This is the third in a series of examinations of music legends and whether they are true or false.

Let’s begin!

MUSIC LEGEND: Kiss got into trouble for the Kiss logo appearing to contain the logo for the Nazi S.S.

STATUS: True

The band Kiss was formed when guitarist Ace Frehley joined the group Wicked Lester, which consisted of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and (just before Frehley) Peter Criss. A few weeks after he joined, the band changed their name to Kiss (Stanley coined the name).

After joining the group, Frehley created the now iconic Kiss logo.

While surely Frehley did not intentionally mean to be offensive to Jewish people, considering both Simmons and Stanley were Jewish (and Simmons’ mother was a Holocaust survivor, even!), he still managed to clearly evoke the logo for Hitler’s personal nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (more commonly known as the SS).

They’re not just similar, they’re identical.

However, you could easily argue (and Frehley has) that the idea of using lightning bolts for s’s is not exactly the most original idea - it’s a fairly standard one, even. So you could easily see Frehley coming up with the logo idea independently from the infamous SS logo.

In any event, even if he did use the SS logo for an inspiration, like I said, he surely did not mean to offend.

And the logo did NOT offend people - until 1980, that is.

While preparing for a tour of West Germany in 1980, the logo became news again when the usage of the SS logo in a political ad became a big news story in West Germany. The politician asked, reasonably enough, why Kiss was allowed to use it. The German response was, essentially, “Well, they can’t, either.” In fact, currently, NO one can use the SS logo (as of 2004) legally. At the time, though, it was more of a “you better not use it!” type of thing.

Kiss did not want to piss off the Germans, especially when it was a fairly reasonable complaint (as, again, it really does look like the SS logo), so starting in 1980, all of their merchandise in Germany has contained an alternate logo…

And that’s really all there is to that!

MUSIC LEGEND: A musician used morse code to express his displeasure with his record company.

STATUS: True

Mike Oldfield is one of the most successful composers in the “instrumental music” genre of music in the 20th Century, although he is quite a good songwriter for songs with vocals, as well.

Still, while he has had a diverse career in music, he is most famous for his work with instrumental albums, in particular, his debut album, Tubular Bells (which, to be fair, did contain SOME vocal work on it).

Oldfield had some difficulty with selling Tubular Bells to record companies, as many people told him that an almost fifty minute, two moment album would be an impossible sell in the current record market, but finally, in 1972, Oldfield met a young Richard Branson, who was then just forming his new company, Virgin Records.

Oldfield played his demos for a couple of Branson’s engineers, and in 1973, Tubular Bells became Virgin Records first album release ever.

It was a huge hit, as was the similarly themed follow-up, Hergest Ridge.

However successful their initial collaboration was, by the late 80s, Oldfield was seriously chaffing under Virgin management. He felt that everything they wanted from him was essentially “more of the same” and he also felt that they did not do a particularly good job marketing his music.

The last two albums of Oldfield’s contract with Virgin were especially indicative of his distate for Virgin. His last album for Virgin, Heaven’s Open, was basically an entire “so long!” album directed at Virgin.

His second-to-last album, though, Amarok, was a bit more subtle. While initially, Oldfield claimed that it just came naturally, the end result of the way he wrote the album Amarok was that there was no one theme to the music - it jumped all over the place. As a result, there really was no way Virgin could pull a single off of the record, because Oldfield did not stay still at any point in the music. Unlike the movements on Tubular Bells, the “movements” on Amarok were often less than two minutes long.

The more direct shot at Virgin was more specifically a shot at Virgin founder, Richard Branson.

Oldfield offered up a thousand pound prize to anyone who could identify a hidden message that he had placed inside the work.

No one won the prize at the time, but in the years since, the message was discovered.

About 48 minutes in, Oldfield uses morse code to spell out F U C K O F F R B, or, rather, “Fuck off, RB [Richard Branson].”

Oldfield left Virgin after 1991, and in 1992, he delivered the album Virgin had wanted from him for years, Tubular Bells II.

Talk about a dramatic exit!

MUSIC LEGEND: Polka was created in Poland.

STATUS: False

For almost two centuries now, the dance and the music style known as the Polka have been associated with Poland.

But they both actually originated in the nearby country now known as the Czech Republic.

The term polka derived from the original Czech name, which was “pulka,” which is Czech for “little half,” a reference to the short half-steps used in the Polka dance. Here, then, is most likely where the confusion comes in. The Czech word for a Polish person was “polka.”

So just how the Pennsylvania Deutsch soon became the Pennslyvania Dutch, so, too, did the Pulka become the Polka, and become forever associated with originating in Poland.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the Polka dance and music style hit Warsaw in Poland only a few years after originating in the Czech lands, and it was in Poland that the genre really was formalized and took off.

In fact, the word “polka” traces to the French in 1844, and so by then, they likely had already begun attributing the origins of the Polka TO Poland, but, as noted, it’s a miscredit.

So while they have done wonders for the popularity of the dance and music, Poland can’t claim the origins of the Polka.

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com