Page 8 -The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, October 7, 1987 Records Kiss Crazy Nights PolyGram Today it would be difficult defending Kiss as the hottest band in the world. But back in the days of monkey bars, sack lunches, and cooties, I played my Kiss albums when I wanted the best and, dammit, I got the best. Kiss was the ultimate in rock 'n' roll glitter - no one even came close. Masqueraded by makeup and elevated by high heels, the fiery (even fire breathing) foursome literally exploded - with the help of flash pots - into rock 'n' roll stardom and into the minds of dirty faced adolescents. The band was highly visual before there was MTV, mostly due to their somewhat self- indulgent tendencies. There were the comic books, miniature dolls, Kiss Army, and the made for T.V. movie Kiss Meets the Phantom. This flamboyant showmanship and Gene Simmon's monster tongue were un- derstandably not for everyone, especially hard core rockers. But if not taken too seriously their whole image was obnoxiously fun as were their lyrics. And the music wasn't bad, either. The Kiss I grew up with is long gone; just like Slime and my Evel Knievel stunt van. Fortunately I can look back on the later and smile, recalling fond childhood memories. However, with Kiss, I must put up with mediocre releases from today's version of the band - minus the glitter, minus the make up, and minus originality. Only two of the founding members remain intact. Gone is Peter Criss and his elevating, thirteen piece drum set. Gone is Ace Frehley, lead guitar. This is why I have problems with their latest lackluster release, Crazy Nights. The band's sound is nothing new and often resembles Loverboy with former starman Paul Stanley's vocals sounding like Mike Reno in a pair of red leather pants that are to snug in the crotch. The album's first track, "Crazy, Crazy, Nights" is a bland, back patting anthem with Paul Stanley preaching "This is my music, it makes me proud/these are my people and this is my crowd." And this is from the guy who once told us to shout it out loud? Ouch. At times, though, the lyrics are so ridiculously pompous that they conjure up images of the mock heroic rock band Spinal Tap. Although it falls short of Kiss classics like "C'mon and Love Me," "Dr. Love," "Love Gun," and "Christine Sixteen," "Bang Bang You" delivers a male chauvanist pig- headed message that is delivered in the exaggerated, cocksure manner Kiss fans are accustomed to. In the song's opening line Paul Stanley boasts "My love is like a cannonball/I'm takin' aim and your gonna fall" before the now makeup- less machos break into the chorus "I'm gonna bang, bang you/I'll shoot you down with my love gun baby." Love gun. Hmmm. Maybe the band is missing the old Kiss, too. -Brian Bonet On their new album, 'Crazy Nights,'Kiss continues to sport their new, lackluster image - minus facial makeup and minus all the glitter. Books 4 Town Smokes By Pinckney Benedict Ontario Review Press $9.95/softcover With the debut publication of Town Smokes, a slender yet rugged collection of nine short stories penned by Pinckney Benedict, the literary world has been graced with the sacred benediction of a genuine, country bred talent. Benedict, a mere 23 years of age, whose rustic style and lyrically ver- nacular language is heavily redolent of the late, great Southern prodigy Breece D'J Pancake, writes with a vernal yet authoritative voice that writers twice his age strive to possess. Raised on a dairy farm in West Virginia, Benedict draws from experiences of this agrestic locale and, in his own sort of folksy prose, depicts a South that makes the setting of Buford T. Pussett's Walking Tall look like a romanticized postcard-portrait of Redneck County. In these nine nicely balanced stories of crawdad cooking, pit-dog fighting, and hog and snake hunting, where Bible pages are used more as cigarette papers than for personal revelation, Benedict, with keen insight and vividly detailed, mind- probing perceptions, lures the reader into his storytelling vehicle with his "down home" voice and then plunges you on a heart-riveting, hog-in-heat wild rollercoaster hell-ride through harsh Southern terrain unfit for even the bravest of souls. Rusted out cars hunched up on cinder blocks, rabid, rovering, yellow-eyed dogs, trailer homes, and moonshine stills are some of the common elements of the junkyard decor portrayed in Benedict's masculine county-culture. Benedict doesn't refrain from telling it like it is, and his narrations are often written in dispassionately frigid tones that coerce you into a state of grave discomfort. In "All The Dead," the strongest story in this collection, a young man, Adonijah, casually comments on the death of his father who got caught in a rampant crossfire of bullets: "A state trooper name of J.W. Davis shot my daddy in the face with his Colt .38 Special and killed him dead as hell...From what I hear he was a good-looken man before he got shot but mebbe not too good when it come to thinken quick." The characters found in Town Smokes come from working class farming families. Many of them work in factories, hog farms, and slaughterhouses.; most of them have strong penchants for violence, which is instilled at a tender age as is indicative in Cates, the young narrator of the opening piece, "The Sutton Pie Safe," a coming of age story where he informs us: "I loved the crack of the gun, the smell of sulphur from the opened breech." Guns and knives are carried around like pocket change, and are, without a moment's hesitation, employed as convincing means of protection and persuasion. Characters such as these, whose actions and trigger fingers speak louder than words, dominate Town Smokes. Yet Benedict's characters should not be rendered as callous, hard- shelled cretins, for beneath their tough exteriors lies a deeply rooted sense of Southern empathy. As in "Dog," a story in which the main character, a man haunted by a moaning dog that has crawled beneath his trailer home to die, solves both his and the dog's dilemma by putting the canine out of its misery. After inflicting the fatal wound with a .45 caliber pistol, the man lies there enviously eyeing the dead dog, musing to himself: "Didn' have nobody in the world to take up for you, did you." Sentiment such as this, although not volting with emotion, resides in the hearts of Benedict's hardy, fully fleshed out characters. Pinckney Benedict has been blessed with the divine gift of storytelling. Town Smokes introduces us to a fresh new talent, an original voice, that deserves attention. Benedict has a bright future and this collection, in due time, will be, or at least should be, recognized as one of the most memorable debuts of the eighties. -Peter Markus 4 Advertise in The Michigan Doily I * Flexible evening hours - $4 -$6/hour plus bonuses - Build your communication z skills and resume - 763-7420 I v C) - 611 Church St. 3rd floor ,w V~ A