DOES KISS STILL MATTER?
On Saturday night, I ventured deep into the heart of the clusterfuck known as The Minnesota State Fair to witness the monster known as Kiss. This was my first Kiss concert, and it was quite an experience to be sure, but after the smoke finally cleared and retina-frying KISS logo was finally unplugged for the night, I was left with a single nagging question: Does Kiss still matter? Not, Is Kiss viable? mind you. Hell, this band is a moneymaking machine with a screwdriver wedged in the gears to force endless cycles of rinse and repeat. You don’t sell 100 million records worldwide and continue to pack arenas by accident. Clearly, this formula works. But does Kiss still matter?
Just to be clear, I’m not questioning the band’s importance in music history. If we could hop into the WABAC machine, travel to 1970 NYC and prevent Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen from meeting, no doubt the musical landscape would be forever altered. You can’t even begin to speculate on the counterfactual: which bands would never happen, and which, if they did, would be radically different.
What does it even mean to matter? I’ll define it with two words: “Inspiration” and “Influence.” Music fans feen for bands that matter, wondering, “How can I get more?”, while other bands worry, “What the fuck are we going to do now?” Insert your own example for the former, and there’s a famous story about the first time The Beatles’ saw Jimi Hendrix that perfectly illustrates the latter.
Trust me, no one is feening for Kiss — there’s plenty to go around. As of today, the band has churned out nineteen studio albums, nine live albums and thirteen compilations, which is to say nothing of the TV/movie appearances, high profile campaigns for Dr. Pepper and M&M’s, endless merchandizing and an in-development children’s program. Set aside the Kiss Army, and from a business standpoint, the supply far outpaces the demand. And while Kiss had a huge influence on many of today’s established artists (too many to even begin to list), I would argue that up-and-coming artists will derive little (or no) influence directly from Kiss. If I were pressed, I would suggest that Kiss currently has the greatest influence on MBAs, tax lawyers and grandfathers wondering what the secret is to being retirement age and still pulling so much young ass.
“Yeah,” you say, “but Sonic Boom has sold over 250,000 copies and the tour is sold out.” True enough. The band’s album, Sonic Boom, sold roughly 110,000 copies in its first week. Those numbers made it the second best selling record of that week, not to mention the highest charting Kiss record ever. Not bad for a band that’s been grinding it out for going on forty years, right?
Maybe. See, that’s not the whole story. Sonic Boom (available exclusively from our favorite exploiters of the working class, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club) was a new Kiss record, but it was packaged with Kiss Klassics (a CD of vintage Kiss tunes re-recorded by the current line-up, previously available only in Japan), a six-song live DVD and a twenty-page booklet. Clearly this package was intended for die-hard Kiss infantry; Sonic Boom merely came along for the ride. In addition, the Wal-Mart deal suggests that Kiss understands their target demographic well enough to know that offering Sonic Boom digitally wasn’t financially advantageous.
I would also argue that the band’s live show has been watered down in the interest of maximizing profits. Sure, there’s a plethora of fire, explosions and fake blood, but the once-raunchy between song banter is now decidedly G-rated. Gone is the bacchanal intro to “Cold Gin” and the bawdy preface to “Love Gun”, and in their place we get “The Pledge of Allegiance.” With so many of their original fans saddled with families, and no price breaks for kids, Kiss followed the money.
So, does Kiss matter anymore? Hell no. Sure, they put on a helluva show and make the cash registers sing, but when all is said and done, their meat and potatoes is plodding mid-tempo rock littered with sophomoric sexual innuendo and worn out double entendre. Time marches on, but Kiss has dug in, and now inhabit a sort of popular culture purgatory with Grease, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pac-Man and thousand other once-groundbreaking objets d’art that that a select group of people simply refuse to let die. Kiss seems content to go through the motions, and their fans don’t seem to care. They hang on Paul’s every word, titter like schoolgirls for Gene’s bass solo/bloodletting and scream at the top of their lungs from the second the curtain drops until the last notes of “Rock And Roll All Nite” die away. Those are the fans who will continue to buy the records and the tickets and t-shirts because it’s what they do, and they’ll assimilate as many friends and family as possible, as if growing the collective will keep this thing they have alive forever.
And you know what? It just might. Recently, Gene has suggested that Kiss doesn’t necessarily end when he and Paul finally decide to call it a day. They may not matter, but Kiss is going to outlast all of us, kiddies. Just wish they hadn’t chose Disneyfied over dignified.
-UG
