A little personal but hey, it’s a blog, not business. This is me and my bro Rich in a rowdy rock & roll moment at the KISS Rock The Nation Tour at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin, one of the greatest outdoor venues on mother earth. We were bummed Ace wasn’t playing but couldn’t pass on seeing them at outdoors at Alpine.
Together the two of us have seen every tour since ’84. This one would be on the bottom of the list if it weren’t for the fact that it was another chance for Rich and I to take another rock trip for rock & roll (people).
Like with a lot of you KISS fans, for me it is a family affair. Rich and I must have had some of the most cogent, long-lasting discussions of KISS known to mankind. We decided to pass on the urge to share our madness via the podcast medium as tempting as it was to unleash ‘The KISS Brothers’ but, alas, we leave that to the real “rock & roll fucking lunatics!”as Paul would say.
Anyway …..Alpine is where I had caught countless Dead and Allmans shows over the years and even a Bob Dylan & Tom Petty show. In fact my bro was there at SRV’s final show, when he closed the night with a monster blues jam between he, Clapton and Buddy Guy. It would be his coda. I remember talking with Rich about the show the morning after and then, when I grabbed the newspaper off the driveway, our total dismay at the news: while Rich was driving back to Illinois that night SRV died in a foggy helicopter crash.
back to KISS: Tommy Thayer did a fine job (as always) but some of the magic was lost; when the solo came I now found myself watching Paul or Gene, not ‘Ace’ as it were. If only the jackasses screaming “ACE!” weren’t there at all man ….I tried to tell them, but KISS is (by design) a medium for the masses not the enlightened, or ‘KISStorian’, among us.
Peter sounded dead to me and, at one point in “Firehouse”, Tommy came back to ‘jam’ with him and Peter would not look at him. It was a weird moment but, as I look back now, essential KISStory worth sharing.
KISStorian 