#Lonely is the Hunter

[rolandrockover]

Eye of the Burning Hunter

Eric Carr's Eyes of Love (1989) is one of those fan favorites that unfortunately didn't make it onto a Kiss album. The indignation about this should be all the greater because in this case we are talking about the completely overloaded and somewhat indecisive Hot in the Shade (1989) of all things.

What the exact reasons may have been within a hopefully objectively functioning exclusion procedure is something everyone is welcome to think about for themselves, but hopefully not without at least taking a closer look at the music first. And why should you do something like this alone when it works just as well together and in the best of company?

So, Eyes of Love sounds admittedly less like Kiss in itself, or rather its somewhat unwieldy overall picture doesn't quite, but the individual parts it contains all the more. For the intro and main riff, for example, I can think of two reference sources that can both easily be assigned to Animalize (1984), the album that probably best musically manifests Gene's estrangement from the band at the time.

If you were now to hybridize Burn Bitch Burn (1) and Lonely is the Hunter's riffs, we'd almost have it, the point is just that Eyes of Love does somehow sound better than the other two both together (2), with a little more vibrant swing, which, once it gets going, gives it something quite nasty and monstrous. Unusual when something like this doesn't come from Gene, but certainly not unwelcome on my part.

But if you want to give it a little extra thought, you could ask yourself whether Eyes of Love isn't rather based on Killers' (1982) Down On Your Knees and tries to make something better out of its riff, which itself wasn't really able to do. A certain additional proximity to Down On Your Knees' middle part (3) would certainly speak in favor of this. But let's just leave it at that.

Apart from that, I can think of a few isolated bits and pieces that are reused here and there, serving as pads or whatever. Something that sounds like a higher swinging Plaster Caster (1977) riff, a certain The Elder (1981) touch as we know it from Only You, or a fill segment of When Your Walls Come Down (1987) and one of those rock n' roll standard licks that usually ends Rock and Roll All Nite (1975) live (4).

And although all the segments seem polished, the transitions flow smoothly and interlock like clockwork, it's still the not-so-simple song structure that, from my perspective, perhaps refuses to fit into Kiss' much smoother arrangement ratio of the time, thus naturally standing out quite a bit; and thus in some people's eyes, one looks in the direction of the two HITS, uhm… producers, might seem unfinished, or even useless. For their purposes. And not just to my regret.

Anyway, perhaps Eyes of Love only got in the way of Gene's and Bruce's not entirely dissimilar but much, muuuch more polished Prisoner of Love, but I prefer to continue to harbor my very own doubts about this idea. Basically, I'm only surprised that Gene didn't take it on and that it didn't fall into his clutches.

Probably because of the too many song credits. You know, less dough to share.

Wink emoji?

Side Notes:

(1) I mean even Eric's verse vocal sounds like the Burn Bitch Burn riff, with a slight biker rock and a AC/DC Highway to Hell feel.

(2) And I say that even though I like those Gene songs, especially Burn Bitch Burn. And I guess so did Eric Carr, because I happen to know that he loved to play Burn Bitch Burn live with its pumping drums and bass.

(3) Who remembers this part of Down On Your Knees, which bears an unmistakable resemblance to a song from Destroyer (1976)? You can refresh your memory of it right here, by the way.

(4) And no, I'm not going to highlight any of the links. That's too much fiddly work for me today. I'll probably cobble together some detailed Reprise entries out of this some day, or something.

I've limited the links to Eyes of Love, Burn Bitch Burn, Lonely is the Hunter and Down On Your Knees for the love of simplicity. Trust me, nobody loves too many links:

Eyes of Love (1989)

Lonely is the Hunter (1984)

Burn Bitch Burn (1984)

Down On Your Knees (1982)

[rabid-dog-steve-horn]

Lonely Is The Hunter

[rttnpnkpmpkn]

Male Love Interests + My PC <3

[occudo]

Would you look at that... another vampire AU... I wanted to make a more put-together vampire Gerry costume, but then my mind went to other places.

[mishacakes]

sometimes different hyperfixations roil around in your head and you go “hmmm how can i combine these”. also sometimes ur like “damn this visual is cool” and have to exorcise it like a demon

[yellowbugifs]

194/365 days of regina mills

[flowerytale]

Carson McCullers, from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

[turtledotjpeg]

thinking about that "I don't have anyone close to me" line 🤔

[marosii]

Listen no one said there's no such thing as a cowboy hunter

[moodyseal]

No other god has taken as many Ls as the twins have in the entirety of the Riordanverse

[ninainthetardis]

Thinking about how Nico lost Bianca first to the Hunters of Artemis and then to death, and how books later he lost Jason to death, and Reyna to the Hunters, again.

He lost his sister and then his first close friends to the same things.

[rolandrockover]

Only the Lonely

In the past, sometime in the 17th or 18th century, there were the alchemists who were known above all for trying in vain to transform lead into its neighboring element, gold. Modern science, on the other hand, has shown that at least one particle accelerator is needed to achieve what the alchemists labored to no purpose for years to achieve, whereas in Greek mythology, King Midas only needed a touch of the hand.

I can't say for sure what exactly happens when Gene touches something with his hand, nor can I say for sure whether he is in possession of a particle accelerator, nor whether you need one to achieve the opposite, namely to turn gold into lead. The only thing I can say for certain is that he has managed this special trick more than once, apparently effortlessly.

Oh, it's about Animalize again today, you're probably wondering. That's right, it's once again about Animalize, but also a bit about The Elder. And for that, I think we're more than happy to take another, different look at Only You's standout middle part, which I've already drawn a parallel to a very specific song on Creatures of the Night in a previous entry.

And to fulfill the more unpleasant part of our duty, we'd rather do the same with Lonely Is the Hunter and its rather less shiny middle section. If you don't notice any similarities straight away, I can only recommend setting the Only You Player to triple speed. After that, it should be like scales falling from your eyes.

When you click on the links, they don't turn into gold, but at least they start exactly at the points discussed above. That's quite something:

Only You (1981)

Lonely Is the Hunter (1984)

[einleetermilch]

It took me over 20 hours to get the small fucking crown for Kirin.

[timetodiverge]

Commission by my beloved muse @somewillwin!! Shin's crew/found family from my WolfWren fic Exile (aka the Bounty Hunter Shin AU 🩷)

Featuring the members of the Nest crew: Ketsu (Wing 1), Shin (Wing 2), and my OC, feral orphan/foundling Sky (Wing 3)

...noting that the Ketsu X Shin (ShiTsu yayyyy!!!) vibes of the fic were ENTIRELY UNINTENTIONAL but have been....very fun lol. (And I now want to write a spinoff AU full of KetBineShin HA)

Ketsu and Sky love their Shin and glomp her at any opportunity 🩷

[redbean-nom]

fascinated by the implied fennec-ventress-phee friend group in tbb. even more interesting (funny) when you add boba in there during the tbobf era.

[macrolit]

New arrivals.