My Writings on HubPages ...

I didn't hear "The Elder" till the late 80s when I was in college. I was a casual KISS fan at that time, I owned a couple of albums but my fanaticism wasn't in full flower yet, haha.

But in '88 or '89 one of my frat brothers donated a bunch of his old records to our fraternity lounge (apparently he'd found Jeebus and was giving up all of his "Devil Music"...pffft.), and I found "Elder" in the pile. I only knew of its rep as the worst KISS album so I sez "Oh cool, I've always wanted to hear this" and threw it on. I was probably expecting to turn it off halfway thru in disgust, but I played it all the way to the end and when it was over I went "Wow, y'know, that was actually kinda cool." Haha.

I know it's the red headed stepkid of the KISS catalog but I still dig it even though most fans either hate it or refuse to acknowledge its existence.

I refuse to acknowledge anything they recorded after Lick It Up.

S.D. wrote:

I refuse to acknowledge anything they recorded after Lick It Up.

I'm mostly a fanboy but even I will admit that I've had a love/hate relationship with 'em over the years. I still love the '70s stuff, and I enjoyed their first couple of '80s albums (i.e. Creatures, Lick It Up), but then I went away for a while till Revenge in '92.

I still refuse to allow the Crazy Nights or Hot In The Shade albums in my house (sooooo awful!), or the Peter Criss solo album.

Fat Freddy wrote:

S.D. wrote:

I refuse to acknowledge anything they recorded after Lick It Up.

I'm mostly a fanboy but even I will admit that I've had a love/hate relationship with 'em over the years. I still love the '70s stuff, and I enjoyed their first couple of '80s albums (i.e. Creatures, Lick It Up), but then I went away for a while till Revenge in '92.

I still refuse to allow the Crazy Nights or Hot In The Shade albums in my house (sooooo awful!), or the Peter Criss solo album.

.................and that's the kind of sugar papa likes..................

I heard a new Warrior Soul track yesterday... which inspired me to write a new "Brief History of so-and-so" entry about 'em in honor of their forthcoming album.

http://hub.me/aekJz

...aaaaand another new one!! I'm on a roll this week.
Seriously though, I've had a couple of these "Forgotten Hard Rock Albums" entries in various stages of completion so I figured it was about time I started finishing some of'em and throwin' em out there.



http://hub.me/ad63S

Geez, it's been almost a month since I last published a new Hub. Time to get things goin' again, cuz I want to have a total of 100 entries by the end of this year.

Anywhoo, today I present a new installment of "Forgotten Hard Rock Albums" and this time the lucky recipient is Dee Snider's Widowmaker and their 1992 debut Blood & Bullets. Check it out, yo.



http://hub.me/aelng

I'm on a Hub roll this week. Here's my take on the new KISS album.

http://hub.me/aesd3

Good reviews, FF. I still haven't gotten around to "Monster"...

New one!



I stumbled across the trailer for the upcoming film "Silent Night" (a supposedly "loose" remake of the semi-classic Killer Santa movie, "Silent Night, Deadly Night") this evening on YouTube, and it inspired my newest blog about Christmas releated horror flicks... hope y'all dig..

http://hub.me/aeuIo

Fat Freddy wrote:

New one!



I stumbled across the trailer for the upcoming film "Silent Night" (a supposedly "loose" remake of the semi-classic Killer Santa movie, "Silent Night, Deadly Night") this evening on YouTube, and it inspired my newest blog about Christmas releated horror flicks... hope y'all dig..

http://hub.me/aeuIo

I was never a big fan of Christmas-horror flicks, except for the original version of Black Christmas from 1974.

Quote :

I was never a big fan of Christmas-horror flicks, except for the original version of Black Christmas from 1974.

Yeah, "Black Christmas" is a great one. (The remake, not so much, other than the eye candy. Haha).

Aside from that one and the original "Silent Night Deadly Night" (which is just so sleazy/trashy that you can't help but love it!) I'm not particularly huge on Xmas horror either, but I swear, after I saw the new "Silent Night" trailer the damn thing practically wrote itself.

Time for another "Forgotten Hard Rock Albums" entry... and the lucky winners this time are Savatage.


http://hub.me/aewpk

Great write-up, FF. Picked one of my favorite albums, too.

Metal-On-Metal wrote:

Great write-up, FF. Picked one of my favorite albums, too.

Thanx. I honestly could've written about ANY of Savatage's albums cuz they're so criminally underrated, but I figured Edge was a good one since it was sort of a pivotal record for them with the new singer, and with them losing Criss Oliva so soon afterward...

Edge Of Thorns and Gutter Ballet were my introduction to the band. I really dig The Wake Of Magellan as well. Hell, I dig Savatage period!

The first Savatage I owned was "The Dungeons Are Calling" EP which I grabbed from the new release wall at a record store when it first came out.

I was a fan through Gutter Ballet (less said about Fight For The Rock the better), started to lose interest when Streets came out...I had no desire to listen to "The Paul O'Neill Project" and I thought most of Streets was just incredibly lame...Jesus Saves is awesome though.

I liked Edge Of Thorns better...but then Criss died and as far as I'm concerned Savatage died with him. I've listened to all the albums after his death but never liked any of them enough to actually spend money on them.

Yeesh, I have had no time to do any new HubPages lately with the holiday season in full swing, but this is kinda funny: I got a semi-trolling, pro-Geoff Tate (!) comment on my Queensryche article that I posted a while back about the split with Geoff.

The article can be found here: http://fatfreddyscat.hubpages.com/hub/Meet-QUEENSRYCHE-Both-of-Them

Some of the highlights from this dude's lengthy ramble:
"What kinda fans were u? Not long ago u guys wanted to give Geoff a knob job, but now ur hating him! Bunch of lame phonies! Good luck with ur tribute band! I'll wait for Geoff's version of Ryche... and ya all will be jumping on the bandwagon when it smokes the REAL version of Queensryche."

Uhhhh... yeah, okay. Thanks for dropping by. I'm sure Geoff is proud to have someone so eloquent in his corner.

Dang! I haven't posted a new Hub in over a month! Time to get the train rollin' again with a Metal Preview for the first quarter of 2013.


http://hub.me/aeGuF

So hey, I watched a whoooooole lotta movies in 2012 (I need to get out more...) so I wrote a Hub ramblin' about a bunch of em.



http://hub.me/aeHrr

My first ever book review. I just finished this excellent (although depressing, infuriating and horrifying) book on the infamous "Great White Nightclub Fire" in 2003 and had to say a few words 'bout it.

http://hub.me/aeIxW

Wow Freddy, your article on a year in movies was pretty good man, some of those flicks I've seen and totally agree with your writings on them, I have to say more people need to get into animated movies, those DC animated flicks are pretty damn good and I'm not much of a DC fan, but I'm impressed with the stuff that's been coming out. I was surprised with how good Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies was it actually had a good story for a straight to DVD flick. I was also equally majorly disappointed with the second installment of Ghost Rider, the first was just freaking great, but the second although it had over the top special effects just lost something in the storytelling, bummer. Anyway great reads man, keep em' up.

^^ Thanks Gersh. I had a lot of fun with that 2012 movie rundown. Looking over the list of everything I'd watched over the year, my first reaction was "damn, I watch a lot of weird shit," I mean, one night I'm watching an award winning documentary, and the next I'm diggin' "2 Headed Shark Attack," that's pretty diverse I think, haha.

A guy at work intro'd me to the DC Animated Universe series a few months ago, till then I had no idea that those movies even existed but now I'm hooked. I was always more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy too but I love me a good Batman or Superman story and those animated Batman flicks have been mostly kickass, esp. "Under the Red Hood" which I swear is superior to many of the live action Batman films (and it's definitely not for the kiddies either!)

"Ghost Rider 2" didn't even feel like a Ghost Rider movie to me. It actually kinda reminded me of those "Prophecy" movies w/Christopher Walken, with Ghost Rider shoe-horned in as a special guest star.

The first Ghost Rider was a turd floating in a swimming pool, I can't even imagine how bad the sequel must be.

S.D. wrote:

The first Ghost Rider was a turd floating in a swimming pool, I can't even imagine how bad the sequel must be.

Take it from one who's seen both "G.R." films: compared to "Spirit of Vengeance," the first movie looks like 24 karat gold.