by dave123 » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:22 pm
Punk was actually the gateway to Kiss for me. In the UK in the '70s, KISS was not on the radar of any of my primary school pals. We had the Jam, the Specials, and Madness to entertain us. Any self respecting wannabe mod of age 7-10 wouldn't be caught dead supporting KISS (or really any "hairy" band) at that time. When I moved to Canada in the early '80s, my elementary school chums were a surprisingly elitist bunch of musical aficionados, who also viewed KISS as musical poserdome. They all had older brothers who swore by Sabbath, Floyd, and Zeppelin but loathed KISS with a passion. One friend even told me of a beating his older brother gave him for showing an interest in KISS. As a result of these two cross border anti-KISS experiences, I wrote off the band for years. When I started to go to hardcore punk shows in the '80s, I started noticing the odd KISS shirt underneath a spiky leather jacket. How could these dudes with such good musical taste like Discharge, Amebix, and KISS? I then sneaked a few of the early KISS LPs into my weekly pile of hardcore and realized that the early records were awesome. Cheesy? yes, but still awesome in a weird feathered hair sit in your basement and smoke pot sort of way. I didn't even mind Lick it Up and Animalize.
I have only seen KISS once on the Crazy Nights Tour and only because Anthrax opened up. Anthrax sucked in that setting, but we still tried to show our support. When KISS came on, we showed our adolescent colors by going to the last row of the very poorly attended stadium and sitting directly opposite the stage. There were two entire stadium sections between us and the next row of people. Absurd. Not really sure why we didn't just leave. Sadly, the band was too "pro" to acknowledge the knuckleheads in the top row, and we went home without rustling Gene's feathers.