Filed under: 70's, 80's, Bands, KISS, Videos | Tags: 70's, 80's, Glam, KISS, Live, Metal, Music, rock, Video
KISS must come next in our They Rocked series. One of the first bands to get me rocking (like many people will say). I fought it but they won. They Rocked isn’t a history lesson so we won’t go into any of that. From the They Rocked initial post…
My brother, who was six years older than me, liked KISS. I hated everything my brother liked so KISS had to be included. This went on until a friend of mine would force feed me the “Lick it up” tape on his big ass boombox we carried around. He was more enlightened as his brother had taken him to see two KISS shows already. My efforts of hating my brother’s band were futile. The foot started tapping and head nodding no matter how hard I tried to stop it. Then I thought of a way to like KISS and not give in to my brother. They had taken the make-up off! My brother liked KISS with the make-up! Make-up off KISS could be mine and I don’t have to acknowledge any influence from my brother!
Something I forgot about when writing the above was how I would play with my brothers KISS trading cards when he wasn’t around. When he was around I would act as if I wanted to destroy them.
My friend Jamie is the one with the Boombox who had Lick it Up playing all the time. His brother had taken him to see KISS on the Creatures of the Night and Lick it Up tours in Dubuque, IA. I always wanted him to put something else in but he would always have to hear it. Eventually it grew on me. I wanted to hear “Fits like a glove” and “All Hell’s Breakin Loose” all the time before long.
Then the day came. I saw the video of “Heaven’s on Fire” on MTV. This was my chance to like KISS on my own. The Makeup days of my brothers days were gone, and they have a new album out so it’s not like I jumped on Jamie’s bandwagon….right? I remember to this day taking the glass penny bank over to the street and smashing it. It was green glass and I had been filling it with quarters I would slowly take from my Mom. It was what 1884…around 13-14 at the time? What do I need to save for other than an album that is going to effect the rest of my life? I sifted through the glass and collected the change and made my way to Maquoketa’s Mr. T’s Music store. One big vinyl Animalize album, please( my cassette player at this time was broken and everything bought was on record).
And so the collection begins. I could not get enough. A whole new world had opened up to me. I entered KISS Fandom myself so it was okay to go back and get the older stuff now. They had 20 other albums out there! I became the KISS expert. Only I knew who Chaim Witz was and this made me smarter than any other rocker wannabe.
MTV had a pretty cool idea in the mid-80’s. They had a Saturday Night Concert. Although most didn’t strike my interest there was one that grabbed my attention and the premier became an event in my house. KISS on the Animalize Tour! Filmed in Detroit it was actually an hour edited from the Animalize LIVE and Uncensored Video. I happened upon the opening clip from the video, let’s have a look (RIP Eric Carr)…
Of course I had the VCR fired up for this one. By this time I had become the Music Video Guy at Maquoketa Jr. High School. If you wanted it, I had it. The copy of that MTV concert became standard viewing at my house. If I was going to someone else’s house and they didn’t have a VCR, we rented one. I still have that dusty video tape to this day.
Big News in little Iowa! Word on the street is that KISS will be returning to The Five Flags Center in Dubuque on March 16th, 1985. Ten days after my birthday, how can Mom not let me go? Tickets were on sale at Mr. T’s Music for $15.00 each. My sister actually bought me one. She also said she had seen that freaking concert video so many times that it better be just as good. Karen and another of my sisters were taking myself and a couple of friends. This occupied my mind up until the day of the show. It was all I could think about. I would look at that ticket constantly. I would fall asleep at night imagining what the set list would be.
We caught a nice little buzz before the concert. Karen was also the older sister that would buy my friends and I booze. It was mostly beer but I remember Peach Schnapps being involved that night. My first concert. Dokken opened. They were on their “Tooth and Nail” Tour. They were pretty good and sounded about like what I had heard of them. Went pretty smooth except for Don throwing the mic stand up and missing it, Mick Brown doing the same with a drum stick, and George Lynch’s weird hair.
When it came time for KISS and the lights went down I was freaking out. “…You wanted the best and you got them! The hottest band in the land….KISS!” as they shot into Detroit Rock City. Dubuque was far from being Detroit but it sounded to me like Paul was singing about us. The concert went blow for blow with the MTV concert I mention above. Except now we get to hear them swear and listen to Paul’s long cool ass stories in between songs. Of course since it was a whole show we got more songs too.
I just took my kids recently to a Jr. Hockey game at Five Flags Arena. I now live about at 10 minute walk from it. I looked over at the bleachers we were standing on at the KISS show and it was strange the memories it brought back after all these years. I would see KISS there two more times, on Crazy Nights and Hot in the Shade tours. They were not welcomed back after cracking the buildings foundation.
Lucky for me KISS had always had a thing for the Midwest. On KISS Alive you can hear Gene say, “Come on Quad Cities” during “Let me go Rock and Roll” in Davenport, Iowa. I read a Playboy (yeah read it cause Gene was in it) where Gene Simmons talked of writing a screenplay about two groupies from Davenport when he was in his movie phase. I would get to see KISS eight times in all. The last being the reunion tour when the makeup went back on.
Part of my thing for KISS was that I never got to be a part of that when the original band was together. Don’t get me wrong. I think they were a better band with Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr/Singer. But you know what I mean about the magic of the original KISS. When MTV did the Unplugged with Peter and Ace joining in I was freaking out. I knew it was coming, they advertised it and of course it was pre-taped. Still when they walked out it was priceless! This of course led to the reunion tour.
In a sense I would become complete with KISS when seeing them in Moline, Illinois that first reunion tour when they put the makeup back on. This was my eighth time seeing them but first with the original members. The show was awesome! But I felt a little empty after that. You know how they say that you don’t really want to meet your hero? I think it was kind of like that. I had seen it all with them now. I liked the KISS better with Bruce and Eric and now they were going to take that away.
I know my KISS fandom of all those years will be questioned and the KISS Army would likely put me in front of a firing squad. I didn’t have any desire to see them again when they would come back on the reunion tours. I still listen to them and I have awesome memories. I just saw one of my Senior pictures from High School the other day and I’m wearing a Crazy Nights tour t-shirt under a jean jacket (laugh, it was cool at the time).
I think they have got a little crazy with the marketing of the band. They meaning Gene I guess. I really liked Gene’s Autobiography…”KISS and Makeup” and read it in a little over a day.I do have to say that I find Gene Simmons Family Jewels very entertaining although it appears way to set up for a “reality” show. I never watched Gene on The Apprentice so I can’t comment on that much. I did think it would be awesome to see his ego go against Trumps. My friend over at the Music Goat watched and has some comments though.
So anyway, that’s what I have to say about KISS for now. Like I said, it isn’t a history lesson so of course there are things not mentioned. I will look at some of the albums a little closer in the future.
Let’s look at some KISS live footage, shall we?
Filed under: 70's, 80's, Van Halen, Videos | Tags: Dates, Live, Tour, Van Halen, Video
Filed under: 70's, 80's, Bands, KISS, Motley Crue, Van Halen | Tags: 80's, Band, Hair, Hard Rock, KISS, Metal, Motley Crue, Music, Van Halen
80’s Hard Rock is often used as a punchline. To hear the words “Hair Band” brings a different response, depending on the age of the ears hearing it. It’s Mom and Dad’s music to the kids today. Some kids embrace it to be different as kids in the 80’s who cried the praise of The Doors led you to believe you were missing out or just were not cool enough to understand. For adults it brings back memories, good or bad. Even those that were not into it at the time inadvertently found themselves sucked in with the exposure on radio and MTV. If anyone between the ages of 30 and 40 tells you that they never sang along to ‘Wanted Dead of Alive” they are likely lying.
I dove into the 80’s Hard Rock head first…literally. In 8th grade I started letting my hair grow. I’ll be honest, the intentions were for a rat tail. Remember those? One strip of long hair hanging off the back as the rest was short? Yes, the rat tail was going to be my first rebellion tool against my mother. Then I realized it could be so much more. It was 1984.
My earliest exposure to hard rock came from a source that it did for many. Siblings. I was the youngest of five in the house and the closest one in age to me was six-years older. In the 70’s we lived in the L.A. area. Often you could find Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, or Ted Nugent blaring somewhere in the house. My earliest memory comes from a party they had. I was lying on the couch and I remember “Stairway to Heaven” playing. Scared the shit out of me as before me was the stairs heading up. I was about 6-7 at the time. Then came a song from a new local band. “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen did not help my shivering on the couch cause. I just remember hearing the chorus over and over. No good can come from a 6-7 year-old hearing devil over and over.
In 1978 my mother transplanted me to small town Iowa. I had escaped the devil that was running up the stairway to heaven. In a few short years that hard rocking music, as Huey Lewis would put it, would return…and with a vengeance. It would become my mission to embrace it and force feed it to this community pf about 5000 surrounded by cornfields.
