|
|
 This was the first album I ever bought at the tender age of eight years old. Back then, I just liked the make-up and the great melodies, but as I have gotten older, my appreciation of this material has changed. In an age of rap and politically correct whine-rock with no tune whatsoever, Kiss is certainly a refreshing change. Love Gun is about sex and rock and roll, pure and simple (Kiss never sang about the drugs). The songs are full of melody, and the lyrics won't leave you depressed about life. Kiss certainly didn't waste time whining about what their parents did to them when they were kids or about how unfair life is like way too many modern rock bands do. Kiss was more interested in having a good time. If you don't understand that, you probably won't like it.Love Gun shows more polish than previous Kiss records. By this time, Kiss really knew how to write songs with great hooks that could grab the listener. The album is consistently good, which couldn't even be said for the album considered to be the all-time Kiss classic, Destroyer. The really strong tracks here are "Got Love For Sale," "Shock Me," and "I Stole Your Love." For those of us who hate being politically correct, "Christine Sixteen" and "Plaster Caster" are great songs, too. I really can't imagine any of the Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains clone bands releasing songs like that today. Maybe that's what makes it so fun. Sure, I got into the more "serious" alternative bands when I was in college. After I started losing interest in music altogether several years later, I came back to the stuff like this that made me love rock and roll in the first place. Love Gun isn't just nostalgia for me anymore...it's a classic I'm glad I rediscovered.
|
For many Kiss fans, this album was where it started and, unfortunately, ended as well. Originally released in 1977, Love Gun revealed a new Kiss look - more glitter, more stylized, more upscale - which moved them from the rougher, more menacing imagery of the past. No surprise then that the music had undergone a similar transformation. Gone were crackling demonic testaments to underworlds, virgin souls, perverted doctors and head-on accident victims. Love Gun - a cheapened reference to a (...) with most of the songs not-so-sly metaphors for sheet-rattling perversions of the kind only millionaire rock stars could enjoy. Sex was nothing new to Kiss songsheets, but here it took on a weird, twisted life of its own. Plaster Caster detailed the work of a group of groupies famous for casting the wigglies of rock stars in plaster. Shock Me, with its lazy rhymes and wizened chorus, celebrated a love of bondage and leather, while Got Love For Sale... well, love in Kissworld was always a synonym for sex and it didn't take a worldview to know the band were singing about hookers. In between these odes to debauchery, lurid tales of stalking young girls (Christine Sixteen), deflowering virgins (I Stole Your Love) and of course the title track and all it's juvenile penis-obsessed phrase-twisting. Worse, someone in an ego-addled display of stupidity decided to close the album with an old '50s singalong (Then She Kissed Me), which, despite it's obvious nod to the band, proved a disturbing snapshot of just how bad things were yet to get. Small wonder then Peter Criss' swinging Hooligan stood out as the album's better tracks. Small wonder too that when this album came out, new recruits raced to the band's back catalogue to soak up the wonders to behold on the first Alive album, Dressed to Kill, Hotter than Hell, Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over. Aside from the obvious bathroom wall sentiments, musically Love Gun is an abomination of over-polished pop and anemic anthems, not a tune of which stands out among Kiss' better work. For four fellows who prided themselves so obviously on their after-dark pursuits beneath the sheets, Love Gun is a limp and pathetic chink in the armour of a band who had all started taking themselves much too seriously. Pity.
