As covered by every music news medium recently, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have been drumming up attention by claiming that Kiss will continue after they retire. That's right, a band made up completely of replacement players wearing the Kiss make-up. A band with the official brand "Kiss" that has no actual members of the original Kiss.
Question:
Is the Brand "Kiss" bigger then the sum of its players?
Let's face it, if you just put 4 shitty wanna-be dudes in uniform and call it Kiss, its really just a cover band. It wouldn't work. I've already seen that version of Kiss at a corner bar in Erie, Pa. I believe they called themselves "Strutter." It's like Kiss without the pyro. A little sheet metal peppered with 40 watt light bulbs, a little grease paint on your fat face and.... BOOM, you could start this cover band in your home town.
Kiss was founded on mediocre hard rock, a goofy gimmick, and cheesy comic book mystique. The songs got better with Love Gun and Destroyer, the make-up and costumes also got better also, and a combination of the three is what made them sell like Budweiser on a Friday in Ohio. They dubbed themselves "The hottest band in the world," and for a minute, they actually were.
Then it all fell apart... Goodbye Ace and Peter, hello 1980's.
The rebuilding stage is where I came of age. From '84 to '92, Kiss was just another Metal Band of the day. They went from Stadiums to Hockey Arenas, but they survived. They were never reduced to dreaded "opening act," never revisited the bar scene, and always sold records. Like many a hessian, I learned their back catalog from old records and (then) current live VHS. Any shred of the original gimmick was kaput by the time I was a pre-teen. The make-up had long since come off, and they relied on actual good songwriting to carry the band forward.
That was the renaissance age for Kiss. Post make-up/pre acoustic convention shows Kiss. That was one hell of a band in my opinion. Of course I found out later that the band was a band in voice only as so many of the sessions were recorded by studio musicians, but whatever. None of that seems to be a big deal to the Kiss Army, and how can "a million strong" be wrong? Really, it was a different beast by then, and replacement players were aplenty.
Fast forward another 10 years. The reunion. The band was back. The 4 that started it all. The hottest reunion in the world, Kiss.
The world was ready for Kiss to be a nostalgic act. We all cheered and bought tickets by the buckets, but this is also where the band and relevance part ways. They tried to capture the magic with the Psycho Circus LP (Great song, bad LP), which as it turns out, was recorded by scabs, but the suits and the public had moved on from Kiss as a 1-800-Dial-MTV hit machine. KISS was already in an adjustment phase, so the touring circuit was prime for the latest addition into the dinosaur rock band scene.
And today, to say Kiss is no longer relevant is an understatement so large that if you made a YouTube video out of it, Whitney Thore would look small in comparison. To really love these guys as a teenager means that you are nerdy. It's like loving Rush. There's a bunch of them out there, but its in small, fragmented pockets. None of their friends care, and most people think it's kinda weird.
If Kiss has any chance of making a run at a franchise that is relevant, they have to take some risks. Risk is no stranger to Gene and Paul. They have made a career out of it. Their ability to reinvent is pretty awesome overall, and we should all respect them for it.
So, how do you franchise Kiss without creating another Kiss cover band? Simple... You need to capture the youth. Get today's generation behind you. Put a middle finger in the face of the old school, and make it palatable to a new generation. No one under the age of 40 has heard Firehouse, and even if they did, they'd find it BORING! New material for a new, more in touch, class of kids.
Kiss may already be on to something in the right direction... Kiss vs. Momoiro Clover Z may prove to be the first relevant thing they have done in years. It's a step back toward the cheese that got them here in the first place.
My suggestion to Kiss: Stay with the Japanese Girl thing. Pass the torch to them.
Here's why: The land of the rising sun definitely has some claim to the Kiss image. Their whole gimmick is kinda pre-historic anime with a funky 70's samurai flare anyway. Girls sell records. Japan loves Kiss. Japanese pop is seeping through to Western culture these days, so the iron is hot. My only suggestion is maybe find some girls a tad bit older then this group, but Japan has it's own thing going on culturally. Is the Cat Man really that far off from Hello Kitty?
Like they say in business, start small and scale fast. Pepper the market with crap like this Momorio mash-up, then do another comic strip. Let the girls kill Gene off and take his essence (or something like that), then get out of the way. Let them create their own legacy and let the old dudes stay behind the scenes.
Make the characters replaceable. Like a Japanese Menudo, or a musical Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The 4 year old in my life, Peyton, has discovered Power Rangers on Netflix. She loves it. The producers continually cycle through actors, the story lines are basically the same, but it still has appeal to the kids. Peyton is a good resource for me to keep in touch with all things pre-school, and I find her Power Ranger stage to be a reminder of when my son, Mocha (now 20), was totally into the same darn thing. I am actively keeping one foot in the toy box, and one fist in the sky....
With that in mind, Gene Simmons should consider a legacy "Kiss" corporation that capitalizes on nostalgia, but is relevant today as well. Be the Disney of music. Fresh blood and new ideas, new music and a new spin your original "characters" idea. It may sound crazy, but I believe it could work for a new crop of fans unwittingly begging for the Kiss of tomorrow. Consider that no kid today gives a flying V about Dumbo, but they all know who Elsa is.
It just might work...
One last thing, why the hell is Kiss in the football business?
Nago
No comments:
Post a Comment