I cannot recall a world without the rock band KISS in it.

Seriously.

By the time I started becoming aware of popular culture as this big swirling thing that existed out there in the world — this would’ve been the early to mid 1970s — KISS was already there, looming over the landscape in those monstrous platform boots of theirs, casting shadows that reached even as far as my small-town home of Riverton, Utah. Everybody in my elementary school knew who they were. Their fearsome black-and-white visages were as familiar to us as those of Bert and Ernie. They were on lunchboxes and in comic books. They were on television, too, appearing in the infamous Paul Lynde Halloween Special (if you haven’t seen this little piece of disco-era variety-show insanity, you really ought to; just make sure you’ve got something really strong in your glass before you press “play”) and their own made-for-TV movie, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. It seems like they were making guest appearances on shows like Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk, although my memory may be fooling me about that and I’m too lazy to Google it. They even haunted our playground mythology, in the form of lurid stories whispered by the older kids, who no doubt got their dubious intelligence from their teenaged siblings (you knew the letters of the band’s name stood for “Knights in Satan’s Service,” right?).

KISS was so ubiquitous, in fact, that it didn’t seem to matter if you knew their music or not (which I really did not back then, even though they performed their hits of the day in those TV shows I mentioned; hey, I was a kid… I wasn’t paying that much attention). But that’s kind of always been the point of KISS, hasn’t it? Their image selling the band more than their music? I don’t mean to be snide. I’m merely acknowledging my suspicion that many more people could probably identify the band from a photograph than from any of their songs.

These days, I do know and like a number of their best-known songs… maybe enough to fill out a complete CD. Probably not enough to really call myself a fan. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling a certain affection for this kitschy, long-lived circus act, precisely because they’ve been around for so very long. They’re a part of my happy junk-food childhood memories, right up there with The Fonz and candy cigarettes and collecting Looney Tunes glasses from Taco Time. A few years ago, I started thinking that it might be fun to actually go to a KISS concert sometime, even though I’m not a fan, purely for the experience. When I heard they were touring this summer with Def Leppard, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I figured even if KISS didn’t measure up to their reputation, I’d at least enjoy Leppard, a band I’d already seen twice before.

I shouldn’t have worried about it. I was entertained before the show (which was this past Monday night) even got underway, simply by watching the gathering crowd. Given the — ahem — increasing maturity of the musicians I tend to like, I long ago became accustomed to the idea of multi-generational rock concerts, but there’s still something incredibly endearing about the sight of a pot-bellied fiftysomething hard-rock fan walking hand-in-hand with a ten-year-old boy, both of them in full KISS make-up.

Def Leppard took the west-facing outdoor stage following an opening act that so failed to impress me, I can’t even recall their name. Wearing sunglasses against a setting sun that painted them in shades of gold and washed out most of their video and light effects, the five-member ’80s megaband played for just over an hour. Their setlist was heavily weighted with material from their 1987 smash album Hysteria, while the two big hits from the previous record Pyromania — “Rock of Ages” and “Photograph” — were kept in reserve for a brief encore that left the crowd fired up and ready for more. In other words, they played essentially the same setlist this band always plays. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily. As I said, I enjoy seeing these guys, even though I know what to expect. But whether it was due to this show being the opening night for the tour, the record-breaking attendance of over 20,000 people (both Leppard and KISS seemed a bit awed by that little factoid!), or being paired with a legendary band that the boys in Leppard probably listened to when they were growing up, they played with an energy I’ve not previously seen from them. They turned in a great performance, possibly the best of the now-three times I’ve seen them.

Then it was KISS’ turn.

Wow. I mean, Wow.

Those guys put on one hell of a show. From the moment a giant black curtain emblazoned with the KISS logo was whisked away to reveal the band descending to the stage on the back of a giant steel-frame spider, to the thundering finale when there was so much confetti flying that it looked like a white-out blizzard on a summer night, the only word that applied was spectacle. There were fireworks and fire-jets. There were lots and lots and lots of flashing lights. Gene Simmons spat fire and drooled blood and levitated on a wire harness. Lead singer Paul Stanley rode a zipline out over the audience to play one song from a little satellite stage, and later smashed a guitar to pieces, Who-style. The drum kit rose about 30 feet on a scissorlift contraption. And that silly steel spider was constantly flexing its legs. It was all perfectly ridiculous — more than once, I thought we were about to witness a malfunction straight out of This Is Spinal Tap!, and Gene’s face during the blood gag was less that of a contemptuous demon mocking the peasants than of a 64-year-old man wondering why the hell he was still doing this silly stuff at his age — but good lord, it was fun. Oh, sure, the actual music wasn’t so great. I didn’t recognize much of what they played, and honestly, Def Leppard’s lead guitarist Phil Collen could play any of the KISS guys into the ground (not to mention my man Rick Springfield… no, really!), but their showmanship is something else entirely. KISS has been at this for a very long time — this tour is being billed as their 40th anniversary, in fact — and they’ve become very good at what they do. And I was completely, willingly, happily swept away by it. By the time the band wrapped up with its signature “Rock and Roll All Nite,” I was throwing the goat horns, waving my fist in the air, stomping my feet, and singing along with the drunken middle-aged dude behind me. I was snatching bits of swirling confetti out of the air and handing them to Anne to keep as souvenirs (I’m not sure, but the individual pieces looked a lot like wrapping papers to me… appropriate, given how many whiffs of grass I caught during that song). And when the band took their final bows and the floodlights came on to guide the enormous mob back to the parking area, I was sweaty and grinning. It was a summer night, a work night no less, but I wasn’t tired at all. I had my girl at my side and a tender, cooling breeze in my face. Somebody standing in the bed of a pickup was belting “Shout It Out Loud” like the anthem it was meant to be, the Harleys were rumbling freely between the long lines of idling cars, a drunken blond sprawled across the hood of our car before her friend dragged her away, and somewhere I could hear young girls laughing. I was energized, ready to go out and do… well, more. And while I didn’t feel like I did at 17, exactly, that ineffable state of untested bravado and fragile optimism felt like it wasn’t so very far away for a change.

I don’t know that I’ll ever go to another KISS concert… but I’m very glad I went to this one. It was exactly what I’d always imagined. It was an experience…

Photo source: KISSONLINE.com