Okay I guess we all agree that Ace Frehley is the coolest Kiss member.

Ah yes, another KISS thread appears.. and sure enough all the KISS haters have to let everybody know how cool they are because they've never liked KISS.


Why don't all you KISS haters go away, start your own "The official I Hate KISS" thread, and leave the KISS appreciation threads void of your useless drivel. And you're not cool either.


Blazer, thanks for posting the interview! I loved hearing all the Ace stories.


L8r...

 

Any band with the Schutzstaffel insignia in their name just has to be cool.

 

But this isn't a Kiss appreciation thread, it's an 'Ace is the coolest' thread, and if somebody started an Official I Hate Kiss Thread all the Kiss lovers will show up to voice Righteous Indignation. So what's the difference?

If you meant me, I don't hate Kiss. I just wasn't a member of the target audience that's all.

 

I had posters of Ace in my room when I was 13. He was like a comic book hero who inspired me to play.

I enjoy watching the old videos but at the age of 48 it's kind of like realizing that the Wizard of Oz was more of a story than a reality.

He kept gold records on the toilet floor and he kept memorabilia in a dirty cargo container next to his house?????? Is that cool? The rumors or stories that a studio guitarist played lots of parts on Love Gun because Ace was too drunk to sound good on the recordings really depress me. This is my childhood hero.

I saw Kiss for the first time 3 years ago. I took my 13 year old son and his best friend to a show in Milwaukee. We saw Tommy Thayer as Ace. The show was terrific fun. We all had wide eyes like kids at a carnival.

I just want to remember my childhood hero the way I thought of him when I was a child.

I shouldn't have watched the video.

 

Tommy James and the Shondells were the coolest sound around. Yes, I liked all those bands you mentioned and some weren't "schtick" free. Paul and the Raiders dressed like pirates. But whether it was geography or chronology I never knew one single person that recognized KISS as a legitimate band.

But then...I was a C student...BEFORE Ritalin! After I did pretty good.

 

Yeah that was it Tommy James and the Shondells... They were super cool! "Crimson and Clover" was my favorite song, like my theme song as I rode my Shwinn Stingray... Those were good days!

I can see the attraction to Kiss for the young guys. Shoot, even the Beatles were bopper music when they 1st became popular. The older guys at that time thought the Beatles were a chick band and they wouldn't be caught dead saying they liked it. The "greasers" (the guys 10 years older than me) liked Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys, Sha-na-na, and the Safaris.... You know, 409s and Packin' the Line stuff. They thought us young punks who liked the British bands were just as stupid as we later thought about the Kiss followers.

 

Ace had great tone. Can't say the same about the rest of Kiss's guitarists. When I was a kid, One of my first records was Kiss Alive II. Ace's guitar solo at the end of Shock was one of the reasons I learned to play guitar. Sure it's not Beethoven's 5th but it was cool. You can clearly hear where Van Halen and Randy Rhoads stole a lot of their stuff from it.

 

I think Bob Ezrin has said the same thing about the Destroyer album. Dick Wagner played on 'Sweet Pain' and 'Beth' for instance... I don't know if he was credited or not.

 

Kiss was the band my parents hated so I became an instant fan. Never saw them in concert while ace was still with them but I did see them with the new guy in ace's make up. Great show my wife went with me an she hated them. She has better taste than me but still at 13 they were amazing. Ace is cool in my 46 year old adolescent opinion.

 

now how could you be 13 in 1976 and be 44 like you profile says?


if you are 44, you were born in 1969 which would make you 7 in 1976 and if you were 7 then and didn't like KISS.... well, I don't know what to tell ya.

 

One of the funniest things I ever read in a music mag was seeing this pic in Kerrang - allegedly Ace's 1st pic sans makeup - with the caption "the face that launched a thousand ships, or rather the face that drank the champagne that could've been used to launch a thousand ships"

I did see Ace on the Anomaly tour & his playing was red hot - much better than the choreographed to within an inch of it's life show that I was Gene & Paul play 12 months earlier.

 

Bones doesn't give out his real age.

 

We used to call Ace's mom on the phone. They lived close by and were in the phone book. She was really nice and it sounded like he was too. She seemed genuinely happy that Ace's fans would call to talk to him. He was never home.

 

So you're saying that the coolest guy in Kiss is the drunk that never showed up on time and wrote the most boring songs?

I wouldn't agree.

But then, he's still Ace Frehley, and how can you beat that.

 

I really don t get Kiss.

 

I was born in '63, I never put real birth dates or info into websites that have no need to know my real info. Do you really think I live on Luddite Island?

 

I don't know the geography of NY well enough to know that such a place doesn't exist.

I think it's kinda silly , the internet isn't going to track you down

 

I respect KISS for the same reason I respect Madonna :

Sheer marketing genius.


At age 49 I'll say 2 things (maybe 3...)

1.) KISS (w/ Cheap Trick, and New England) was the first concert I ever saw which is appropriate in Detroit, which, in case you didn't know, has always been their home away from home.

2.) Before I heard KISS I was exposed to Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Alice Cooper. KISS - to me at that time - was more than a little redundant/pedantic/cartoonish.

Now ?

I love their first record and the early glam, almost Dolls-ish aspect of it.


No hate here - just meh...



Bones : I'm in my car outside your house as I type this...