Gene Simmons: “Studio bassists who play with their fingers live have no idea that we can’t hear what they’re playing”

[discreet]

2 minutes ago, JellyKnees said:

What ever happened to Montego biscuits though? Ginger AND chocolate... god we were spoiled in the 70s.

Yesh, an we got no teef. 

[JellyKnees]

Shpeek for yoshelf 

[PaulWarning]

1 hour ago, Lozz196 said:

On a similar vein I remember reading an interview with Cliff Williams of AC/DC who said that in the studio he used flats to record with, but live he used rounds for that extra bit of definition.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that a top session player used fingers in the studio but a pick live for this reason, can't remember his name though, I might have even dreamt it 

[Hellzero]

3 hours ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

^ This. I can't stand the group's music, but there's no denying he used to be a bit of a genius in terms of self-marketing.

I use the past tense, because the last time I saw him making headlines was because he'd used an interview to make a crass and (likely deliberately) offensive comment about people with mental health issues. Sure, it worked, it got people talking about him, but it seemed like a really cheap shot from a guy who used to be ahead of the curve in terms of marketing his band.

He surely was talking about himself. 

[Norris]

I never could get on with picks

Great for getting stray pieces of beef out of your teeth though

[LeftyP]

My mother always told me "If you pick it, it will not get better".  Always listen to your mum.

[pst62]

He's a T-wat! and his band are woeful!

Edited April 13, 2018 by pst62

[Bolo]

What a fuss. It's just American Abba innit?

[Rich]

Avoid politics please chaps. Thanks 

[FinnDave]

46 minutes ago, Rich said:

Avoid politics please chaps. Thanks 

I think this is good advice for life in general, not just on a bass forum. Avoid politics and the news and your life will be so much happier!

[bassbiscuits]

Gene Simmons - talking out of his a*se as ever. 

[Billy Apple]

for a start, he opens with "respectfully", so he's not being as much of an chocolate starfish as people are making out. It's just his opinion based on his (no small) experience. I like Kiss, as they're a band with a mid-level talent, but great showmanship who have undoubtedly left their mark. I wonder if the Kiss naysayers are a touch jealous a la Adam Clayton.

[Woodinblack]

No, not jealous, I have nothing against kiss specifically, but quite a bit of dislike for Gene Simmons. I wouldn't actually consider him a bass player anyway, I would consider him a Music Marketer.

 

[Lozz196]

2 hours ago, Billy Apple said:

for a start, he opens with "respectfully", so he's not being as much of an chocolate starfish as people are making out. It's just his opinion based on his (no small) experience. I like Kiss, as they're a band with a mid-level talent, but great showmanship who have undoubtedly left their mark. I wonder if the Kiss naysayers are a touch jealous a la Adam Clayton.

I think one of the things with KISS is that due to their flamboyance many think they can`t cut it musically. Fair enough, but on some of the tracks I`ve heard - am not a particular fan - when Gene Simmons` basslines have been pointed out, well I think he`s better than given credit for.

[Rich]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

I have nothing against kiss specifically, but quite a bit of dislike for Gene Simmons. I wouldn't actually consider him a bass player anyway, I would consider him a Music Marketer.

Quite so. In interviews in the past, he's been quite proud of the fact that his fugly 'Punisher' basses cost $250 to build and that there is no shortage of mug punters willing to pay him $2500 for them. Anyone who will so brazenly rip off his own fans and be proud of the fact that he's doing it is just worthy of contempt IMO. 

As for 'jealousy'... Do I wish I had his wealth? Yes of course. Do I wish my band was as successful as his? Yes. Do I wish I was him? Not in a million years.

[EssentialTension]

16 minutes ago, Rich said:

Quite so. In interviews in the past, he's been quite proud of the fact that his fugly 'Punisher' basses cost $250 to build and that there is no shortage of mug punters willing to pay him $2500 for them. Anyone who will so brazenly rip off his own fans and be proud of the fact that he's doing it is just worthy of contempt IMO. 

As for 'jealousy'... Do I wish I had his wealth? Yes of course. Do I wish my band was as successful as his? Yes. Do I wish I was him? Not in a million years.

It's worse than you think ....

[Guest Briton]

?

Edited June 23, 2018 by Briton

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 1, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[oldslapper]

My first gig was Kiss at Hammersmith Odeon 1976, great show. Simmons was particularly good at being centre of attention. I remember thinking throughout the show "how can he move in those boots?" & "those shoulder pads look very uncomfortable"

I know.......all the important stuff.

[skankdelvar]

10 hours ago, Jus Lukin said:

...Surely rock stars should be over the top, flamboyant, tastelessly rich, and contentious. As it's become fashionable to imagine that rock music somehow means something it's lost much of the big showiness which made it so fun and fantastical in years gone by...

I so much agree with this observation that I wish I could lay claim to its genesis. In the fullness of time, perhaps I will.

Moreover, I would contend that the pasteurisation of rock music has been one of a number of factors which have contributed to its decline in popularity. 

Let us consider the two most currently dominant genres: rap (in all its forms) and pop R&B. Are the pre-eminent practitioners of these styles "over the top, flamboyant, tastelessly rich and contentious"? Why, yes, indeedy. These people are - to coin a phrase - absolutely fabulous. They exude excess, reek of sex and they are coining it in. 

Contrast the rappers and the pop-stars with their po-faced, middle-class pygmy cousins in Rock, weeping their bitter tears of empathy, flaunting their jejune isshoos and their terribly-worthy-but-oh-so-dull causes. In particular the British end of Rock reminds one of the sort of vicarage tea-parties one attended in one's youth where disapproving drabsters sat around in a circle, sporting faces like a cat's bottom and droning on about the fragmentation of society and how simply awful everything is and patting themselves on the back about knitting socks for the poor black babies in Africa.

Of course, Metal's different but then it always is and always has been. Thankfully there exists still in Metal a spark of free-booting rebellion and roaring non-conformity. Metal fans are rather like Millwall supporters, I suppose; everyone hates them but they don't care. 

I digress. 

What it really comes down to is that by embracing the mimsy-ish, pursed-lipped sort of attitudes that would have met with the nodding approval of my Great Grandmother the rockers of today have utterly p1ssed on their own chips. At some point in the 1990's Rock (and its audience) turned its nose up at strong liquor, recreational narcotics, indiscriminate fornication and public urination; perhaps it's what genres do when they enter middle age. Rock entered a spiritual winter from which it is yet to emerge; as Mr David Coverdale once remarked: 'Dark days for a cocksman; dark days indeed'.

With fun out of the window, Rock needed to find another driver; sadly, it alighted upon 'hope'. Brandishing a rag-bag of causes such as sub-Saharan drought, gender oppression and that awful woman in Burma who turned out to be a wrong 'un (told ya) the prosing rock bores and their ghastly celebrity chums ultimately laid the foundations for the anodyne little squirts who currently prance around rock, tearfully unburdening themselves of matters of conscience while studiously avoiding giving offence or frightening the horses.

Commercially, around about 1996 rock cut off its own balls and it's been on the slide ever since, and no wonder. For while today's young people may very audibly bang on about their 21st century snowflake concerns I suspect that behind their masks of passive conformity they secretly yearn to lay beside a sun-drenched pool, counting their millions while an exotically tattoo'd midget shovels the purest cocaine up their surgically enlarged nostrils, this even as a giggling bevy of naked beauties of the opposite (or same) sex disport themselves in the jacuzzi, every one of them off their shining, youthful little faces on Kristal and ketamine, and frankly gagging for it.

And that's why Rap and R&B sell and Rock doesn't. Rock doesn't seem to realise there's no money in being a boring prude. So f**k Rock; Gene Simmons can try to keep the fire alive but the faux-rockers have taken over. There are filthier, more sporting musical genres out there if one knows where to look.

I leave the last word to Mr Richard (Little Richard) Penniman. In his autobiography he describes a post-gig dressing-room encounter with Mr Buddy Holly. Does Little Richard expiate upon Mr Holly's social views or his politics or his privilege? Not at all. For while Mr Holly engages in athletic coition with a proto-groupie upon the dressing-room couch Mr Penniman observes that Buddy has 'the biggest c0ck I ever saw on a white boy'.

That, my dears, is Rock (and Roll). 

Edited April 15, 2018 by skankdelvar

[FinnDave]

And if that ain't the last word on the subject, I don't know what is!

[Hellzero]

Everbody knows that Rock died with the arrival of the no future (sic) Punk in 1976. So being a rocker, a punker or even worst a punk rocker in 2018 just makes me laugh or puke, to deserve the last ones view. 

[Dad3353]

30 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

...that awful woman in Burma who turned out to be a wrong 'un (told ya) ...

Not helped by a current ultra-PC attitude (in my view...) increasingly prevalent in bass fora of precluding any and all even faintly political mention, stifling any potentially 'offensive' posts, leaving only a 'good for metal' retort or another recommendation to use flats on a Pee bass. Oh, well; at least the cats and dogs are fed. 

[skankdelvar]

38 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Oh, well; at least the cats and dogs are fed. 

I assume that 'au moins les chats et les chiens sont nourris' is a French expression which means something. Were my old chum the Viscomte de Malsain-les-Odeurs-Subterrannées du Brebingotte Nonsanfichtre still with us I'd send him round to your house and you could have a nice chat about les chiens and les chats.

As for Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi: at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular I laid before BassChat the matter of her father Aung San (the father of Myanmar), he it was who despite before the war being a Communist then reversed direction during the Japanese occupation, raised an 'anti-British' Burmese militia, served as Burma's 'puppet' war minister and was honoured by Hirohito before once more turning turning his coat and coming over to our side.

Some might consider Aung San to have been a thoroughly bad hat and that this might justify the actions of certain individual British soldiers who may have supplied the weapons used to whack him and six of his cabinet in July 1947. I couldn't possibly say.

My rehearsal some years ago of Mr Aung San's chequered past ran headlong into a wave of tearful sympathy for his daughter's then predicament, i.e. banged up by the military government, which condition being the object of widespread lamentation among celebrity rock activists (rocktivists).

I often wonder how Bono feels, having helped to spring someone who is now a party to the Rohingya genocide? It would be ripping if someone were to ask him, preferably during the bit where he does the maudlin hand-clapping thing (if that's still part of his act).

Edited April 15, 2018 by skankdelvar

[Dad3353]

8 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

I assume that 'au moins les chats et les chiens sont nourris' is a French expression which means something...

Not at all (at least, not until today. I may have started something, though  ...). It's merely a reflection of the 'important' stuff posted in today's enlightened, heady topics, whereby no fluffy animals are harmed; quite the opposite. The plight of the Rest of the World has been quite firmly put on a back-burner. Progress, I suppose.