missed much. I had never heard any Cheap Trick before my first year of university when their video for their cover of "Don't be Cruel" was in heavy rotation. At some point, I picked up their greatest hits, along with those of Foreigner and Bad Company, and didn't really find much on it to my liking beyond "Dream Police."
I didn't know KISS were still around until they took off their makeup. I remembered when they first got big when I was a kid, but by the time I was listening to music, they weren't on my radar, so taking off their makeup kind of put them back on my radar. I had Double Platinum and a few of their '80s albums, and have seen them twice - once without makeup and then once again with. I had Aerosmith's entire back catalogue at one point, up to Pump, although I think that was more of me being a completist than actually being a huge Aerosmith fan. I have read bios and auto-bios of KISS and Aerosmith before.
I'm not really sure why this book caught my eye - maybe it just seemed that it would be interesting. There's an overview of the careers of each of the bands, although I noticed at one point that less time was spent on Aerosmith than the other four. There's a lot of random stories, some interesting, some less-so. The connections between the band seem very forced at times - "Gene Simmons' gardener once sat next to Brad Whitford in a barber shop" kind of thing. Not that incidental, but some of the connections were pretty close.
At one point (pg. 183), Brod, in talking about these four band, says: "... all of them were just a bit ... different. So were a few other American bands at the time. Alice Cooper, the Tubes and Sparks, to name three, all trafficked in theatrics and humor. But with the exception of Cooper's, their music was too brainy and their appearance to outre to garner any lasting mass success." This sounds like a bit of a suspect statement, considering that Starz also failed to garner any lasting mass success. So are the forgotten Starz more relevant than the forgotten Sparks and Tubes? I actually remember hearing a Tubes song, "She's a Beauty" on rotation on the radio, which is more than I can say for Starz.
The argument that these four bands remade rock & roll is a little suspect - Brod seems to base it on the fact that a lot of members of bands that came later were fans of these bands. Besides naming later bands that cited these bands as influences, he never really delves any farther into trying to prove that these four groups rewrote the rules. Presumably, these later bands had other influences, or other members who Brod doesn't quote brought different musical inspirations along. His whole argument to justify this book seems more like artifice to connect a bunch of random band stories than anything with any solid grounding in fact.
Some chapters - a chapter on rock journalism, a chapter on booking agents - seem just randomly thrown in and a little boring. The book does seemed padded at times, and there are parts that seem to be just there so Brod could include a story - I'd read certain paragraphs and think "why?"
If this is your era, you'll probably get more out of it than I did. There's some decent stuff here, but nothing compelling or life-changing. Definitely more of a supplementary material type of book than a must-read.
I didn't know KISS were still around until they took off their makeup. I remembered when they first got big when I was a kid, but by the time I was listening to music, they weren't on my radar, so taking off their makeup kind of put them back on my radar. I had Double Platinum and a few of their '80s albums, and have seen them twice - once without makeup and then once again with. I had Aerosmith's entire back catalogue at one point, up to Pump, although I think that was more of me being a completist than actually being a huge Aerosmith fan. I have read bios and auto-bios of KISS and Aerosmith before.
I'm not really sure why this book caught my eye - maybe it just seemed that it would be interesting. There's an overview of the careers of each of the bands, although I noticed at one point that less time was spent on Aerosmith than the other four. There's a lot of random stories, some interesting, some less-so. The connections between the band seem very forced at times - "Gene Simmons' gardener once sat next to Brad Whitford in a barber shop" kind of thing. Not that incidental, but some of the connections were pretty close.
At one point (pg. 183), Brod, in talking about these four band, says: "... all of them were just a bit ... different. So were a few other American bands at the time. Alice Cooper, the Tubes and Sparks, to name three, all trafficked in theatrics and humor. But with the exception of Cooper's, their music was too brainy and their appearance to outre to garner any lasting mass success." This sounds like a bit of a suspect statement, considering that Starz also failed to garner any lasting mass success. So are the forgotten Starz more relevant than the forgotten Sparks and Tubes? I actually remember hearing a Tubes song, "She's a Beauty" on rotation on the radio, which is more than I can say for Starz.
The argument that these four bands remade rock & roll is a little suspect - Brod seems to base it on the fact that a lot of members of bands that came later were fans of these bands. Besides naming later bands that cited these bands as influences, he never really delves any farther into trying to prove that these four groups rewrote the rules. Presumably, these later bands had other influences, or other members who Brod doesn't quote brought different musical inspirations along. His whole argument to justify this book seems more like artifice to connect a bunch of random band stories than anything with any solid grounding in fact.
Some chapters - a chapter on rock journalism, a chapter on booking agents - seem just randomly thrown in and a little boring. The book does seemed padded at times, and there are parts that seem to be just there so Brod could include a story - I'd read certain paragraphs and think "why?"
If this is your era, you'll probably get more out of it than I did. There's some decent stuff here, but nothing compelling or life-changing. Definitely more of a supplementary material type of book than a must-read.