the Tour, the Tour, the Tour
The Crue
The KISS
This contrast kinda sums it up, but let’s look at a couple more things:
I enjoy them both, but here’s the big distinction
- KISS is a couple of old Jewish (as it happens) dudes squeezing every last dollar out of Chaim and Stanley‘s Music Emporium. Oh sure, they hired a couple of nice boys to fill in, but they’ll never run the place. The “danger” of KISS is in their minds, or in the risk of Gene having a coronary/heat stroke, or the audience stabbing Paul when he won’t shut up about the new album being available only at Wal Mart.
- The Crue always seemed like a gang of L.A. punks whose contribution to society was in using musical “axes” and sticks to bang heads instead of using literal ones to bang on actual heads. Where KISS pretends to amass SRO crowds of pussy backstage, pretends to want it any more, and their groupies pretend that they want to put out for Grandpa, the Crue actually seems to be swimming in it. My teenage daughters could go backstage with KISS; not on your life with the other guys.
Danger is the sad part. It’s a sad caricature with KISS. It’s part of the ongoing appeal of the Crue. What I don’t understand is why KISS tries to perpetuate the lie of their edginess, while the Crue tries to distance themselves from it. Nikki Sixx said in an interview that the Crue is basically a job – they don’t hang out offstage, like ordinary mortals don’t hang out with their coworkers. Sixx, dude, we want to believe the whole badass thing, but if you want to shit on that image and have us picturing you feeding Cheerios to your toddlers in Malibu while Vince Neil floats in his Vegas pool pretending to be Moby Dick and Mick Mars gets another hip replacement with his AARP discount, well so be it. Fucks.
Coming up sometime after tonight: Can the geezers and the inkfiends still get it up?