Dear Gene—I owe you so much. Actually, let me re-phrase that: I owe you nothing. It is true that your influence on my artistic development cannot be overstated. Like so many 50-year-old white males of middle-class upbringing, KISS was my dominant musical & cultural model until I got to college and discovered LSD. Things were different after that, naturally, but I kept buying— which is why I shouldn’t say I owe you anything.
Because I’ve paid. I have paid so much. And not only me, but also my family: my parents at first of course, but later my sibling and girlfriends, and eventually my wife and even my children have spent unimaginable amounts of American money supporting my KISS habit. And not just on records and concert tickets. Not just posters and magazines and t-shirts and belt buckles. But all of the lunchboxes and trading cards and coffee table books and wastebaskets and transistor radios and action figures, and the sleeping bags, electric toothbrushes, Halloween masks and non-alcoholic wines. I wanted them all, and for entire decades I endeavored to keep up.
I’m better now. I’ve been clean since Sonic Boom— haven’t spent a dollar. I should re-phrase that—I bought aftermarket tickets and took my son to see what’s left of the band five years ago this week. But we didn’t buy any merch and we won’t buy the new Love Gun re-issue, as desperately as I want to hear the demos and outtakes. I have $38, but I’ve vowed not to give any of it to you. I hope you'll understand.
So even though I consider us ‘even’ I would like you to have a copy of my book [sic]. Without you I may never have written it. Let me re-phrase that, actually: without you, I may never have written pages 18, 84 and 132. I have bookmarked them for your convenience, but feel free to enjoy as much or as little of the rest of the book as you like. I’m giving it to you, for free.
Thanks for the memories, Gene. Let me go…
Very sincerely,
Jeff Braimes, Bellingham WA
