KI77

Our second issue is being put together right now.
  STAFF

KI77 Issue I Summer 2017

And so it is that on this day we close the summer issue.
Check back for the link to the fall issue In the next few days at the bottom of the page.
Good night USA and the world. This is the Ghost Musician signing off...

Summer's Almost Gone

Good, Gene.

Now you guys need to ask Paul Stanley to join the band.

He'll say no.  Too much ego.

Try Peter Criss, Gene.

That'll make Paul look small.

GENE'S ON OUR TEAM AGAIN!

 

Joe Perry in Talks with Kiss!

We're just making a point, simpletons! 

 

Rock On ACE!

 

GAME OVER!

The morning of September 20th.
 

Temporary Notice:

We are wrapping up the Summer Issue.  Thank you to everybody who has been reading.
Shout out loud to those people overseas!
The film clip has been added to the Fabulous Forum Flashback article below.
It's a piece of that time and will personalize a few of the faces in my story.
It's the second video, immediately below the Ten-Q video at the top of the article.
And thank you to all of the former and present members of Kiss for their good sportsmanship.

Have fun Ace and Gene!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Speaking On Behalf of the President of the KI77 Army

Hi everybody!!! It's the President of the KI77 Army spokesdummy, talking to you about brain washing.  I'm doing it to you as you are reading this. OK, you can go back to what you were doing.  But just a quick reminder that Kiss has no choice but to do a full reunion ALBUM after we published our reunion album propaganda, which I, uh, we wrote without help from you. But you are dangerously close to coming to our way of thinking, and leaving the Dark Side. Join The Force and the Rebellion.  This includes Paul and Gene who are coming out of the fog. Stick out your tongue, Gene!

And stop thinking in a lineup box.  Don't fire anybody this time.  Have some class!

MTV 2 PLUGGED
Call Vinnie, Bruce, Bob, and Anton. Do what we say!

"Rise to It" guys!

Frehley's Comet Reunite 2017 September 15

Don't be satisfied. Tell them we want that reunion album!!!!!

Which one is the impostor?

GENE

Shout out loud to Peter Criss:

Keep practicing the drums!

Have a nice weekend EVERYBODY!

FABULOUS FORUM FLASHBACK: Alive II, Revisited

You can skip this, but its kind of awesome.

                                                                                                                                 

By Ghost Musician (D.Talmage)

From left,

John Hames (12th birthday) in the Redskins jacket, the Ghost Writer center, and John Vinas on the right.

May, 1977 just before Love Gun came out.

That's the Kiss comic book I am holding up.

But that was dated September.
I'm prety sure that hit the newsstands in June. So that can't be it.
Maybe it's Star Wars. No. That was a few weeks later. Who knows?
I had already "outgrown" Batman.
This wasn't 1966!
Is it a Bob's Big Boy comic book?!!
i don't recognize the pages.
Accuracy.
When I freeze the frames, it kind of looks like Japanese animated porn.
AFTER FURTHER REVIEW, WE HAVE DETERMINED THAT THIS WAS THE KISS COMIC BOOK.  THE "BOOM" PAGE WHEN THEY FIRST BECOME KISS.
Maybe it was Bobby V 's birthday in June?  But he's not in the film.
See that bar behind the piano at the start of the film?  I still have it here at my apartment.

     Elvis Presley died while we were on vacation in San Diego during the summer of 1977, and that's what stands out.  My mother was shocked.  I had always thought Elvis was Rock and Roll from all of those television advertisements, and I was right.
Then Groucho died.

     When we got home, a friend named Eric, 13, the young leader of our neighborhood and the local Kiss EXPERT  that read all of the magazines, was walking by and told us that Kiss was playing the L.A. Forum for a three night stand, and that it was going to be recorded for the next Kiss album, Alive II.  Can you imagine how much my ten year old brain was spinning?  (I had smoked even less pot than Gene at that point but I was so high, I thought I'd just  OD'd!!!)  I nearly missed this show because we happened to get back in town just in time.
     Some tiny little nobody group called Cheap Trick were the guest stars. "What the BLEEP do we need guest stars for? Who the fuck BLEEP are they?  They must be nobodies since we don't know them!  What is the meaning of this?!!  Cheap What?!! They must suck!!!!!!!!  They're not KISS!"  We thought that Cheap Trick was the stupidest name for a band ever.  TWO  WORDS?!!  And their first name was Cheap???!!!  That was worse than LED-ZEPPELIN.
AUDIENCE LAUGHTER!
Kiss is the greatest name any band ever had in the history of music, not just Rock! 
I don't say that to flatter them.  It is because Kiss is the greatest name any band ever had in the history of music, not just Rock! What if Kiss and Aerosmith had each other's names, but the songs remained the same?  Kiss would still be the greatest name any band ever had in the history of music, not just Rock! And they wore make-up, costumes, and shot off explosives and fireworks, while playing super loud, powerful, "heavy metal" /  hard rock with 2 guitars?  Sign me up, Scotty!!!

     I saw Aerosmith (several times, but the first was on April 8th, 1979 at the  
L.A. Memorial Coliseum, the California World Music Festival) right before the band imploded,,. and don't have a lot of highlights to report because there were none that night). They also haven't recorded a good album, or song even, in decades, longer than Paul McCartney or maybe even Woody Guthrie, but they're in good company.  (Wait, you're not actually counting all of those newer payola "hits", are you?)   OK diehards, there were a couple of moments. They looked really cool from far away in the huge Coliseum late at night, in the same way the football players do. There's something about being the focal point in such a large place. Everything is magnified (not in visibility, but importance) in the Coliseum, despite looking twice as small as in other venues, only more so at night - if the crowd size is not an issue, and it wasn't.  We were kind of far away, mid-way up the seats, to the left of the stage, about sixty yards away, if you factor in the height of the seats.  My enthusiasm did not transcend that night.  The crowd was apathetic... for Aerosmith.
     The end.  No wait, not yet!!!!!   Not quite.  I'm talking 'about the ending of the set,
"Train Kept a Rollin'", which is always good, right?  Right.  So then the "big" Joe Perry guitar solo took place, maybe?   It blurs with the Aerosmith album Live Bootleg (1978) which was their current double LP.  But I remember it vaguely, echoing across the Coliseum and into the night sky. They introduced one of the songs that would end up on Night in the Ruts late in the year, "Bone to Bone", and I definitely remember that one because I was very interested in hearing the new material (back in those days!).  But they were completely blown off the stage before they'd even plugged in by Van Halen during their earlier set. The rumor was that the Bad Boys from Boston were almost too fucked up to even play (my diagnosis: nerves). 
     It had become cold and dark by the time Aerosmith went on, opening with World War II fighter plane footage on duplicate, small movie screens (semi-cutting edge at the time). Meanwhile, the guitar players scraped their strings backstage before the curtain drop, mimicking planes in distress, going down...now that was cool!!!  They opened with "Back in the Saddle", I think, because I barely remember their show.  I saw them several times including front row in 1986 and that show was far more impactful.  What stayed with me from '79 was recognizing their first number right away because it had sounded exactly like the live album's opener. Also, a vision of Steven Tyler later becoming frustrated, telling the crowd to use their "fucking hands!!!" (translation; Please clap!!! Or at least do so when the song is over) and sort of remember him twirling around the stage all night with his mic stand.. It really turned out to be a somewhat forgettable set.  I don't remember it!  Except for being there all day, waiting for it, and discovering Van Halen instead!!! I had never even heard of VH  before until opening up the concert program that hot afternoon in the seats. It read "Aersomith; a name worn with pride."  What did that mean?  I still don't know.  But who was this band going on before them from Pasadena?  We'd originally gone to see Aerosmith, but had left that evening talking about our new favorite up and coming band, VH   I bought their first album a few days later.  They had catapulted to super stardom that night in Los Angeles, then crashed at Mom and Dad's in Pasadena, where they both still technically lived, when they weren't on the road.  Aerosmith?  Aerosmith was good.. It was Over.
But this was 1979.  Things were changing.  The eighties were looming.  There was definitely an awareness that Kiss wasn't welcome at that these festivals!  This was about music.  These were real bands.  It would have all been a lie had it not been for Van Halen. Kiss fandom had begun to feel a little bit juvenile, and Dynasty hadn't even come out yet!  But we're heading off course...Back to '77. 
     I was a member of the Kiss Army, everybody was.  And I had the Marvel Super Special NO. 1 comic book, a bunch of cool Kiss iron-on Chicken Shirt T's, some Creem magazines, the sparkly Kiss belt buckle, and every album already,

(Courtesy Marvel Comics © 1977)

including their latest and greatest (we all thought at the time) Love Gun.  In some ways, I still feel that way, but then there's Hotter than Hell.

The one record I had neglected of the seven.  I had only heard side one, and hadn't managed to get through that second side until... the day of the Alive II show!

To many people's horror, that is by far my all-time favorite Kiss album!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just to piss them off! That's not why.  It has a cloudy 1960s quality about it, and because it all happened before I was aware of them, it feels like it came from that hippie time period when I was a baby.  Only that second album, I might point out.  The album photography perhaps added to that effect even more so than the music or sound of the mix.

And in case you have been living under a rock, here's Hotter than Hell.

I would hate any attempt of a remix, it would never work for me.  It's not all about top end, Tommy!                              KI77  Hotter   than    Hell

This was the 2nd album, released in 1974. Neither of the first two sold much at the time, but both would have to be considered cult classics today, and sold way more copies at that time than almost anyone comes near selling in the digital age...

The final song, "Strange Ways" written by Ace Frehley, featuring one his greatest guitar solos ever, and with

Peter Criss on drums and lead vocals - 

that is my

ALL -TIME  FAVORITE KISS SONG!!!!!

The rhythm guitars roar, Ace's guitar solo screams, and Peter's drums sound heavenly.

Ace told us (just like at his audition) he drank a couple of tall beers before playing that wicked solo.

I had a few beers afterward, myself! 

What really happened?

Most likely scenario, Ace mixed up the two stories!

  AUGUST 27th, 1977

    "You haven't heard that?!!" my friend John Vinas, 12, exclaimed, making me feel insecure. He was going to the show with my father and I later that night.  And what a day and night that was!  I went to the Love Gun tour and also heard side 2 of Hotter than Hell  for the first time, earlier that hot day.  (Eric was going to be seeing the final show Sunday night the 28th.) We had stopped by Steve S.'s house the morning of our show to ask him what it had been like, the night before.  Before we could even ask, he had told us, "The Kiss concert was so neat!"  (He was kind of a geek, as you can tell by the jargon.)  His name has been protected to avoid embarrassment because Steve, it was rumored or possibly true, had always "secretly" wanted to go streaking through the neighborhood, and had even asked his dad if he could!
     But before that awful vacation in San Diego nearly swallowed up my Alive II experience, the doorbell rang one morning, and it was three of my friends from the neighborhood, maybe four; Eric Soria, John Vinas, and his little brother Bobby, 7, 
(and John Hames, 12,  was probably there but am not positive).  So, they had an early copy of the new Kiss album because another friend's father was in the business, and that kid wasn't a Kiss fan (so he gave the record to Eric, and I own that copy today). "Bang!" they greeted me with the Kiss Love pop Gun "going off" in my face.  "Huh?" Micro-seconds away from hearing the new Kiss album!!! The cover looked a lot like Destroyer, the first Kiss record I'd ever heard back in December. Love Gun looked even more incredible. And it sounded fantastic.
     Seven and a half months earlier, the neighborhood kids had sternly instructed me to tell my parents to buy the new KISS album (Rock and Roll Over at that point).  I didn't even know what an album was.  When my mother handed me KISS Destroyer, I couldn't even begin to guess what it was all about, but my instincts told me these guys were like scary, creepy, hippie-super heroes, and I was right!  I kind of had a vague idea that it might also be music, since it was a record like Count Basie, right?  NO!!!  It was just noise!
     A news broadcast and somebody doing the dishes?  What the... ?  Some guy got in a car, and was listening to the radio, singing along...  Was this a short story or something?  Yes!  And then the electric guitar came in... My eyes widened. 
When the drum roll sounded, I immediately got it!!!  This was:
Paul Stanley, Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, and Gene Simmons of KISS!!!

The iconic Kiss Destroyer album cover,

a masterpiece painted by Ken Kelly (1976)

      A day or so later, my buddy John Hames dropped by, and we started talking all about the new buzz in the neighborhood (now that I knew what all the fuss was about, KISS!)  Hames told me he had a Kiss ALBUM at his house (his brothers probably had had them all, I realize now).  I still hadn't even realized Destroyer was also an album, and so it was that on this day, December whatever it was of 1976, I'd envisioned something more like a photo scrapbook, an early version of Kisstory!  Before Gene. "WHOA!!!"  I responded sincerely.  It turned out to have been their first record, Kiss (1974), which HAD to have been a hand me down.  Nobody had bought their first album yet in the neighborhood, and we didn't even like it when we'd first heard it!  The cover was really a good lesson; it was better to be a first rate KISS than a third rate Beatles. The photograph was terrible, except for Ace, who looked cosmic, staring out into space right from the start.  He always knew who he was - SPACE ACE!!!  But he looked terrible in reality for weeks afterwards trying to get that damned silver spray-paint out of his hair!  Our Gang would go over to John's place to listen to all of our Kiss albums together (...and the debut Boston record).  We all thought Kiss Kiss stank compared to Alive! and we were right, while describing the versions as "slower" (what we had really meant  was "softer, cleaner, with less energy, power, attitude, or distortion...").  As mentioned earlier, Hames had older brothers, and the last one to go, Jim, was moving out at that time, and John was going to be taking over his bedroom soon.  Jim had painted this really fucking cool circus "mural" on one of the walls of that room which everybody loved and envied.  It looked cooler than Psycho Circus.  It made that room special, no doubt about it, and gave it a mystical ambiance.  Jim had been an early Kiss fan, but didn't like the band much after Alive!  He was a long-haired, young adult of the 1970s, and age is always a major factor in one's taste.  Paul and Ace were probably only a couple of years older than Jim was, so it all makes sense. He had been a part of that first generation of fans, and we were now the second.  Some of those ORIGINAL fans had become disillusioned with their enormous success.  (That always happens.)  He was now getting rid of all of his Kiss records except for Dressed to Kill because he dug the negative on the back cover.  He told us this just when Kiss beginning to zenith, while they were still ascending, when the latest album out was Rock and Roll Over!  See?  We've all been through Kiss repulsion and it can strike at any time!!!

     Next, in the order I experienced these albums, came Alive!, then The Originals, and finally Rock and Roll Over for my tenth birthday, and my collection was caught up (if you counted The Originals as the first three).  It was actually a lot easier to collect Kiss in '77 than in '17. WAY!!!  (By the way, the concert tickets were priced at only $9.50, $8.50, and $7.50 each, that summer, to attend Alive II!!!)  I'd spent the entire winter, spring, and summer of '77 listening to AM pop radio stations Ten-Q and 93 KHJ every day, just hoping to hear songs like "Detroit Rock City", "Hard Luck Woman", "Calling Dr. Love", and "Christine Sixteen" (I still love this single), all of which they regularly played.  OK, and  even "Beth". No?  OK, especially "Beth", but we didn't really like that one, and neither did the band.  I think Peter's probably sick of it by now.  It's like "Rock and Roll All Nite", Eventually, "I Was Made for Loving You" came out, and then we never heard them on the New Ten Q again. They went out of business soon after Dynasty's release.. On July 31, 1979 KTNQ joined the Spanish persuasion.  ¡ Buenos días a todos! ¿sorprendido? No habrá más discoteca en la mañana, está muerto.  All my old friends had moved on to punk rock.  And I joined them too, halfway, in 1982, and oh my God, that summer was good and bad, in a dangerous way, but I never, EVER cut my hair!!!   I became the Rocker. but for awhile they would shout Hippie! at me when I would bike by (before they wanted me to play guitar for their bands).  Anyway, I prefer the Phantom version of "Beth" with the ghost musician on guitar  (It wasn't me.)  You would have thought KISS was actually big at the time, had you been my age!!!!!   WE DIDN'T LISTEN TO FM!!!  But I was also being exposed to a lot of other "great" music (unlike my parents who were wasting their time listening to dinosaurs like Ludwig van Beethoven) that wasn't even rock, it was Top 40 pop.  And I began to connect with some of it. 
     But at the time, I only really liked Kiss, because they were obviously SO much better than all of those other cheap groups that didn't even have costumes or makeup, whose songs were boring, "regular" rock, never heavy enough, and with no stage presence, guitar solos, smoke bombs, posters or even comic books!

     At night, while Kiss was playing somewhere else in the world, we sat around Kittridge St. Elementary School in Van Nuys, after playing sandlot football, and talked Kiss, which would transcend into ghost stories.  During the days, we would go to Dale's Jr. on Vanowen and Woodmen (not exactly as classic as say, Times Square, but it's real, unlike Kisstory, and will have to suffice), and first we'd read Creem Magazine and all of the other articles we could find about Kiss.  Then, before leaving, we would rip off a couple of mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches and buy a candy bar, then go a couple doors down over to Piece of Shit Records, that had some Bay City Rollers, Queen, Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Leo Sayer. The Bee Gees, Boz Scaggs, Fleetwood Mac, Boston, Chicago, Kansas, Rod Stewart, The Eagles,  Sha Na Na, Bla Bla Bla, George Carlin, and some rock stuff that I'd never heard of, like Aerosmith.  And two bands that I had; The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.  And no black artists visible whatsoever except Stevie Wonder (unless you counted Three Dog Night).  Lets just hope they actually had some Hendrix LPs filed away, but I hadn't heard of him yet.  (I first learned about Jimi in a fan magazine which told us Ace was into Hendrix, and could "emulate him perfectly".  I laugh at that statement, now.  I love Ace, but he did have a lot of very good PR back in the 1970s, and we bought every word of it!  I didn't hear Hendrix until two years later on a jukebox at George's Hamburgers stand next to L.A. Valley College along the train tracks - "Purple Haze" (perfect!) on a typically hot summer day in 1979. Jimi Hendrix would soon replace Kiss as my all-time favorite (to this day) but an important point is  I WASN'T THERE!  I was a baby when Jimi died.  I don't have the same kind of authority as when writing about Kiss - that was my era, OUR band, so that's why I write Kiss stuff instead of Jimi Hendrix material. But back to those Krazy guys in Kiss!  And a look at just one particular neighborhood at that special time, forever lost. You can still read the magazines, admire the merchandise, and throw on the old videos and records, you can buy their fucking costumes, but you can never go back to the old neighborhood!

     That little piece of shit record store also had a couple of pinball machines, including Space Mission, and all of the Kiss records, sealed obviously, which we dug.  So we'd look at the Kiss records each day, even though we had our own.  I didn't have the first three really, only The Originals, which seemed cheap at the time, because of the paper sleeves, so I liked checking out the first three records, mainly. )Actually, The Originals was a brilliant move because it familiarized the younger fans with the entire repertoire before they lost interest, because we probably would never have bought those albums otherwise.  Once we had the entire collection  we were hooked.) Then we'd pretend we were the pinball wizard Ace Frehley, who undoubtedly actually sucks at pinball!!! I also bought Love Gun the day it was actually released at that little piece of shit store, about a week after Eric had played it for all of us - when we had absolutely CRANKED it while Mom and Dad were out.  It had been a cool summer morning, and it was almost like this big rock and roll breakfast party, for seven to thirteen year olds, but without any food.  More in a minute.

I only read about the Kiss appearance at radio station Ten-Q in the L.A. Free Press which had an article headlined The SS Men of Kiss   

on the front page.  In those days, reading about it was perceived as being a part of it.  My mother found the free newspaper and was absolutely horrified, without either of us understanding what it was being discussed! She had discovered this about two days before the Alive II shows. 

__

    I bought a Beatles greatest hits record there during the Kiss craze which gave us something to contrast them with, some musical perspective.  Not a bad choice for a kid.   About a year later, I bought Aerosmith Rocks, which the Rock music-expert sales guy recommended (after a friend had turned me on to their 1973 debut album) at P.O.S, Records a little before they were shut down for good by the health department, and had to pack up their 147 sealed LPs, two pinball machines, and six posters. and turned in the keys.  I had stolen the money from my mother's purse to buy the record, and got caught.  I suppose this is like confession but it is easy thirty-nine years later to confess to something I never did.  OK, I did it. I never had to get rid of the album, because I never told them what I had used the money for, but my pop taught me my lesson by not taking me to any Rams games that (regular) season, and he suffered with me, alone.  We did go to the divisional playoff game against Minnesota that December, and watched Fran Tarkenton's final NFL game. One of the games I missed was when O.J. Simpson came to town with his new team, the San Francisco 49ers, and you don't get those chances back!!!  I've seen some great players in person, over the years, Hall of Famers and guys no less talented, but didn't make it in. and really should have  The Hall of Fame is more about longevity than talent!!!!! I have seen players such as Walter Payton, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Earl Campbell, Fran Tarkenton, Alan Page, Jack Tatum, Lester Hayes, Mike Haynes, Wendell Tyler, Pat Thomas, Jim Plunkett, John Elway, Ronnie Lott, Dan Fouts, Dan Marino, Jack Youngblood, Merlin Olsen, Fred Dryer, Larry Csonka, Tony Dorsett, Warren Moon, Brett Favre, Randy Moss, Kenny "The Snake" Stabler, Broadway Joe Namath, Marcus Allen, and Eric Dickerson, far too many more to count, but I never did see the Juice. . 

     I can't remember whether or not P.O.S. ever had the Kiss machine but I'm starting to think that they did, and that I might have even played it there once or twice, I have a foggy dream of a memory of doing so that may just be a fun house mind trick.  I was basically done with them before they had closed around '79 or '80 - I only had the need for real record stores, I was collecting now, and becoming snobby, except for Kiss.  Later on I would play that Kiss machine at Golf Land all the time, during the summer of '79, and just loved it.  I still do!  I'd also plug quarters into the jukebox to hear "Hard Times" in the same arcade that summer.  The Kiss buzz was fading out already - badly, and I knew it too, but somehow that album meant even more to me than Love Gun had.  (My favorite Kiss records are still Hotter than Hell, Love Gun, and yes, Dynasty believe it or not.)  Kiss had become even more personal to me.

GOOD TIMES!

                                     KISS "Hard Times" (Ace Frehley) 1979 

      Back to early Love Gun release day.  Mom had taken me somewhere later that day, and when we arrived back home, I somehow ended up seeing Eric, 13 remember, DRIVING by with Bobby Vinas, 7, in his dad's really, really ugly old car that I didn't even realize could actually start up.  They stopped suddenly when we saw each other. My mother hadn't noticed and had gone inside, so I'd told her I was hanging out with Eric and Bobby.  John was probably at little league practice. Next, the three of us were driving through the side streets of our neighborhood very slowly, being bad asses, with Eric, who was huge, looking like quite the adult, driving ever so cautiously.  But he WAS  sober!!!  AUDIENCE LAUGHTER!  We were responsible bad boys. None of us had ever gotten loaded yet in our lives.  Eric probably had, which has never occured to me until now, but he was in junior high school already.  Later, we all became a little hardcore, playing together in a punk rock garage band. 

     Thank God we didn't leave the neighborhood, but Eric was probably in some serious inner conflict, and really wanted to get home soon before his father would have ended his life.   (We made it back in time, but first... )  We went down Kittridge Street, away from his house and turned right on Nagle.  It was a dead end, but parked the car at this plum tree and started picking and eating all of the plums.  They were DIVINE.  Solid, purple and red inside, and it was really hot that summer in Los Angeles, 1977, so it was like jumping into a pool, completely refreshing. Those were the best plums I ever had. 

Painted by Ken Kelly, once again.

The full album...  

     We hopped back in the embarrassing car and drove back to Ventura Canyon, his street, and I am not embellishing... we drove right past a cop car going the other way on a 2 way road!  Eric looked large enough that he got away with it and we all cracked up as we pulled in, now just hoping his Dad wasn't pointing a shotgun at us when we arrived in the ugly, stolen family car. and went inside his house, which looked exactly like the Vinas' house but different colors (they were next door neighbors, a block away from my house. I lived on a big corner house with a yard you could play football on. 
I met both Eric and Hames at Kittridge Street Elementary School's summer playground in 1973 and the Vinas family had moved into our neighborhood in 1976.  I bonded right away with the two brothers over NFL football).   Eric put Love Gun on for the second time that day, all the way through.  "I thought it began with "Love Gun"? I asked him.  He had played side 2 first, earlier.  Hearing "Love Gun", "Hooligan", and "Almost Human" as the opening tracks initially always had given it even more of a Destroyer ambiance, because the opener was heavy like DRC and the third track reminded all of us of "God of Thunder", which I'm sure was a template in Gene's mind, too.  I loved the album the very first time I had ever heard it, but the second time around, it just fucking blew me away!  It floored me!  It still knocks me out... I guess you had to be there. 
     Right now I'm looking at a two-dimensional model of the stage, across the room in the quiet evening on this 40th anniversary of the show, as I write this...
The gate fold of Kiss Alive II. "I WA7 THERE!"

EVENING 

          THE CONCERT WAS A BLUR!           

     Daylight was fading while we waited in line to get in. There was definitely a cool L.A. Lakers, L.A. Kings feel about the place, even on the outside.  I LOVE LOS ANGELES, and miss it.  I remember scary looking long haired rocker guys in Kiss T-shirts that were all about eighteen, and feeling very intimidated. When we got inside of the Forum, we were all handed black buttons with silver lettering in the Kiss logo style that read I WAS THERE! with only the Kiss 'S' to reveal where There was. It was once said about Los Angeles that "there's no There, there" (Gertrude Stein) but there sure was there at the Forum that night!!!  We immediately blew right past all of the concession stuff in the concourse, and went straight ahead, on our way into the bowl.  Ahead, at the end of the tunnel was what looked like a black curtain.
     I was familiar with this type of tunnel, from the Rams games at the L.A. Coliseum, and even a Super Bowl (XI, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena) the previous January.  I will never forget coming into the stadium for the first time in 1975 for my first NFL game, Atlanta Falcons at Los Angeles Rams at the Coliseum.  I was mesmerized.  It was twice as cool as coming into Dodgers Stadium for the first time, in 1974, and that had been pretty fucking God damned amazing itself.  Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's career home run record that season, without steroids - impressive, and I collected baseball cards a little already, so I kind of heard about that at the time. Later into the seventies, I got really into football cards through about 1980.  I would also get all of the Kiss cards, but the over-merchandising was affecting my own perception of the band by 1978, and I couldn't diagnose nor articulate that yet, new Kissymptoms.  The band had fractured and was covering up by 1978, taking a vacation while trying to keep the buzz going at the same time... 

     Coming into the Forum in 1977 for the first time to the foreign aroma of pot smoke was very similar to those first time events, but very different too, if that makes any sense. This wasn't my Dad's scene.  I knew what it was, right away. weed.. This was Rock and Roll!  Kiss was kind of like weed. It had a delinquent quality, not Scooby Doo.

     Across the aisle at the end of the tunnel had been what turned out to be a HUGE black curtain, and incredibly there was a split between...  two black curtains!
John pulled them apart and we peeked out into Oz. 
     Down below about 40 or 50 yards, it looked like a little spread out city of equipment, amps being shuffled, a few people going here and there with walkie-talkies, etcetera.  "That's Gene Simmons!!! And Paul Stanley!!!" Vinas had recognized Gene's jacket, and forty years later, I am pretty sure he was right!!!  We recognized them, especially Paul's hair.  We were Kiss fans.  

     When we turned around, we realized that we weren't with my father anymore.  He had the tickets, and had kept on going while we had peaked behind the curtains, and headed for the seats like we'd always done at the Rams games, but I'd never been to the Forum, and we had certainly never been to a rock concert,.. I was terrified for a moment, but John kept his cool, which he always did.  (He was definitely the cool guy in the neighborhood.)  We were surrounded by crazy teenagers and young adults everywhere.  it wasn't little kids until the next tour, Dynasty, which hit the Forum in 1979 on November 7th.  I was there, too, but that's for another night, a much different scene.  
****************************************************************************************************************
Suddenly, right then and there the lights went out and the crowd started to yell and get wild in what was almost darkness from where we were standing.
It was scary. "HELLO LOS ANGELES!!!!!!!"  Somehow it felt like Altamont, and I hadn't even heard of that place.  But then... !!!  "That's Paul Stanley's voice!!!" John realized, because he'd heard what his voice sounded like on Ten-Q radio during a lot of pre-concert hype that was going on with Kiss in L.A. at that time, that I was hearing and reading about, but always missed (how ironic, right?).  How he had managed to figure out that the voice on the P.A. was Paul's while Stanley had also been down way below us backstage without Kiss makeup was puzzling, but of course it turned out to have been Rick Nielsen.  "It's starting!" I moaned, completely freaked out.

     Eddie Van Halen was backstage with his older brother Alex, we've heard over the years, being courted by Simmons, but they never signed anything. There was no Simmons Records!  He talks now as if he had already been talent scouting, but Paul claimed to have told him about VH, so there.  Eddie was never interested in joining Kiss back in 1982, that's a spin.  They apparently jammed, and Edward had also been checking out their progress on the Creatures of the Night sessions.. It appeared more like EVH had really just been teasing them. because they now needed a new guitar player, and the tables had turned (but Gene covered himself to avoid embarrassment and made the whole thing sound and look great in the press). There was mutual interest going on between the brothers and Kiss bandleaders in 1977, no doubt about it, so much so that David Lee Roth was worried right up until the point that the first album came out. Dave came close at one point to not making it in VH.  For example, Aucoin wasn't a fan of Dave's, nor was he that into the band, and later rejected their demos, and that was that. The Southern California band had to be thinking, should we make a lineup change(?), which of course would have been disastrous.  Soon after the height of Kiss's popularity, Van Halen would go on to very quickly replace and dispose of Kiss in Rock.
     We approached this cool, black usher, about 18, with an NBA afro, and he yelled back at us over Cheap Trick (I thought we were missing Kiss) "You lost your pop?!!" and we nodded desperately, and at first I just wanted to cry because we didn't have the tickets or know where we were even sitting.  He told us to walk around the entire arena and to meet him right there if we didn't find my father.  I knew we were going to be all right then, and we did exactly what he said and found him, my fifty utterly unconcerned, in only about a minute.  Dad then took us to our seats through the high volume rock and roll, as Cheap Trick continued playing I realized enthusiastically. Our seats were directly facing the center of the stage, but don't get the wrong idea; they were way back, in the second row of the first level, all the way behind where the backboard would have been on defense, in the regular seating area, not folding chairs. The football analogy would obviously be the end zone seats, but basketball courts are smaller than football fields.  In other words, behind and somewhat above the complete floor. but centered, like 60 to 75 yards back maybe, but who knows?  Looking at an NBA court which is 94 feet long-that's less than thirty yards, and I realized we were probably a little closer than I at first had estimated while writing this.  We may have only been fifty or sixty yards back. What we do know for sure is - I was not front row at this show.    
     They weren't that bad, but to a ten year old, it was kind of like being at the back of Woodstock eight years earlier, when I was still two, with a view from the other side of the country, 'cause every dinosaur went to that, so this will make sense to all of us who owned VCRs. This was Regular Rock, or so I had thought.  The singer wore a suit and the drummer did too, but he looked too old for the band, like one of their fathers!  The song I always remembered that they did was "Big Eyes" but then at some point, Vinas tapped my shoulder (which he was doing all night, it was loud) and pointed at (Bun E. Carlos) the drummer again, whom we had been laughing about, but now he was playing with these enormous drumsticks!!!  We were stunned.  I would learn later that a percentage of the crowds still to this day say that Cheap Trick blew Kiss away on the Love Gun tour. Not me.

The 1977 debut album Cheap Trick

Here's the opening track "ELO Kiddies".

Actually there were two openers.

The record had two opening sides:

Side A

and

Side 1

     If you are new to KISS, understand that these weren't shows from the Alive II tour that took place during the fall.  These were the actual Alive II shows that the bulk of live material on the album was drawn from.  Some of it was fixed undoubtedly, spliced, edited, and some of it was recorded during rehearsals and sound checks.  It's about forty=five percent real.  I went to one of the three nights.  They didn't open with "Detroit Rock City" like the record and I noticed that right away in November when the album came out because I knew a lot about the band after almost a year and a show under my belt.

    I'm a white belt Kiss fan.  There's no higher belt than black.

     Rick Nielsen leaned into the microphone, taking over for Robin Zander and announced to everybody who they were.  "We're a Cheap Trick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and the partial crowd approved.  Then he changed my whole attitude about Cheap Trick when he said, "Let's hear it for KISS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and everyone around me went bananas as the band roared during the high energy climax of their set.  Cheap Trick had absolutely succeeded that night!!!  I didn't think they sucked at all.  I completely forgot about that and their first album became one the earlier rock records in my collection.

     And then it was over. The lights came back on.  Normalcy began to set in, again, sort of... The radio hard rock started playing again over the P.A. system.  People were leaving, getting hot dogs, candy, and cokes. The seats looked kind of empty still.  

     But suddenly, out of nowhere the PA announcer boomed out “KISS!!!!!!!!!” and the place went NUTS!!!
      
He did it again about five minutes later.  All of a sudden, the people started coming back, and the seats were kind of filling up.  This girl about six years older than me stood in front of us (dancing all night!) and was wearing a cute top hat with a home made shrine to each member on each side of the hat from front to back, left to right.  She had the time of her life that night, and I admired her spirit, passion, and dedication to the band, and was a slightly intimidated by her sexuality, perhaps.  I never forgot her.

     The people were coming and going, and something was going on down by the stage.  They were pulling some black tarp off of a drum set behind the equipment Cheap Trick had been using, and were now removing. The crowd knew it was show time and started getting very enthusiastic. Then, an electric blast of loud, fluid Ace-like guitar hit the building like a bolt of lightning, just like that scene in Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (I missed that concert at Magic Mountain '78) in the parking lot before "Shout It Out Loud".  It echoed throughout the arena and the crowd roared like there was a touchdown in the NFL playoffs. Then the guitar blasted out again about a minute later, tuned up a little, maybe they were all tuning...  and then the lights went out.

     The arena was going absolutely crazy (in a positive way) while there were spot lights all over the place beaming off of a discotheque ball, when John tapped me again, pointed, and screamed like a little girl, as if this were The Beatles, "THERE THEY ARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  Our heroes were standing across the arena from us, on top of this golden stairway (but they took the elevators down, despite the fire).  It looked like the New Wizards of Oz were about to play or speak. They just stood there for what seemed like forever and ever, soaking in the loud adulation.,..

     Suddenly, there was a loud explosion like a World War II blast that just scared the living shit out of me, with huge flames, and puffs of smoke in the air, as the band had finally hit the first chords of "I Stole Your Love" and began the show. 

     Then and now, everything is still a blur, like nine or ten football plays from a great game you went to, many seasons ago.  It used to feel like a decade ago.  Now it feels like forty years ago.

Here are some clips from the night before, August 26th.  The three shows were virtually identical from what I've read over the years, but they had trouble selling enough tickets for the Sunday night performance and did a lot of "give-aways" to fill up the seats and maintain the "Kiss Illusion" that they always sold out (Chris Lendt, Kiss and Sell, 1997). 

I definitely remember Gene "breathing" fire, but "Firehouse" the song itself, not so much.  Not at all actually, although I sort of remember Paul wearing the fire helmet, maybe.  The sirens and signals, no way, because the whole night seemed like that to a ten year old at his first rock concert, and KISS no less!  It was a case of having been desensitized through sensory overload.

     An image of them doing the new hit "Christine Sixteen" is still there, along with Ace's smoking guitar solo spot, but no memory of him singing "Shock Me".  The thundering Peter Criss drum solo absolutely stands out.  My mind saved everything in short moments a lot like the 8 millimeter film footage fans made, or maybe even more like today's GIFs, only the band looked more puppet-sized. Step back a few feet further than usual from your computer screen, and that's how they looked at that first show.  Like watching football from the upper level - type of distance, but we were just above the stage, actually. A typical peak flash moment memory of the show was Paul Stanley telling the crowd, "Los Angeles...You're Number One!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, Paul and Gene ended up moving there. 

So much of what we all had liked about the band really wasn't even their own ideas or work, like hiding their faces, that was Bill Aucoin.  The album designs, the album artwork, the costumes, the photography, the talent around them was remarkable.  They were the right members, but we're all fortunate there was such a great organization working behind them for awhile. 

The final results were what really counted. Kiss was a miracle.

       I recall Gene spitting blood, but I don't remember the song "God of Thunder" at all. Remember that Gene couldn't fly yet, which I've never been all that wowed by.  I will point out that I already knew all of their stuff by this time, including side 2 of Hotter than Hell, irrelevant anyway because it was from an earlier era.  Snapshots and 8 millimeter GIF - like images of the solo spots are what basically stayed with me.  It's also become quite diluted by the other shows piled on top of the original (two) show(s), over the years.  That's another reason why I stopped going to the shows after the 2000 Farewell Tour; to remember the original band, in greasepaint, best.   

What was most unforgettable that night at the Forum was "I Stole Your Love" because that absolutely floored me!

This is about what they looked like from where I was standing, August 27th

BANG!                         

I did get a program, and even acquired an extra button and program soon after, which actually bugged me later on because I had mixed them all together and never knew which ones were actually mine!  
           Then four years later, I threw all of my Kiss stuff away, including Gene's autograph from circa late '77 (I met him two different times as a kid, about six months apart - more on this in the near future...) the two '77 Love Gun tour books (I never got the Dynasty tour book), the two "I WAS THERE!" buttons, the Kiss Army photos and newsletters, everything  Every hardcore fan has a similar merchandise horror story - their stuff was thrown out by the maid, or stolen by so called friends, or got burned and or soaked, or whatever, but that's when we all got serious and became fucking sick. The second time around, after we had learned from a few big mistakes in Kiss collecting and fandom.  Speaking of mistakes, I actually smashed all of my original Kiss LPs into the wall next to my house (when I was 13, and had truly discovered The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix).  Intentionally!  But by 15, I was borrowing their albums again, and by 16, they were my favorite band again. Whenever I am fried on Kiss, or sick of Paul and Gene's dog shit, I go on strike, and enter that side of me from junior high school when I'd lost all interest in and respect for Kiss, gravitating towards all of the '60s bands.  But after a few nights, I always just end up throwing on Hotter than Hell, once again!.

     A very vague snapshot memory of us then ascending the Forum steps during "Detroit Rock City" plays in my mind's eye....  Not good.  I should have put my foot down.  Vinas lost interest in Kiss soon after that show, and I think he was the one who gave me his program and button, and had actually jumped aboard the Cheap Trick bandwagon in 1978, and was just another person who told me, "I don't know if you realize this but, KISS is dead!!!" and it was kind of like, "This is all garbage now and always was!  And you still like it!  You're living in the past, in a fantasy Kiss world from over a YEAR ago!!! It's worthless, we didn't have that great a time, I've already forgotten about it, and you can have these, they are like used toilet paper now."  This guy WENT to Alive II although I am putting words in his mouth.  That's because he put his foot in his mouth.  He had loved the band.  What had changed?  But I have to remind myself that it wasn't long before I too had abandoned the ship.  The difference is, I came back quickly, and none of my other friends really ever did.  Kiss became almost an embarrassment, like I still wet the bed, after I got back into them, and it was 1983, but this only made me that much more devoted.  It became sentimental, and lonelier, but it meant more now.  Now they were REALLY my favorite band, because I now had all of that experience with other great music from the 60s to contrast it with.

     And then suddenly, it was quiet, and we were in the car driving home, into the night, talking all about KISS, while the band finished their second show of three, inside the Forum.  My pop, who never left a ballgame early in his entire life, had decided to beat the traffic that night.

That's right, I missed it, folks!!!  The big ending, "Black Diamond"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Kiss was never perfect, but we all thought they were at the time, and likewise, none of our Kiss stories are ever quite perfect either.  Maybe that's even what makes them interesting.  The Kiss cover ups not only don't work anymore, but have become boring folklore.

But it could have been a lot  worse.
Our buddy John Hames missed all 3 shows

and never did get to see the band until... Lick It Up !