SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Rock and Roll Over (1976).
After Alive!, Kiss released what I think of as the cartoon albums. These next three discs all had cartoon covers, which also coincides with their huge ascent into fame. I tend to think of Destroyer and Love Gun more than this one (maybe full-bodied pictures are more memorable than just their faces), even though this one has a huge share of important Kiss songs like “I Want You” (which has an amazingly long version on Alive II).
I never really liked “Take Me,” there’s something about the chanting backing vocals that irks me (although “Put your hand in my pocket, grab onto my rocket” is one of my favorite Kiss couplets). But “Calling Dr. Love” is a wonderful twisted song (the falsetto backing vocals are so doo wop, it’s funny to contemplate the band’s musical direction at this point). I loved this song so much it even features in one of my first short stories.
As an eight year old, I could never figure out what Gene would be doing in the “Ladies Room”–since he was a boy and all. Naiveté is a wonderful thing to have as a young person listening to Kiss–I had no idea what was going on in most of the songs–I wonder if my parents bothered to listen to the lyrics at all.
I also never really liked “Baby Driver” all that much–I don’t know if it’s Peter’s voice, or that I can’t figure out what the hell this song is about but it’s still just okay to me–although I like the guitars at the end. I love the solo in “Love ‘Em Leave ‘Em”–although the sentiment is not the best. Of course, the sentiment in “Mr. Speed” cracks me up: “I’m so fast, that’s why the ladies call me Mr. Speed.” Did that mean something different in 1976?
“See You in Your Dreams” was covered by Gene on his solo album, and I think I like that version better (it’s more theatrical). Although this one has very interesting use of Beatlesesque harmonies. “Hard Luck Woman” is wonderful song, and I do like Peter’s voice here, yes. But who the hell is Rhett? “Making Love” ends the disc. I like the break in the middle and the awesome guitar solo. Also, Paul’s vocals have some cool effects on them.
This is a fun album. Even the songs I don’t love are still songs that I like quite a bit. It’s a nice contrast from the bombast of Destroyer. The amazing thing is that both this album and Destroyer are barely over 30 minutes long. Were they making albums so frequently that they didn’t have any more songs, or were they just following the Beatles model: make an album every 7 months to stay in the public’s eye?
[READ: October 2, 2011] Dogwalker
I can’t believe how quickly I read this book. I wasn’t even planning on reading the whole thing just yet, but I started the first story and it was so quick to read and so enjoyable that I couldn’t stop. I finished the whole book in a couple of hours (it helps that a number of stories are barely 4 pages and that it’s barely 150 pages). The title of the book is something of a mystery as there are a lot of dogs in the stories, but walking is about the furthest thing from what happens to them. I was also somewhat surprised to see how many of these pieces I had already read (Bradford was in five of the first six McSweeney’s issues).
This collection is certainly not for everyone. In fact when I recounted the story “Dogs,” Sarah was disgusted and said she would never read the story. Bradford definitely pushes some boundaries, but they’re mostly in an attempt to find humor, so I think that’s cool. Sarah even admitted that the end of “Dogs” sounded funny (although she was still disgusted). The two things I found odd about the stories were that two of them featured a three-legged dog, which seems a little lazy to me–although I don’t know what the dog might signify. And two of them featured someone or something singing unexpectedly and the narrator getting a tape recorder to surreptitiously save this special recording. Again, it’s a really unusual thing to happen at all, but to have that happen in two stories?
Aside from those little complaints, the stories were fun, funny and certainly weird.
“Catface” is one of two stories that had multiple parts. It also sets the tone for the book–a detached tone that I found very funny but also very effective in conveying normalcy during decidedly abnormal scenes. In Part One, the narrator goes through a series of roommates, each one lasting less and less time. But one in particular, Thurber, stayed for a while and really took advantage of him (even stealing some of the narrator’s clothes right in front of him–the narrator admits he’s pretty much a wimp). Eventually, he gets a roommate who sticks around for a while. Then Thurber comes back, and the new roommate plans, in successively more violent ways (including a hex), to “take care” of Thurber.
When the new roommate leaves (all the roommates leave), the narrator gets a three-legged dog (first appearance). While walking the dog (okay I guess he does walk them), he meets a woman whose dog just gave birth to a litter of mutant puppies (this is the first of two stories that feature mutant puppies as well, although the second story’s mutants are craaazy).
The titular Catface is a friend of Thurber, but he eventually becomes the narrator’s roommate. He’s a tough guy (whose face looks like a cat’s) but when he’s asleep, he sings an adorable song about a cotton rabbit. Catface doesn’t know or acknowledge this song at all, so the narrator tapes it (first appearance). The story then goes in a really strange direction (because so far it’s been pretty normal?) at the end that revolves around the mutant puppies and Catface’s family (all of whom have rather catlike features). It’s a weird triptych of stories, but it’s very enjoyable. And the ending is surprisingly sweet.
“Mollusks” appeared in the first McSweeney’s. I enjoyed it then, but enjoyed it more this time. The imagery of the narrator’s friend and this giant slug (it weight about the same as a ham) is so vivid. The “plot” in which the narrator tries to seduce his friend’s wife is really unexpected, but the story is so short it plays out very well.
“The Texas School for the Blind” was published as a “letter” to McSweeney’s #4. As such, it is a very short piece in which the narrator is an employee of the school (the narrator in “Mollusks” also works there, and I like that kind of serendipity). He has a very hard time working with a certain blind and deaf boy who clearly doesn’t like him, and the story gets a little out of hand. It’s very funny in its deadpan telling.
“South for the Winter” puts a dose of reality on the fantasy of “hopping in the car and getting out of town.” Something they never show in movies–what if you’re broke? Just how far are you going to get? Oh, and the fact that the car is owned by a blond man–that makes this story totally wonderful.
“Mattress” is a full length story (the previous three were all about 4 pages each). In it the narrator is going to buy a mattress from a stranger. He gets one of his roommates (a suitably reckless man who doesn’t seem to slow down for anything) to drive him across town to pick it up. After engaging the woman a little (and failing to find out why she is getting rid of the mattress), they throw the mattress and box spring on the back of the truck. It never says that they secure it, and when they get home the box spring is there but the mattress is not. They go back to look for it. The driver (who has by now chugged a beer and popped some pills) is worried that furniture scavengers might have found it (furniture scavengers??). The story wraps up in a very satisfying way (that ties back to the beginning) but the whole “plot” is just so weird that it’s more than just a typical “driving around” story.
“The House of Alan Matthews” is one of the strangest stories in the bunch (and that’s saying a lot). It’s especially strange because of what is unstated and because there’s no mutants or dogs anywhere to be seen. The narrator goes over to a drug dealer’s house and finds something very disturbing in the crawl space. We get some great deadpan dialogue but no answer to the inevitable question of why. And so it just kind of hangs there. It’s wonderfully twisted.
“Six Dog Christmas” (he really does write a lot about dogs) is a crazy story about a lady with a clutch of puppies and no apparent thought of what to do with them (one is killed by a radio?!). It’s not the most satisfying of the bunch because there’s not a lot of conflict.
“Bill McQuill” is a another story in which two people are thrown together (they both share the rooms that are in the attic of a boarding house–the only way in is up the fire escape and through the bathroom window). Bill is a loud man who is prone to erratic behavior–he steals a little girl’s bike to give to the narrator who said he was thinking about getting a bike. But the bulk of the story centers around the train tracks near the house. More dogs are involved (and more are fatally wounded–geez, how many dead dogs can one guy write about?), but the guts of the story come when Bill himself is struck by a train–and lives. The story is very dark and although it has comic moments it’s probably the least fun of the book.
“Little Rodney” is a three-legged dog (appearance #2). Rodney hates the narrator, but when Rodney’s owners go away and ask the narrator to take care of him, Rodney has to suck it up. Or run away. Which he does. When the narrator is out looking for him he meets a woman shouting for “Isabella.” He decides that he will bond with her over their lost dogs. But before he can talk to her he sees a giant snake by his car. And the snake has a large swelling in its abdomen. The story goes in a very unexpected direction from there and I enjoyed it more with each passing paragraph.
“Chainsaw Apple” was in McSweeney’s #2. I enjoyed the story then, but enjoyed it even more in the context of Bradford’s other stories–stories of misfits doing fairly stupid things but with the best of intentions. And yes it is about a chainsaw and an apple. Again, the deadpan delivery is fantastic.
“Dogs” I have already mentioned. The reason that Sarah didn’t want to know anything about it is because it starts off like this: “No doubt you’ll think I’m strange when I tell you I’ve been making love with my girlfriend’s dog. But that is not my most unsettling secret.” It’s hard to know what to say about this story because each revelation is wonderful (and more disturbing) but I don’t want to spoil anything. As I said, by the end, the story is so disturbing that it moves firmly into the comical. And in the final scenes, when the harmonizing vocals come in (I know, right) it’s just really very funny. My theory is that he wanted to see how far he could go into taboo territory and still have the story be funny and the characters be sympathetic. This is the second story in the book that features someone recording an unexpectedly beautiful singing voice (in this case, it comes from a muskrat in the couch). This story also features: an iron lung, mutant puppies and multiple parts.
“Roslyn’s Dog” was in McSweeney’s 6 and as I mentioned there, the audio version (the book came with a CD) of the story differs from the printed one. I liked the audio version better. And this version of the story is the audio version. This version has a nice twist which makes the story darker–and provides a more engaging ending.
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As I said, this was a very fast read. The stories were funny and weird. But mostly it was the delivery that made them so wonderful. Insane things happen but there is very little in the way of “hey look how crazy this is” in the writing. The weird things are just stated matter of factly and often never explained or justified. And once you get into the world, it all makes its own logical sense. Very enjoyable stuff.
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