LCD Soundstystem, American Dream

Five years ago when our house exploded, losing the turntable was mostly an afterthought. Our more immediate concerns were replacing the refrigerator, stove, water heater, all the light bulbs and eventually even the CD player. It wasn’t difficult getting used to not having a record player because we hadn’t exactly been using it every day to begin with. Eventually I took the records downstairs, and the turntable gathered coins and mail like a ping pong table gathers laundry.

A friend gave us an old Kenwood KD-2000 that needed a new belt. After replacing the belt, it seemed clear it needed a new motor. So after another year of dust-gathering, we took it to the nearest broken turntable repair shop, which was all the way down in Seattle (Washington). They fixed it up like new and I brought it home and got the records back out of the basement.

I’m not a freak like some people I know, but I romanticize vinyl records as much as the next agnostic. I love how records feel and smell, how they flip. One’s own personal history with a particular record is much more acutely delighted in with an LP than with a CD or some dumb playlist. Records are for reals.

But until I started droppin’ the stylus, I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the ritual of playing vinyl. Selecting one, de-sleeving the wax, examining the label on the actual record to see which side is which, putting your favorite face-up on the platter and starting the motor. Then-- with your own human flesh hand-- moving the needle over and dropping it softly on the edge. The brief crackle of imperfection followed by song one.

Then twenty minutes later picking the needle back up and starting the whole process over. A side in time…

But just because I was between working turntables didn’t mean I stopped accumulating records. And after five years, there was a little stack of strange. I’d had these new records for years without listening to them! Some of the stuff we’d already owned on other formats and others probably got streamed. But a lot of it was virgin, much of it still sealed. It’s been fun catching up, like a month of Christmases…

DAY#1:  LCD Soundsystem, American Dream. Christmas gift from the kids, 2021. Favorite side: a

If you’d played me this record in 1983 and told me I’d love it in 40 years, I’d have come at you. Hell, 10 years ago. But I’m not the least bit hesitant to say I love LCD Soundsystem.

I don’t really think of LCD Soundsystem as a band—even though they have a very consistent historical membership that plays actual musical instruments. To me, it’s James Murphy and beats—stuff I used to call disco. Until very recently, I recklessly grouped anything that didn’t have a distorted electric guitar as the predominant instrument into the category of ‘disco.’ I know better now. But really not all that much better...

I’m a vocal-centric music appreciator. If I don’t like the singing, I can’t like the band. See: Neil Young, the Police, Hüsker Dü, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Ozzy Sabbath. If I like the singing, I can get into most anything. Including disco.

American Dream was a comeback record for LCD Soundsytem in 2017. I’d be lying if I said I could tell it apart from ‘their earlier stuff’ but now that I have my own copy of one of their albums maybe that changes. It’s an ambitious work, clocking in at more than 68 minutes spread over two discs. It would have made a great single album.

There’s a lot of variety here—especially for disco. There’s even some guitar, like on the hard-driving “Emotional Haircut.” There’s also some of that stretched out percussion mural trance jamming (Murphy on lead cowbell) reminiscent of the Talking Heads’ “Cross-eyed and Painless” which feels like when you open your eyes at a party with a guitar in your hands and realize that awful noise is coming from you.

The nicest moments, though, are the sparsest ones—patiently developing vocal melodies set against a brocade of pastel tones that takes on more definition with each listening. The first track “Oh Baby” is dreamy and aptly named; the title track finds the band auditioning for Angelo Badalamenti’s recently-vacated position.

One thing I’ve always valued about LCD Soundsystem is Murphy’s rye humor. It’s here on American Dream, but you have to dig a little harder for it. There’s no “Daft Punk is Playing at my House” on this record...

Of course, one of the great joys of LPs is the large format artwork. We got pretty accustomed to squinting at photos and liner notes in the ‘90s, but returning to the acreage of the vinyl sleeve is easy on the retinas. American Dream itself is kind of a disappointment in this category, though, with minimalist packaging that looks and feels like it was produced at the community college printshop.

I’m not the least bit hesitant to say I love LCD Soundsystem. They’d probably be my favorite band if I’d been at those first Suicide practices. Instead, I grew up on hard rock.

Tomorrow: Broken Teeth, Bulldozer

Bring a picture of Malcolm Young to Dave’s

Sandwiched in-between iphone reminders to Choke the Chicken was one to remember to bring a picture of Malcolm Young next time I visited Crider’s. I’m not sure how we ever remembered anything before we could just dictate reminders into our phones. I swear most days I wouldn’t even remember to pull down my pants before going poop if it wasn’t for my lucky iphone and its bulletproof memory.

I think the other reminders as input were actually to Check the Chicken because if I don’t set a reminder I usually end up overcooking it. But bringing a picture of Malcolm Young to Dave’s was as it was intended. Malcolm was still living at the time, but I don’t remember why else we were collecting paper pictures of him. I found one in an old Kerrang! and tore it out, folding it up in my shirt pocket. And out the door I went.

Dave accepted it graciously as though he had any idea why I was delivering him a picture of Malcolm Young. It had no-doubt made perfect and indeed urgent sense when the reminder was initially filed, sitting on Dave’s back porch with a bottle of brown liquor. But in the end, I think it was just great to have a picture of Malcolm Young to put on the fridge—and that is plenty.

Walking Papers , I Belong to You b/w Trophy Wives

Of course whenever your house explodes, it’s always on a Friday night when plumbers and appliance repair dudes charge double. Not that we could have just walked in to the water heater store and brought one home and hooked it up before taking a hot shower, even on Monday. Those things take weeks to order and schedule.

Luckily, we had another house at the time that had not even exploded. We had just finished moving the last of our stuff into our new 98225 house, and were still working on our old 98229 house—getting it ready for a renter who was on her way to Bellingham from Ohio. So we actually had a cold refrigerator to move our perishables to and place to shower.

It worked out pretty good.

Within two weeks we’d replaced the fridge and stove and the fancy gas tankless water heater in 98225. Eventually the garage door opener and microwave. Finally, we got a new (used) tuner and CD player.

But it was 5 years before the turntable was returned to its rightful place at the top of the component tower. And there’s been some catching up to do…

DAY#3: Walking Papers, I Belong to You b/w Trophy Wives. Spiff from Evan who mixed it, 2019. Favorite side: A

Jeff Angell and Ben Anderson are hit makers. Not necessarily in the conventional sense where you are given money and record player trophies. But I swear everything they do is solid gold TNT.

Their musical collaboration goes back to 2009 when they accidentally named their 2-piece act (Angell on guitar/vocals; Anderson on keys) The Missionary Position. Recruiting a studio backing band, they made DIAMONDS IN A DEAD SKY themselves. As in they recorded and mixed it themselves and put it out on their own label, The Boredom Killing Business.

Then three years later they released my favorite album of all times* CONSEQUENCES.

They haven’t as much as paused since then, toggling between Mish Pozish, the Staticland project, and the current and presumably permanent handle Walking Papers. They are constantly working. These two do not look to the side.

Like all their material, this single is dark. With his lyrics and voice, Angell creates atmosphere that has dimension and perceptible vertical drop. You can smell the secondhand smoke and feel the coarse texture of the scar tissue. Nothing good ever happens to the characters in Walking Papers songs. Corrupt, disloyal, rueful, addicted—these are deeply flawed meanies & victims who come and go via the fire escape and the alley. No welcome mats, no high-fives or warm meals. At once layered and stark, sepia yet contemporary Angell’s subjects live and wheeze as he sings them like a puppeteer.

“I Belong to You” is kind of a love song, I guess. But again—not going to make any Top 10 lists. A Seconal dirge with a distant, loose-string guitar tone and just the right dose of Anderson’s brooding organ laid gently over to stir the mood. “Trophy Wives” finds the keys more prominent, carrying the melody while the guitar slouches along the perimeter. Goddamn trophy wives…

One thing I do miss in these two great songs is the sax. These pieces don’t really call for it, but Gregor Lothian’s reeds are in the room on my favorite Angell/Anderson stuff. I don’t always dig horns in hard rock, but this shit works, believe me.

Like the songs themselves, the package is an apt reflection of the dynamic of the partnership between Jeff and Ben. Stark b/w photographs of their respective hands at work, front and back. The record itself is a murky translucent kiwi w/ black label. And a regular centre hole as opposed to the 1.5” of many singles.

Fun Fact: Unlike most singles, the record is a 33rpm spin. When I put it on initially, I instinctively toggled to 45 and the result was as comical as when I tried listening to Broken Teeth at 33 yesterday. The juxtaposition of the error only served to make “I Belong to You” sound bleaker and more spare once corrected.

Any music appreciator who claims to have a ‘favorite album’ is either a liar or a fool. There’s just too much music and we people have too many moods. Selecting a ‘favorite’ simply can’t be done. So obviously CONSEQUENCES isn’t my favorite record of all times. It’s lyrical profundity and sonic perfection is difficult to overstate, however. It is definitely ‘one of my favorite records of all time.’

Twisted Sister, Y&T & Q5 Seattle Center Coliseum, spring 1985— I Was There

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 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…

June 23, 2004– Shoreline. Gene cancelled White River Amphitheater this night

Reunion Tour Party, August 31 1996– Hell’s Half Acre, Tukwila. L-R: Sophie, Patti, the author & Ramone

KISS Rules

Daytrippin’, Bellingham 2004

Alive 35 afterparty, West Seattle

the Vincent Blackshadow, photo courtesy of the Bellingham Herald

First Vincent Blackshadow show w/ the Trucks and Coconut Coolouts, Bellingham 2006

Halloween 2000, Bellingham

Less makeup is required for rubber masks

From the short film ‘A True Fan,’ Bellingham, 2000

Starchild, 2000

Halloween 2014, Bellingham

Taking it off (the makeup) 2006

Halloween 2008. The author (L) dressed as his son (R), Bellingham

the Vincent Blackshadow, live in Seattle– 2007

Halloween 1994, Seattle. L-R: Dare Bulmonk and the author

Reunion Pre-party, Hell’s Half Acre– Tukwila 1996. L-R: unknown, Paul Larkin, Rock Star Matt, Edgy 59 (he did everyone’s makeup), Pinky, Jesse, unknown, the author, Bekki Crider, Cynthia’s dog Sid

Bein’ Alice requires less makeup

Reunion Tour afterparty w/ Rockstar Matt. August 31, 1996– 3:10 a.m.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. I never did get in Michelle Buckley’s pants.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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… 

9. 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.

10. 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…

11. 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…

12. 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.

Cheat to Win, The Jack

Still working my way through the stack of vinyl accumulated during five years without a working turntable. 

It’s an age-old barstool debate: does the music of today suck, or have we merely aged out the enthusiasm & curiosity necessary to seek out the good stuff? 

I was an ‘80s bin-flipper. Like many of us, I was quite content to spend an hour in each of the musty used record stores on the Ave, pawing through bin after bin of mushy-spined LPs, mining for gold. I rarely left empty-handed. 

The depths of some of those bins didn’t change much that whole decade. New stuff would get added in front, but the stock in the rear reaches of some of those bins was pretty stagnant. The covers of many of those forgotten records are burned into my memory: Hatchet, Heep, Rogue Male. 

Some dudes of my generation, like Jim and Matt, still have fingers and minds nimble enough to trip the bins fantastic. But most days it’s all I can do to get mine to cooperate to punch up a playlist on Spotify. Occasionally, however, I’ll find myself in a mood to browse. And I’m usually rewarded. 

WEEK #5: Cheat to Win, The Jack. Purchased for a dollar at Black Noise Records in Bellingham, 2021. Favorite Side: Hard to say…  

What initially attracted me to CHEAT TO WIN by The Jack was the cover, of course. It’s absurd, sure—the photo, but also the period in the band name and the quotation marks around the title. As much as that, though, it looked like something I ought to have seen before. A million times. Yet it was completely unfamiliar. Turning it over and scanning down to the bottom of the credits confirmed my hunch: 1985. Smack in the middle of my most active binning years. 

I was intrigued enough by The Jack spend one dollar on it. 

Of course I didn’t have a turntable to put it on when I got home, so I read the liner notes and dropped a casual Goog on its self-conscious ass. Not getting any immediate internet results only served to heighten my intrigue. Said notes helped in piecing together a courtroom sketch of The Jack—a vanity project from Utah whose namesake singer referred to himself in the third person and appeared on not only the front, but also the back cover. 

I winced, noticing “Dear Prudence” in the track listing. On a 7-song EP. Hoping “Day After Day” wasn’t a second cover, I put CHEAT TO WIN at the back of the growing stack of records where it belonged, forgetting about it until last spring when my new turntable was again spinning proudly. 

Even then, The Jack was not the first record I reached for and it wasn’t the second. It took me quite a while to work my way to the back of my own bin where I’d hidden the record from myself. Even then I was reluctant to put it on. 

The actual music is precisely as appalling as you and I both expected: wind-up toy guitars, preening baroque keys and ever-rolling roto-tom drums-- all compressed beneath the awning of the pompous, over-processed vocals of The Jack. From the false endings and canned stadium crowd outro of the sprawling title track, through the gross oversinging of “Dear Prudence” and (yes) the Jackification of Bad Finger’s “Day After Day,” CHEAT TO WIN did not disappoint, at least within the greater context of disappointment. 

The whole self-important mess is an outrage. But that is not the part that interests me the most. Grimly sliding the vinyl back into its sleeve, I was still curious as to how something so awful had eluded me all these years. After all, I was an active seeker of this kind of dreck through much of the 1980s. And as revolting as I found CHEAT TO WIN in 2023, it certainly aint no basement tape. The performances, production and presentation are professional (if dated). Someone spent money on this in 1985, and it struck me odd that a copy had never crossed my path.

Digging a little deeper for information on The Jack confirmed two vaguely-held suspicions:

The first was that this type of pre-Hair Age Members Only 80s puff rock is hardly extinct. I finally did find a bio and some backstock of CHEAT TO WIN (along with The Jack’s first record ROCK ELITE) on the website of a hard rock clearing house label called Metallic Blue Records. And there was so much other rank ore down that worm hole: Truce, Megattack, The Take, Cirkus. The pages just kept loading. At first, I thought it might be a parody site, like a whole catalog of HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE repros. But I believe it’s real. It exists in three proper dimensions, right here on Facebook. There are people still creating and consuming this music. 

The second realization I came to in researching The Jack was that the world we live in today truly is a small one. What may previously have been referred to as 6 degrees of separation is probably more like 3 or even 2 in our triple-digit Mbps culture. Reading through The Jack’s bio (clearly penned by The Jack himself), I noticed the name of someone I ACTUALLY KNEW listed as the bass player in a later incarnation of the band, after The Jack’s relocation to LA. I didn’t know Dominic well, but well enough to take drugs with him once or twice in Seattle while The Jack was still working on CHEAT TO WIN in Provo. 

Clearly, there are no remaining secrets in this life... 

COMING IN FEBRUARY: You still like Devotchka?!