I Still Love You, Vol. I: The Originals
How my favorite band became my favorite band again
In November 2009, I was slated to see KISS for the very first time, as a gift for my fourteenth birthday. KISS were not even close to my favorite band (I believe at the time it would have been Korn or Slayer), but they were a raucous rock and roll institution I knew I had to witness in person. I don’t remember knowing a lot about them outside of the hits and Gene Simmons’ iconic face and tongue, and I had been primed with multiple too-young viewings of the 1999 film Detroit Rock City, which I loved more as just a movie than I did specifically a KISS movie. Due to a scheduling error on my family’s part, not realizing the concert was going to overlap with my eighth grade field trip to Washington, DC, my opportunity was missed and the tickets were sold. I eventually chose a make-up offer in January 2010 to see Arch Enemy and Exodus, the first show I ever went to without my parents, and the first show I ever crowdsurfed and moshed at, so it still ended up being important. But I still held out hope to see KISS another day.
Over the next eight years, they would come in and out of town co-headlining with huge bands like Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe, bands I was also dying to see at the time but didn’t get around to until later as well. It wasn’t until July 2017 when they were scheduled to be the first night headliner of the short-lived Chicago Open Air festival (located outside of the city in Bridgeview, IL) that I finally found my way to a KISS concert. It was a huge bill, KISS being the icing on the cake layered with Rob Zombie, Meshuggah, Megadeth, Anthrax, and The Dillinger Escape Plan, among others. In the time between my Washington, DC field trip and the hour or so drive into Bridgeview, I became a much larger KISS fan, but not yet an expert or diehard obsessive. And to be honest, I remember very little of their set.
When you watch KISS documentaries or retrospectives, rock icons like Tom Morello or Eddie Trunk talk about how unforgettable the first time they saw KISS was. I don’t totally share that experience, but I don’t feel a strong way about that fact. There are a number of factors on why this is: first, as I mentioned previously, I was a KISS guy but I was not a KISS guy yet. So my passion for the band was enough to get me to a number of suburbs away to see them, but not necessarily enough to fully appreciate (in hindsight) that it would be the last tour to feature iconic songs like ‘Firehouse’ and ‘Flaming Youth.’ Also, the amount of killer bands that played that day make the festival seem like a bit of a blur for me looking back on it almost another eight years later. It’s hard to think of it as purely a KISS show and not one of the great rock and metal festivals I’ve been fortunate enough to attend.
Second, the years that followed the Chicago Open Air festival would be some of the most active and acrimonious KISS years of their five-decade span. Their End Of The Road (second) farewell tour began in January 2019, and inadvertently lasted until December 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During those four years, I saw the band six times, got deep into the KISS podcast world, started picking up tons of trinkets and memorabilia, speed-buying every album I was missing of theirs for an affordable price, and generally gearing up to affirm my selection of KISS as my all-time favorite musical artist, who dethroned R.E.M., who dethroned Self Defense Family, who dethroned The Mountain Goats, who dethroned Slayer, who dethroned Korn, who dethroned Green Day, who dethroned Aaron Carter.
In the last couple of weeks, I have been heavily gravitating back into the KISSWorld orbit, after quite some time of taking a break of listening to their albums, buying any of their products, and only casually checking in with my favorite podcasters. I’ve been all-in lately, binging documentaries I’ve watched plenty of times before and new ones I haven’t traversed yet, diving back into my podcast feed to hear what people think of the $50,000 ‘Strutter’ single and more, and filling the void that KISS left at their final show at Madison Square Garden on December 1, 2023. I’ve had the idea of I Still Love You as a podcast for years, but after participating in a handful of podcasts myself, it wasn’t a venture I was necessarily excited about starting up again. I’ve been needing something creative to work on while I sit at home throughout the week as I work nights, and I haven’t had a full-time newsletter for a couple years now either. So my re-obsession is fueling my next artistic resumé notch, talking about my favorite band to anyone who will read it. As much as I’d love for longtime members of the KISS Army to read this, I’m just as interested for non-fans to read this as well, either out of general interest or possible conversion. Well-established fans may be sick of hearing about ‘Tomorrow’ or ‘You Love Me To Hate You,’ but people who have only a general idea of KISS may not know how many times the lineup changed or even that they took the makeup off between those two songs being released.
I want this newsletter to be a celebration of the band and the fans, as much as I don’t mind highlighting their missteps, like their unbearably stale End Of The Road tour setlist, or not giving Ace Frehley and Peter Criss their dues on the reunion tour, or making an ill-fated prog rock album (which I love, and we’ll get to eventually). I wanted the best, I got the best, and now I’m here to tell you about the best, and the worst, of the best. The hottest band in the land, and later the world, KISS (cue the ‘Detroit Rock City’ intro).