Loading archive…
KISS ‘77
Not surprisingly, this concert was the first for a lot of dudes I’ve known.
We interrupt the regularly-scheduled coverage of the collapse of civilization to bring you this Extreme TBT: Forty years ago tonight: KISS at the Seattle Center Coliseum...
Not surprisingly, this concert was the first for a lot of dudes I’ve known. Like for so many white middle-aged men of middle-class upbringing, KISS was my introduction to rock music and my dominant social and artistic reference until I got to college and discovered how much more there was.
I’d barely missed them on the ‘77 tour. But the subsequent years’ biding, while agonizing, had given me a chance to immerse in the band-- to really go to school. By November 1979, I not only knew every song and lyric, but all the members’ birthdays & birthnames, favorite foods, musical influences and accent colors. I could draw pictures of KISS all day and often did. I could forge their autographs and I practiced drawing what they’d look like without their makeup.
There was no way for me to have known that the band was already well beyond its creative peak by the time I arrived at the party. I didn’t have a crystal ball, get off my fucking back already. It is amusing to consider now, however, that this Dynasty tour was billed at the time as The Return of KISS. It was still the ‘70s! No way could I have been expected to know the band would spend most of the next four decades returning. I did recognize-- in my own soft, pink heart late at night in the solitude of my own bed-- that this new record wasn’t as good as Love Gun. But I wore it out just the same…
In a creative outburst considered productive even by the busy standards of the day, KISS had produced seven studio records, two live double records, a sprawling greatest hits collection and the ambitious set of four coordinated solo albums between 1974 and the turn of the decade. Add to this the made-for-TV movie, the Marvel comic book and all the lunchboxes and action figures, model kits, wastebaskets, sleeping bags, transistor radios and pinball machines—and this was one hard-working, high-grossing act. Rock bands these days (whatever that term even means in the modern entertainment economy) aren’t usually allowed to make even two records in six years. This was a different era. The vinyl only weighed 90 grams and it cost $6. The concert tickets were only 8.
We were just kids, we didn’t know how it was supposed to work. Dennis Gregory (not a flying toy) and I camped out overnight at Mervyn’s in Burien to buy tickets to a festival seating show that would never even sell out. Then we waited, listening to Dressed to Kill as summer slouched away unnoticed.
At last the day of the show arrived. Instead of driving us to school in the station wagon, Dennis’ mom (with my own parents’ reluctant blessing) dropped us off at Seattle Center, near the Jetsonesque arena originally constructed for the 1962 World’s Fair (what is now Key Arena was less than 20 years old at the time).
The crowd we encountered once reaching the Coliseum was a bit unsettling. Dennis & I were reasonably sheltered suburban orchestra geeks in the very early stages of exploring any semblance of independence. We weren’t tripping balls and weren’t even drinking vodka and orrrange juice. What I remember about this particularly sunny late-autumn morning is that most of the other kids milling around were.
We got in line. There were only about 50 people in front of us, but by the time the doors opened a couple of hours after dark, we were several hundred deep-- back closer to the fountain. Some of our line-mates didn’t start moving once the traffic finally did, sprawled out in puddles of barf in the mulch beneath the great Elms. Those guys will have their own versions of the day’s events, surely posting on social media tonight as well, in observance of this important anniversary.
Again—we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. No one had briefed us. Once inside the arena, we ran directly to the stage which as it turns out WAS the exact correct thing to do. We were two rows from the fence. But being so green, we quickly second-guessed our position. Maybe we should get a killer seat instead. We just didn’t know! Eventually we began ebbing backward against the fierce tide rushing in from the front doors, the vomitty Southern Comfort breath of the each new wave washing over us until eventually we were standing in the middle of the main floor, out of the thick and closer to the sound board. We went to the souvenir table.
The Rockets were a band from Detroit. They spent the 1970s serving at the pleasure of a variety of headliners, kind of the equivalent of a career minor league baseball player. I vividly recall during their opener, with the sound up loud, and the stage lights pulsing down that this is what it’s really like. This is how live music looks and sounds. How perfectly shitty it was! The sound was muddy and sightlines were poor and the band looked tired and the whole huge building smelled like burning soap on a rope. I looked at Dennis trying to figure out if he was feeling the same disappointment. I tried asking, but he couldn’t hear me. The Rockets closed with Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and left the stage to deafening indifference, most of the 12,000 kids having come to see something else entirely.
My eyes burned. The houselights between bands were harsh, the air sticky with smoke. We didn’t know what to do in between acts. We’d forfeited our squares of concrete in the pit and all the decent seats were taken by now too. We didn’t smoke or drink and we didn’t know how to pick up chicks. We went back to the souvenirs.
I’d spent the past two years of my life imagining this moment, the moment when I finally would get to not only see and hear the only rock group I liked, but to actually commune with KISS—to wordlessly discourse semi-personally with Ace, Gene, Peter and Paul. I’d spent so much time manifesting what this experience would be like—finally witnessing their movements in three dimensions and actually seeing them see me. I wanted to be more than a spectator-- I wanted to be an acknowledged participant. I had gained admission to the Temple and it was finally time to at least worship, if not partake in an unholy sacrifice at the altar of disposable, self-conscious increasingly commercially processed rock and roll.
The show, of course, was just okay. Gene flew and Paul called us See-a-tal. But Ace looked bored and Peter very tired. Since I knew all the songs, my mind could color in the voids left by a bassy PA booming in a concrete sports arena. Since I knew the faces and the costumes, my mind could sharpen what detail was blurred from a distance of 300’. Since I’d come this far and invested so much, my mind could clean up in post what the actual moment lacked. In all, though, it was a fairly disappointing realization. It’s never as good as you imagine, if you imagine it too much. Romanticism is romantic-- unless you at some point are forced to face down True Reality, in which case a good stiff drink really does come in handy…
But not that night. Not on Wednesday November 21, 1979. That night we settled for a weird setlist and an overpriced program, a handful of confetti and a poignant memory. Patrick McDonald trashed the show in the next day’s Seattle Times and I don’t even remember who came to Thanksgiving dinner. I got better at enjoying rock concerts as I grew older, and in fact got to be something of an expert eventually. I’ve attended hundreds of shows by now, maybe a thousand. I’ve even seen KISS another half-dozen times, although they would never be as authentic as they were that night, with all-original members and five weeks remaining in the 1970s. I was there, of that much I can be certain. The time—where does it go?
you wanted the best but you missed it
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.
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 ofthe 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…
By the end of 1977, the band was on the brink of imploding after four years of constant touring while recording six studio albums and two live albums. Natural incompatibilities were aggravated by the amount of sheer time spent shoulder-to-shoulder, and Peter & Ace were starting to lose interest in the band. The solo album project was designed to give the members some time away from each other while not necessarily taking a vacation from KISS at a time when the dice were hot. Each member was able to spread his own creative seed and the result was 4X the record sales. The scheme worked beautifully and surely extended the life of the the first lineup by 18 months.
I have certainly grown to appreciate “2000 Man” especially after it became a staple in the young Vincent Blackshadow sets of 2006 & 2007. It became, in fact, the title track from his first solo album. But at the time of my initial exposure to the song, it didn’t make any sense to me. It didn’t sound like a KISS song, and coming after “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” I just felt lost. The best KISS version of this song is probably on Unplugged, actually, which was an all-around positive moment even without the reunion component.
It’s not like there hasn’t been one good thing named KISS since 1980. There just aint been many. Creatures of the Night of course, is probably the best of the rest. Released in 1982 after the unqualified disaster of Music from the Elder, it saw the band hitching a ride on the emerging metal bandwagon. Though Ace was pictured on the cover of the record, he had in fact been replaced by the the flashy yet tuneless Vinnie Vincent, the last new member of KISS to wear makeup. The songs are heavy, driven by the power of Eric Carr’s drums, captured masterfully by producer Michael James Jackson. A year later, they would play the make-up card, beginning their descent into the MTv hair metal mud wrestling pit, vying for minutes with bands who grew up listening to their ’70s music. Two guitarists and five forgettable albums later came the inevitable reunion with Peter & Ace and the re-application of the makeup. This was truly thrilling, for a minute. Opening night at Tiger Stadium was festive and promising. But like most things KISS, it was milked too long and by the time the reunion album Psycho Circus came out 2 1/2 years later, things had again gone flat. The title track is solid and there are a couple of interesting Gene compositions on the record. But mostly it’s more desperate attempt to coax the lightening back in the bottle. From there it’s been cruises and re-packages. Super Bowl halftimes and Olympic Games, American Idol and Family Guy. Big paydays, but not exactly what you’d call creative triumphs.
I never did get in Michelle Buckley’s pants.
Like most awkward teenaged boys (NO?!) I would spend hours sitting at my desk drawing pictures of KISS. My sessions were interrupted only every 20 minutes when it was time to turn the record over. I favored the Love Gun era uni’s, but would occasionally venture backward or even design my own new costumes. I even spent time trying to draw their faces without makeup, desperate for a peek at what they may look like unmasked.
It is impossible to deny the influence KISS has had on generations of rock music artists. For this reason, it’s been extra painful to observe them folding into the trends that have come and gone during their tenure: disco on Dynasty, powder pop on Unmasked; Heavy Metal on Creatures giving way to Hair Metal for five records after that. The toughest one for me to swallow, probably due to my own proximity to the dominant imprint, was the Carnival of Souls experiment which actually saw KISS aping grunge– an aesthetic they had always held up as an example of what they existed in opposition to. This album was not released for several years after its original recording, but bootlegs were widely available in the Seattle KISS underground, largely thanks to James.
Oh my Fuck– Winterland. Had I access to this footage in the 1980s while I was wandering, I just might still be the fan I was as a kid. It’s such a perfect document. The set is composed of songs from the first two records, and though much of the material for Dressed to Kill must have been written or at least forming, the songs do not appear in the set. Somehow the band found time that spring to record Dressed to Kill before capturing Alive! that summer. Those would be bigger venues, but the communion in the 5500 seat San Francisco theater is unnerving. Bill Graham Presents filmed all these shows, but without the internet to bleed boots, this footage was rare in the ’90s when I got a VHS copy from someone who worked at BGP. (She also slipped us a copy of the last Sex Pistols show ever, shot at the same venue. Equally mind-bending, but that’s another essay entirely…). Multiple cameras, great sound, honest performance. It’s not a perfect show, but what it lacks in precision it more than makes up for in base sentiment. Gene with his early Kabuki leer, wild eyes and tipping topknot. Paul overworking, still figuring out his raps– but you can see the future. Ace is undershot on the off-side of the stage, but turns in a sparkling performance in the triangle bib. And Peter F. Criss, the most under-rated drummer in rock and certainly the most under-appreciated member of KISS just killing bugs dead behind the single bass drum. The dissolving edits of the candelabra. Glen sometimes says about stuff “I would like to go there.” And if you handed me a pass to go anywhere at any time in history– I just might redeem a trip to the Winterland Arena on January 31, 1975
Poor Paul Stanley from KISS. More than anyone, he should have quit while he was ahead. He likes to portray himself as a gambler in his lyrics, but tempting fate as long as he has finds him bumming a dime for the payphone at dawn, his chips in the hands of the house. The more he’s had to use his voice to oversing and make retarded statements about how great KISS is, the less he’s been able to muster a noddable version of “Love Gun” let alone “Makin’ Love.” And it aint just Best of Paul Stanley Raps on YouTube. The guy just seems to say something regrettable every time he opens his mouth. If he’d quit after Creatures he’d have gone down in history as one of the greatest hard rock singers of all time. As it stands, he’ll be remembered for lip-syncing and I am Cool, I am the Breeze…
Houston 77 is Vincent’s Winterland. He has been into KISS since before he was 3. Here’s what happened: I was going to see the Farewell tour with Bret and Jason in July 2000, and I accidentally left this tape out after watching it while getting my KISS on before seeing the band for the first time since the Reunion Tour (the first one). Vincent was old enough to operate the VCR by this age and had access to the usual Schoolhouse Rock and TeleTubbies tapes. He must have popped in the unmarked cartridge, and by the time I returned from the Gorge, he was singing “Shout it out Loud.” The tape (1st night) remains a favorite and shows the band in refined form shortly after the release of Love Gun. This tape got us through a lot of the less-pleasant moments of Vincent’s childhood, including a series of ear infections in about 2002 or 2003.
It’s so crazy that I saw KISS for the first time in the Seattle Center Coliseum on November 29, 1979 and that Vincent saw them there for the first time on November 15, 2009. I guess it’s actually two full weeks to the day, thirty years earlier. The apple, indeed, may not often rot too far from the tree…
It was more fun being a KISS fan before they were quite as universally acknowledged as they are now. Usually when I see someone my age wearing a KISS shirt, I think they don’t look like my tribe. I shouldn’t be so exclusive, but I can’t usually help it…
Most people believe entertainers should be allowed to continue working as long as it makes them happy. I reject this notion. As soon as it starts making me unhappy they should retire. Or at least re-invent themselves in order to make me feel less awkward. The Stones have grown into their older selves fairly gracefully. Mick doesn’t age, and Keith has seemed comfortable in his withering skin. But lately I think they seem less confident and I can’t endorse that. There hasn’t been any reinvention for KISS for decades, as they’ve humped the dream dry, cementing their legacy. But it’s been increasingly hard to watch and I believe they have long overstayed their welcome.