I know they've become the poster boys for cultural capitalism and I suppose they always were, but I do have to still acknowledge their influence on my musical journey considering Kiss' 1976 LP, Destroyer, was the foundation stone of my record collection. Not that I didn't have a couple of records in my possession before this, but this was the first one I bought with my own money of my own volition. The few I had prior to this were childhood gifts of one sort or another and were mostly novelty records like Super Bloopers or Goofy Greats.
It was pretty hard not to be exposed to Kiss in 1975/1976 as they had become THEE teen band of the era thanks to their Alive double live album from 1975. My cousin had that album, which I thought was great. My record collection began after a somewhat tense negotiation with my parents to get a raise in the monthly allowance my brother and I were granted. It started as a mere pittance and barely enough to buy some candy and a pop or two. I was desperate to start buying records and you needed at least $7 for one of those back in those days. Dad was incensed that we wanted more money and put up a tough resistance towards any increase, but we finally managed to get an agreement to something like, I think, $20 a month, enough to buy 2 or 3 records at least. It was my first experience with collective bargaining.
With that in place, the next order of business was to put that hard won chore money down on some vinyl. Weirdly enough, my first choice was not this record, but the LP, More More More, by The Andrea True Connection. I just liked that song and went to Zellers to buy it and brought it home to give it a spin on my shit box record player. It was just one of those things that was a box with a turntable and speakers built into the back. Total garbage. So much so that the heavy thump of the disco beat was too much for it and, when I went to play the record, it just skipped all over the place. Infuriated by this skipping damn record, I figured it was defective and took it back the next day for an exchange. I wasn't going to take a chance on another copy of the disco record, so my backup choice was the Kiss album.
Back then, Kiss seemed like a dangerous band. Reading the letters to the fans on the inside gate-fold off the Alive album, Gene's letter came off real evil and demonic, so he was pretty cool for us kids. It all felt like something we should not be listening to. Putting on the Destroyer album, that sense was reinforced by songs like God of Thunder. For a 12-13 year old, just discovering the world of adult preoccupations, it was very alluring and definitely gave you some street-cred in the playground at junior high.
Of course, it wasn't long until I started to pick up on the commercialization going on with it and how it was getting more and more "kid friendly" as time went on. By the time Love Gun and the comic came out, my suspicions of the latent "uncoolness" of Kiss started to mount. Then that horrible movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom, hit the TV screen and it was game over for my interest in the band. There was also the emergence of the punk & new wave scenes starting in 1978 which soon knocked my attention completely off mainstream bands like Kiss and onto far more interesting paths. I should also say that Queen came along in 1977 and blew Kiss off the map in terms of style, versatility, talent and sophistication.
I should conclude, however, by saying that Kiss did, ultimately, leave a key impression which informed my own musical path going forward. If there's one thing I took away from them, it was the importance of showmanship! The idea that a band should put on a bit of a show if they're going to be on stage remained with me from then on. I never liked going on stage in street clothes. I never liked a lot of bands that did that either. I always appreciated a band who gave me something to look at while they were up there, whether it was in the staging, visuals or simply having personality and attitude enough to be interesting to watch. This, I have to put down to Kiss setting the standard in terms of offering some stagecraft while playing music.
