Monthly Archives: September 2011

Kiss ramblings II – September 2011

Posted on by Nils Brekke Svensson

Monster and the future of the music business

September is is almost over and my last ‘rambling’ post was quite piss poor, so I thought I would write a little about the music business and ‘record’ stores that are really starting to piss me off. I was involved in a discussion on Facebook about ‘physical media’ last night and It suddenly hit me that I could have problems to get the next Kiss release ‘Monster’ on the release date like I have with all records since Dynasty came out in 1979. Maybe It will be the first Kiss release I will have to order online to hear It at all.

What is the future of the music business. Or is there a future at all? Will we ever see bands with an incredible fan base as Kiss in the future? I really don’t think so. And who is to blame? My answer would be the ‘music and record business’. And please don’t give me the line about file-sharing and downloading. The rot in the business started a long time before the real decline started on the eve of the Twentieth Century.

In the beginning of the 70′s most records companies was run by people who loved music. And those kind of people built artists. If you didn’t succeed at first, they at least gave you a chance or two before you got the boot out the door. Kiss is a perfect example of this. The band needed three records before they really broke with Alive!, and even if they had not broken big they would have been able to go on with the sales they had up until then. And almost all the bands/artists that are big sellers today are artists who grew up under that climate. Continue reading →

Kiss ramblings – September 2011

Posted on by Nils Brekke Svensson

September has almost come and gone and I haven’t been able to update these pages as much as I want. Time just goes to fast and there is to much to do. I probably also have a little ‘Kiss depression’ because I’m not able to go on the Kiss Kruise. So I have been listening to Uriah Heep and the new Alice Cooper record ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ a lot the last couple of weeks. And I really have to recommend the Cooper record if your an Alice fan. I haven’t had a record on that high rotation since Sonic Boom came out in 2009. I really hope the new Kiss record ‘Monster’ will be as good as ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’.

At last I managed to fetch my Kiss Army Norway T-shirts from Stig. And I think they look really cool. And It’s great that we at last managed to get people what they have been asking for for many years. I hope the people that are going on the cruise will wear them with pride.

The ‘Kiss Party’ that Cato B. arranged in Oslo on Saturday was also cool. There were more people than I expected and I had real fun meeting at the cool ‘Kiss people’ again. The owner of the place seemed quite satisfied also. So there will probably be more Kiss parties at the same place.

That’s all for today.  I will be back with more stuff soon.

Kiss – Rocks Islington

Posted on by Nils Brekke Svensson

KISS – Rocks Islington
By: Vance Kent
Published September 2011, 138 pages (250 copies)

The “I WAS THERE” book

As all die hard Kiss fans know Kiss played an one off concert at O2 Academy in Islington, London last year. A small club with just room for a couple of hundred people. A concert that most Kiss fans could just dream about getting tickets to because of the demand. Even people that work at Classic Rock who arranged the concert had problems getting tickets for the event. But a lucky few got tickets by phone. And this book is their story (well mostly pictures) from the concert most fans just dreamed of seeing. Both the bootleg DVD’s and CD’s that have come from the show has been great so I was quite excited when I was told the book was coming out, even in a very limited edition. As I have said before I really love these ‘fan made’ books.

So first of all the book contains mostly pictures. So It isn’t very difficult to make up one opinion about the book. And the pictures are over all really good, and captures the same feeling I had when I was watching the bootleg DVD. The pictures are divided into ‘chapters’ from what song they are taken from. A really cool idea. The layout is also quite well done. After all the pictures we get some short stories from people who attended the concert. Not many, but the ones who are featured are a good read. I would really have liked to see lot’s more, because that is really a reason one would pull the book off the shelf more often. Continue reading →