Twisted Sister Y&T & Q5 Seattle Center Coliseum, spring 1985

Once an SMF, always an SMF.

That’s how Dee Snider signed an autograph for me when I finally met him in 1992. It was appropriate--perhaps even necessary--as there was hipper music being made at the time than the kind he had popularized during the previous decade. But in the crisp springtime of 1985, Dee and the rest of Twisted Sister were enjoying being Sick Muther Fuckers for the very first time.

Their commercially-explosive Stay Hungry was still selling on the strength of its cartoonish singles, and the grueling tour in support of the record was stretching well into its second year. Their Saturday afternoon show in Seattle, in fact, was the third time they’d been through town insisting every rivethead in King County purchase a copy.

I had mine. So did everyone else on the staff of Denim & Leather, the Seattle metal fanzine to which I was contributing at the time. Its publisher O.T.T. had turned me on to Twisted Sister a couple of years earlier, and I cruised down to his Northgate apartment on Friday night in my girlfriend’s ’73 Mustang Mach1 so we could get an early start on our buzzes for the show. Why Amanda ever gave me the keys to that thing to speed up and down I-5 drinking and drugging with O.T.T. was beyond me—she didn’t even like heavy metal. But it was handy, as neither O.T.T. nor myself had cars of our own, and we needed a real fast one to squeal around in once we got drunk and stoned enough.

Winding up for the show early Saturday afternoon, I discovered two caps of MDA in the change pocket of my leather jacket. I had no idea where they had come from. The concept of “spare drugs” was not a common one to us in those days. With the exception of weed, which you always purchased in bulk, there was no such thing as extra drugs. You scored what you needed (well, maybe a tiny bit more than you actually needed) for a particular event, then hit them and hit them until they were gone. Coming up the next day to face a doggie bag of what you’d tried to kill yourself with the night before was not appealing.

But a hit of mid-‘80s MDA and a sunny drive to the Twisted Fuckin’Sister show certainly was! We washed the red caps down with Moosehead and saddled up the Mach1. We were due to meet the entire staff of Denim & Leather at the fountain at 4:30 for a group photo that was to appear in the upcoming anniversary issue of the magazine.

(While we’re waiting for the drug to take, let me just make one thing perfectly clear: Twisted Sister was a great band. The unfortunate representation through the aforementioned “hits” and the gross exploitation of the band by way of the faggy music video is not worth arguing against, but none of that shit was what TS was all about. Studio records are studio records; hits are hits. The great rock and roll band excels live,

and Twisted Sister was an amazing live act. Take a listen to the B side of the I Am, I’m Me 12” recorded live at the Marquee in London in 1983. It’s fucking animal. Dig the hopped-up eleven-minute version of “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” with Dee going out of his damn mind down on the floor. Like Rodney Dangerfield meets the Nuge in make-up, this is one of the most inspired and compelling vocal performances ever recorded. Solid rock…)

So we’re crossing the ship canal bridge, and I think O.T.T. is going out the window on me. Dude used to eat acid like popcorn, but this MDA was workin’ him over. Twisting in the passenger seat of the Mach1, he was a heap of sweats and deep breaths, darting eyes and lots of faces in the vanity mirror, but finally we got parked and smoked a bowl and by the time we reached the fountain, that real bad part of that drug was gone and it was just a lot of whoa & giggle, touching friend’s faces. It was still pretty zoomy—the Denim & Leather staff all snarling and pasty and hollering about Twisted. Eventually we escaped the group to wig on the outer rim of the fountain, soaking in its mist and trying to catch the space needle.

The show, of course, was surreal. Local doods Q5, featuring TKO originals Evan Sheeley and Rick Pierce, were great, and the Belushish Y&T drummer Leonard Haze came out from behind his kit in baseball pants to say comedy jokes. But it was Twisted Sister, all 800’ of them, who made the lasting impression this night. During the climax, amidst a show-ending medley built around “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll” Dee called for the houselights so he “could see all the sick muthahfuckahs.” And there, at the very top of the Coliseum, sat my old friend Skip Galvin, his back to the concrete wall of the arena. From the stage, Dee Snider screamed at Skip to get on his feet—one guy in a crowd of 12,000 caught shirking like the little imp in Horton Hears a Who. And I stood there on the floor, fist in the air, staring up at Skip, suddenly the anti-star of the evening, dilated and wondering just what were the odds?

There are probably better drugs to enjoy Twisted Sister on. And when they come around this summer on their Reunion tour (true) I’ll make use of this hard-earned knowledge.

Once an SMF, always an SMF…

Odd Ones Out

It always works, dressing children up as adults. Like those greeting cards from the '90s with the 8-year-old couple dressed in pearls & oversized porkpies, kissing on a parkbench. Cute! Or talking animals— it works every time. 

But about halfway through the second verse of any Odd Ones Out song, a listener realizes these kids can actually play. Whoa. They can actually play really good...

 Comprised entirely of middle school students, a couple kids in this band aren’t even technically teenagers yet. When Callous French was 12, he was still eating dirt. These boys are playing regular paying gigs and getting ready to make an album. And sometimes they even dress up like rock stars.

Readers of this magazine may remember Vinnie Blackshadow, the kooky 9-year-old who wore self-styled KISS makeup and his mother’s platform boots in 2006, spitting fake blood during his solo sets opening for the DTs, the Trucks and No-Fi Soul Rebellion. The kid stayed odd, but eventually got bored playing solo shows for grown-ups, yearning for homies of his own.

Tanner Wallace was a new kid in town, and the two boys quickly found common ground on a fretboard, spending hours learning and writing songs while their peers played violent video games. The duo was invited to perform at school, but knew that in order to take this thing to the next level, they would need to flesh out a proper band. Still, finding kids their age who could actually play ( and who wanted to rock ) proved no easy task.

Through BAAY the boys fell in with keyboard & utility wiz Kaleb Harrison. Another kid at school they’d been pressuring to join—bass player Gus Danielson—reluctantly agreed. And in the spring, the last piece of the odd puzzle was added when Vinnie & Tanner arranged a donught meeting at LeFeen’s with Toby Bruce, an 11-year-old blue-eyed drummer from Australia. It was all settled…

With personnel in-place, the marvels realized they needed songs, gigs & better gear—and an arms race broke out. Piece-by-piece, the ante was raised: tube amps started showing up; bass rigs; keyboards with seemingly infinite numbers of keys & sounds; road cases; Fenders, Gibsons & Gretches—oh, my!

The songs flowed. Vinnie had a pretty good backlog of material from his solo days, much of which was adaptable for OOO. He & Tanner continued working on original material while the band learned a gang of covers that by Halloween would enable them to play an impressive two hours if necessary. They did-- and more gigs followed.

Like I said, the first time you see the band you can’t help but cock your head and say “Aww-- look at that little fella behind that huge drum kit. The bass player’s wearing mirrored sunglasses indoors, how cute. Whoa—is that Moby Dick they’re playing?” It totally is. Including the drum solo. They play a couple of Zeppelin songs, actually. But don’t call them classic rock unless you want a headstock in the junk.

“We’re more like vintage rock,” the band texted me, “You don’t hear our songs on the radio. Not Yet.”

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this band, though, is its versatility. Cellos, violins, ukeles, shoulder-mounted harmonicas. Kaleb doubles on sax ( see ya later, Alligator ). Bellingham Youth Jazz Band, Mt. Baker Youth Symphony, busking regimen, BAAY, tutors—all of it. They’re like a middle-school hard rock Devotchka, passing instruments around and singing harmonies. They read, but they still rock. It’s actually pretty fucked up.

After their homework is finished, they plan to make a record at Binary and a viral-friendly video with HandCrank. They intend to lie to some more motel desk clerks and stay up super late. They’re Odd Ones Out.

Dio is God

DIO-- Dreamers Never Die

Directed by Don Argot and Demian Fenton

Starring Ronnie James Dio

2hrs 7minutes

Fuckin’ Dio, man…

Mark Maron said he couldn’t afford to watch any more documentaries because he ‘didn’t know how much time he had left.’ It’s true—some documentaries rob us of precious moments that we might otherwise have been present for. Hours we won’t get back. But others are worth the minutes, especially when Ronnie James Dio is the subject.

We’ve all seen this movie before. The format was boilerplate and even a little Burnsian at times. (Yes, that is a word. Normally I don’t take such brazen liberties with the language, but today being my birthday, I feel emboldened to make up the word Burnsian).

We’ve all seen these same talking heads head-talking in other docs about how much the subject influenced them and blew their mind when they were making a sandwich when they were 11. And they’re all in this film, too, with a notable exception: no Slash or Grohl. (DG does make an unfilmed cameo in the extra features after the credits. But his absence in the film proper is quite refreshing, and with only a couple of predictable exceptions, the interviews are killer.)

Like This is Spinal Tap (ironically and yes genuinely ironically) the best stuff is in the movie and the outs are not that interesting, except for the story of how Ronnie’s left thumb got cut off by a garden gnome and he picked it up (the thumb) and took it to the hospital to have re-attached, only they put it on backwards so much later he went back and had it re-detached and subsequently re-re-attached correctly. That was just Ronnie being Ronnie!

The schematics of his career were super interesting to see developed. He actually was a doo-wop singer in the actual 1950s, and he played bass too. My favorite Dio quote did not find its way into the film, but it is relevant considering his own complicated relationship with the bass guitar and with bass guitar players. “I was a bass player once,” he famously said. “But I got out of it.”

Absent from the movie entirely was any evidence to support the myth of Dio as tyrant. He was involved, for sure—the first one to arrive at a session and the last to leave. But he is portrayed in his own estate-commissioned epic—and rightly so—as a mere perfectionist and not an egoctopus or even particularly megalomaniacal. Frequently he is offered up as the victim, the earnest team player let down by the pitiful mortality of others.

A huge focus of the film’s message is on Dio the human. His breathtaking body of work precedes this film, of course-- and it is adequately represented in the footage. But the story RJD INC wished told was the story of what a great fucking guy Ronnie was. He would stand in the rain outside the bus and talk to fans until he was late to the next gig. He greeted them by name and remembered the names of the parents and pets. He genuinely cared about the people who cared about him.

Part of it was probably that he wanted to be Ronnie James Dio for as many minutes of the day as possible. I guess once you get on the bus there are fewer people to talk to about Ronnie James Dio. Dio liked being Dio.

There were some surprises. I always thought of Dio as the rock star who was far above such earthly delights as drugs and alcohol. But there are a lot of images of him not only drinking but actually smoking. And I know he liked grass, because Sheila Rene told me so. But he wore it well. So many of the testimonials referenced the ‘miles’ on his voice. He sang hard his entire adult life, from his teens practically until the morning of his death. One of my favorite passages from the film is with a recording engineer who made some of the later records. No, I can’t remember his name—thanks for asking. Anyway, he was talking about getting basics and Ronnie would be in the room singing while the band tracked. The engineer said ‘you know, Ronnie, we can just use your scratch vocal. You don’t have to keep doing the take.’ And Ronnie was like ‘fuck that, I’m Ronnie James Dio.’

Those years were hard ones for Ronnie, the ‘90s. The film is a bit clumsy with the portrayal of the historic transition between metal and grunge, but the point is made. One day the unsustainable and quite mad Frankenstein monster of Metal that MtV had created was King, just eating and fucking everything in sight. Then the Teen Spirit video came on and metal was outlawed, like that same day. The film actually shows the tapes being tossed into cardboard boxes for archiving at a secret underground lab in asthenosphere.

But through it all, Ronnie never flinched. He got dropped from his label and shuffled backup players. His marriage wasn’t amazing. Record sales plummeted relative to metal’s anti-relevance. But he took it for the team-- no one was ever more proudful or more metal than Dio. He’d come this far without writing a pop song and there was no reason to start now. Murray and the mechanical dragon might have shrunk as the ‘90s wore on, squeezing into smaller and smaller venues. But it was always RJD slaying the dragon with laser sword (literally) at the end of every show and there were always geeks in the alley to catch up with afterward.

I’m glad they made this film if only to remind me of what an important role Ronnie James Dio played in my own development. There was a time there right after Holy Diver came out that I listened to little else. I just toggled between that and the Sab & Rainbow records. I had a homemade pin that said Dio is God and Ronnie and I were very close. Ultimately we drifted apart and eventually I wasn’t even aware of the records he was releasing every five years, right on schedule-- each just as lovingly crafted as the last. Even if I wasn’t buying or even listening. Ronnie wasn’t doing anything different than he ever had, rather it was I who had changed. And that’s on me. Can’t say the same for Sebastian Bach.

By all means see this movie and don’t forget to turn it up!

you wanted the best but you missed it

Well– is that all there is to a fire?

Tonight, in the midtown temple where in many respects it began, the journey comes to a merciful end for the most-important rock band of my life.

I won’t be there. Not because I couldn’t be– although tickets are pretty spendy (starting at $500 and ranging up to more than $10,000). Rather, I guess I just don’t really want to be. After all, I didn’t bother attending when the remains of KISS lurched to within a hundred miles of my house three weeks ago, when I could have gotten in for a paltry C-note.

No, I believe I’ll sit this one out.  Plus, I already saw KISS on their ‘Farewell’ Tour almost 25 years ago. Fool me once…

Nothing I’ve observed of this self-congratulatory ‘End of the Road’ Tour has made me second guess my decision to not get involved. The advance social media hype has been forced and banal. The merch is shit. The VIP Packages are an outrage. And that’s just the stuff the band can control! Not till you drill down to the overlit and underfiltered cellphone fan footage do you really get even the faintest whiff of just how bad things have really gotten…

It hasn’t always been this way, of course. There was a time when KISS was everything they still claim to be—the Greatest Show on Earth. The window was brief, but still — four years is a long time to be The Best. But when you borrow against four great years for the next 46, then you risk ending up in default, don’t you?

It’s a long story.

Christmas Day 1977. L-R: Jimmy D, the author, Colin K and Sean K

I personally was late to the party. By my own math, I climbed aboard the KISS float exactly one week before the end of that golden age of relevance. It was Christmas Day 1977 and Santa had brought me my first record player. My parents, in reluctant coordination, gifted me the latest studio KISS album, Love Gun. There’s a lot more to the Christmas morning story, but I’ve told it (published it, even) so many times by now it’s starting to get on even my nerves. Surely it is boring you as well. So I’ll skip the tired details other than to say that from that day forward, I was as dedicated a KISS fan as there was– a completely different person than I had been previously. Like as in during the 32 minutes it took to play the album, I had undertaken a complete and wholesale transformation. (29 minutes if you excuse “Then She Kissed Me.”) For a month I listened only to the two sides of Love Gun until I got Alive II at which point I had six sides to rotate through. The 2-record greatest hits set Double Platinum came out in March and my collection grew to 10 sides. Mind you, not only did I not bother with records by any other artists– but I didn’t even listen to the radio unless it was waking me up for school. It was all KISS every single day of 1978 for our young Braimes.

Autumn brought the long-anticipated release of the solo albums– an ambitious project designed to extend the life of KISS Mach I. The scheme worked beautifully[1] as the four KISS-branded records were released simultaneously on September 18. Not having the bread to buy all four records at once, I struggled over which to acquire first. I chose Gene’s and was fairly confused by it. (I still am to a degree, although I listened to it intentionally this past summer and will say it makes a lot more sense in 2023 than it did in 1978). I saved my allowance and bought Paul’s record next. I loved it, and still do—probably the truest of the four to the established KISS formula. Ace’s record followed, and though it is universally considered the best of the four, it frightened me at the time with its references to drug use and general ne’er-do-wellism. I got Peter’s record last and though I have grown to recognize his as the best voice in the band (if not necessarily the best singer), I didn’t have capacity in my rotation for a jazz record at the time.

What I did have space for was more of KISS’ back catalog which I picked up one at-a-time, whenever I had the coins. I wasn’t hip to the concept of the used record store, so these albums were purchased new, usually at the music store in Sea-Tac Mall– the Brass Ear. My October birthday and Christmas were both good for an album or two and by the spring of 1979, I was about caught up. Just fucking swimming in KISS sides…

May 23, 1979 Federal Way, WA

On May 23rd I had four teeth pulled to make room inside my skull for my upcoming orthodontic braces. As I lay on my twin bed afterward with a mouthful of gauze and a headful of local, my mom walked into my room with Dynasty, released that day. It was the first album of new material that had been released during my almost 18-month tenure as a KISS fan. My mind raced with possibilities: nine brand new songs, written and recorded especially for me! I couldn’t get off the bed, so mom put the record on and left me alone with “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.”

It was a helpless feeling to be trapped inside my own drugged body, unable to reach the record player and lift the needle. Without the internet to provide endless advance scouting, I’d had no idea what to expect from the new album. It was being billed as The Return of KISS. Of course I had no way of knowing in that tender spring that KISS would spend the next 45 years ‘returning.’ It had not occurred to me in my wildest dreams that my favorite band would go disco. But here it was—the hard and truthful wax. Ace’s detached rendition of “2000 Man” followed, and I became even more disoriented. I didn’t realize it was a cover of a bad old Rolling Stones song, and thought it was just a bad new KISS song[2]. My head spun. I would come to appreciate “Sure Know Something” in later years, but on first listen I dismissed it as soft (it is) and Peter’s “Dirty Livin’” didn’t help matters any, finishing side 1. Having swallowed too much of my own blood, I barfed. The needle lifted automatically off the record, the tonearm reseating on its cradle– and my room went quiet once again.

From these challenged beginnings, my relationship with Dynasty has grown even more complicated over the years. It’s not a terrible record. But timing is everything, and the album’s arrival in my life was poor on both a micro (quadruple extraction) and a macro (disco sucks) level. At a time when older kids in my same grade were abandoning KISS, I was forced to stay home and defend them. Mostly to myself, but still: there was some heavy inner-negotiation going on in the summer of 1979. I was a long way from quitting The Life. But I also bought Live at Budakon.

Don’t worry: I’m not going to spend 500 words on every post-peak KISS album. There’s really no need. With a few notable exceptions[3], the work moving forward would represent an increasingly desperate attempt to re-capture the black magic of the 1970s. With each New Low, the band’s place in history complex would become more evident and shrill– all leading up to tonight’s drymax in front of 20,000 middle-to-late aged white monied yessers who wouldn’t be anywhere else…

II

Mervyn’s box, Burien. L-R Dennis G (in red), the author (Raiders coat)

My braces had been on a full year by the time KISS released the follow-up to Dynasty, the punchless Unmasked. In the meantime they’d been touring in support of Dynasty and a Seattle date was announced for November 21, near the end of the US leg. Dennis Gregg and I camped out in front of Mervyn’s in Burien to buy tickets when the box office opened in the morning– for a festival seating show that never even sold out.

We’d never been to a rock concert and had little idea how to prepare or behave once there. Mrs. Gregg had an uneasy look in her eye as she dropped us off at Seattle Center on the morning of the show, and we fell in line with a group of other kids outside the angular Coliseum. We were only 35 people deep, but by the time the doors opened at 6pm, we were several hundred heads back, closer to the fountain. The line crowd had grown older and increasingly unsafe over the course of the day and we were relieved to finally get out of it. We ran to the stage along with everyone else, but lost ground quickly there too. After shivering outside all day, it was suddenly very warm and smoky inside the arena, with red-eyed bile-breathed rockers pressing in closer than what we were comfortable with. Eventually we found ourselves practically back at the sound board. Scanning the tiered seats, it appeared all the good ones were by now occupied as well. Not knowing what else to do, we went and looked at the merch.

First concert. I had never seen a rock band play live. Not in an arena or at a harvest days festival or in a neighbor’s basement. My entire pre-conception of what I was about to experience was based on nine KISS albums and the live sequences from their made-for-TV movie KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, the multi-camera high-def Hanna Barbara puff piece from mid-1978. I’d spent a lot of hours dreaming of what it was going to be like to finally see KISS live– time I might otherwise have spent sleeping or studying or at least trying harder to kiss Michelle Buckley[4]. But I imagined a KISS who were in-tune, wide awake, and puckering for me personally.

What I got, of course, was a stark disappointment. I’ve become quite skilled at enjoying rock concerts in the years since that cold November evening in the pre-Bezos arena. But that night, standing on my tip-toes at the back of the hall with contact cottonmouth, barely able to see Paul’s hair– let alone his boots– was a hard dose of rock and roll reality, augmented by my towering expectations. The shitty stadium sound bounced and farted, and the only member I could clearly see was Peter. He looked half asleep and in fact would be out of the band within weeks. I can boast that I got to see the original lineup with makeup in the 1970s—but barely. The dream was coming apart at the time, and though I didn’t yet have the vernacular to articulate it, I believe now that I sensed it even then…

III

by Jeff Braimes

I was still drawing pictures of the band[5] and collecting bubble gum cards as the new decade dawned. But my attention was beginning to drift. I bought Dream Police and even sidled up to my (younger) sister’s copy of Van Halen II (the first VH had been too strong for me when I heard it in a neighbor’s basement two years earlier– also an oft-related account that I won’t re-torture you with here…). I bought Unmasked on its release date in May with guarded hopes, but the record confirmed my darkest fears and was a sweeping disappointment. The band spent the year touring outside the country. Peter’s replacement Eric Carr had been confirmed and masked and it just seemed like things weren’t the same. They weren’t.

Nor would they ever be again. To be fair, it wasn’t all KISS’ fault. Yes: of course the band should bear partial responsibility for going as soft as it did. They deserve to be discredited for writing empty songs and recording them without any guitar, and for adding too much color to something that had worked so well in black, white and silver. But KISS didn’t invent capitalism. As much as they embraced it, the system for bleeding artists dry had been in-place for centuries before it voided KISS. Regressing commercially simply is not a viable design in show business, and with too much advice and too much coke and too much promise of even bigger payday, most mercurial artists do eventually shred the envelope before losing ground and being abandoned– first by casual fans and ultimately by their true bases. Some recover eventually, surviving to reinvent themselves and return to making good art that is self-satisfying and occasionally even commercially sustainable. But as often as not, the sensitive creative is cast aside to root in its own past until the money runs out and they’re forced to hit the fair and casino circuit. KISS took a third route, which was to forge ahead, subtly adapting to prevailing trends while still pretending to be who they’d always been. Occasionally it worked[6]; more often it didn’t. Mostly it felt hollow and cheap to those who knew better.

Finally, I’ll accept my share of the blame for KISS sucking as bad as they have for the past 45 years. Arriving as late as I had, with the band’s creative peak already eclipsed, I probably yearned too fiercely for my own glory era. The signs were everywhere for me to disembark and cut my personal losses, but I couldn’t help myself. Instead, I sat on my bed listening to Dressed to Kill as summers slouched away unnoticed. I refused to take any version of no for an answer. I believed (at least at first) that there was still something left in the tank for me and I did not look to the side. I wanted the best. But the cruel truth was that I’d missed it.

IV

I oughtn’t be so cynical. KISS Rules—I hope that much is clear. The essence of the band still burns in my heart and in the hearts of so many I call brother. Alive! still sounds menacing turned up loud. Page 98 of the coffee table book still gives me chills. And I could watch the Winterland footage[7] all day and often do.

Gene at Winterland, 1975

That’s probably what I’ll do tonight, actually—watch Winterland. The B/W BGP footage from early 1975 captures the band at its apex, playing every show like the Garden. The hung-up cartoons that would squat in the personas later have not yet been born– and it’s just the hungry, unvarnished KISS in all its sinister, stainless glory.

No, I don’t think I’ll watch the pay-per-view simulcast of tonight’s finale. Live footage of the gaudy facade the band has been dragging around on this 5-year hospice victory lap has become increasingly painful for me to look at: the video poker aesthetic of the pyro and sound; Gene’s jowls soaking up more and more makeup; Paul’s increasingly self-righteous raps[8] and withering voice. It just makes me feel gross.

The stream is only $40– a drop in the bucket compared to the fortune I’ve spent on KISS in my lifetime. Not only me, but also my loved ones. My parents at first of course, but later my sibling and girlfriends, eventually my wife and even my children have spent unimaginable sums 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 comic books and wastebaskets and transistor radios and field guides, the sleeping bags, knee socks, Colorforms, electric toothbrushes, Halloween masks and non-alcoholic wines. The action figures, good Christ—all of the action figures! I wanted them all, and for entire decades I endeavored to keep up.

the Vincent Blackshadow, Christmas morning 2000

But shortly aftetr at the turn of the century I made a vow to stop paying Gene. I wrote him a letter on real paper telling him so! And with the exception of purchasing one copy of Sonic Boom, I’ve honored that vow. The record was being exclusively marketed by Walmart (another reason to ignore its release) and the owner our boutique record store refused to poach a copy for us, despite my offering a large premium. So ten minutes before closing time, Vincent and I literally ran to the back of the Walmart (the only time he has ever been in one, to my knowledge) and plucked a copy. We were back in the car in six minutes.

Of course it wasn’t really worth it.

the Vincent Blackshadow, November 15, 2009– Seattle Center

It was interesting to watch Vincent wrestle with Sonic Boom, the first album of original material released during his tenure as a fan– indeed during his lifetime. At age 11 he had already mastered not only KISS’ entire body of work but had in fact had already stomped through a Van Halen phase, an AC/DC phase, and even the first of several Alice Cooper phases. He was a deep, rounded hard rocker already– but KISS still held a special place for him, as it had for me. Sonic Boom was in some respects his Dynasty, although I believe it is safe to say that not only were his expectations more realistic, but also that his safety net was more accommodating. He could always turn to Thin Lizzy and Cheap Trick whereas I had no such safe harbor in 1979. His risk paled by comparison, and it was comparatively easy for him to roll his eyes and move on.

Generally speaking, my son has shown far greater resilience and good humor regarding the curdling of KISS than I have. Like me, he’s long since lost interest in the regrettable current condition of the band, but was genuinely gleeful in his embrace of nostalgia when we attended the Alive 35 show in 2009 (with free tickets—in case Gene is reading). In preparation, we listened to all the early records and watched the Houston 77 tape[9], and we both climbed into makeup day-of-show. Secretly I worried whether he would have a bad trip like I had my first time which incidentally was in the same building 30 years earlier to the week[10]. He knew Santa Claus wasn’t real; he knew Paul was wearing a wig and that Tommy Thayer was playing lead guitar. But I’ll be damned if he didn’t sing along with every song and clap his hands. Because that’s what rock and roll is all about. I doubt Vincent is writing a spiteful 5000-word essay tonight berating the band he would gladly have died for most of his life.

What he is doing tonight, hopefully, is taking the L-train from his pad in Brooklyn to Mid-town to make December’s rent busking for the variously intoxicated pilgrims marching to MSG, anxious to memorialize the occasion by spending as much money as they can on this night of nights. Vincent can play and sing pretty much any ‘70s KISS song, and in many respects has spent his life preparing for the opportunity to be part of this story– a modest but mighty dust spec on the great, garish clover that is the legend of KISS.

V

I imagine there’s a growing part of both Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley that can’t get this night over with soon enough. Despite modest historical side projects– in and outside of music– KISS has been the duo’s identity for 50 years. It will surely be bittersweet to say “KISS loves you GOODNIGHT” for the last time. But between being forced to cancel three of the final six shows due to Starchild Flu and the unflattering press surrounding his puzzling trans comments plus Gene’s complaining about cell phones– the bitter might just well be eclipsing the sweet as the painted wagon limps ever closer to the finish line.

Without much historical regard from critics, KISS has always held its fanbase aloft. “We serve at the pleasure of our bosses,” Gene is fond of saying, “the people in the seats.” Those bosses are in-turn fond of believing that people who don’t like KISS simply don’t understand KISS. But even at $1,000/head, this endless gauntlet of meet ‘n’ greets has got to be wearing on the two co-founders.  Tommy Thayer & Eric Singer have been over it for a long time– those two just want to pick up their final paychecks and clock out. No one wants a photo with them anyway. But Gene and Paul are obliged to pause and pose with every fool with enough money to buy a package. And it kind of sounds like it’s starting to get to them.

They are in their 70s now, and there’s certainly something to be said for the level of commitment necessary to continue being KISS for this long. I guess the grown-up in me questions the motivation. They’ve made the money. They’ve unmasked, re-masked, re-united and broken back up so many times even a fan like me has kind of lost track. They’re in the motherfucking Hall of Fame. What more is there to prove? Every person in the developed world has been offered the opportunity to see KISS and they’ve either done so or else opted out. The band was never designed to be for everybody[11], yet it seems like they haven’t been content to hang it up until we’ve all cried Uncle.

I’m generally not big on extending credit for merely ‘still doing it.’ There was a lot of that patronizing jive last month when the Stones released Hackneyed Diamonds. “They’re 80!” Fuck that. As far as I’m concerned, you either play good and look cool doing it[12] or else you invite scorn. I actually kind of like the new Stones record, and it’s probably easier to be the Stones in their 80s than KISS in their 70s. Plus pull-dates are soft. Best if used by Christmas Day 1977 is merely a suggestion. I’ve eaten well-expired canned goods without getting botulism and I bought every KISS record up to Asylum. But enough is enough…

Is it, though? Is tonights’s 2 1/2- hour blowout really the end? They have bid us adieu before, remember– more than once. Will we learn later that this is merely the final tour and that one-offs or even residencies are fair game? Will Gene and/or Paul finally retire from the band, to be replaced by younger mortals who will step into the makeup ala Singer & Thayer? Gene & Paul have been threatening this for years, after all. And even I have to admit that an immortal KISS with re-perpetuating members isn’t a horrible idea. It’s worked for 007. And getting some new creative blood into roles of influence might just be the trick. It seems obvious that the current regime is out of fresh ideas. But there are kids out there who are still full of songs. KISS as a brand need not be dependent upon its biological fathers to continue to propagate.

I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t be so hard on them if they weren’t so damned easy on themselves. Now that I’ve gotten some of these grudges off my chest, I guess I do kind of do wish I was there tonight. The anticipation in the air. The curtain falling. The actual heat from the actual fire. The green light and red blood of “God of Thunder.” A broken guitar. One last melancholy blast through the pulsing solo section at the back of “Black Diamond.” The confetti. The encores. The gratitude.

Let me go. Rock and Roll…