For those of you fortunate enough to have never seen it, the “plot” of KISS’s justifiably maligned, made-for-television movie from 1978, “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park” involved a convoluted yarn about a rock-hating mad scientist at an amusement park who strives to seize power via an army of androids. Unwittingly part of the evil doctor's sinister plot, KISS is scheduled to perform at the park, but are summarily kidnapped and replaced by four of the scientist's doppelgangers. Evil robotic KISS assumes the stage, inciting the audience to riot. Courtesy of some exceptionally unconvincing telekinesis (oops, I forgot to mention that, in the film, each, each member of KISS has a superpower), KISS manage to -- surprise -- escape and engage in a ridiculously disjointed onstage melee with their evil twins (see below).
Well, life imitated ... ummm … art, this week, when, at the climax of their allegedly final show at Madison Square Garden last Saturday night (which I lamented here), KISS announced that while they were retiring from touring, a “new era” of KISS was being born with “digital avatars” taking their place from this point forward.
Everything about this is awful, stupid and I want no part of it. To my mind, it’s entirely antithetical to everything that made KISS distinctive in the first place, and I’ll tell ya why.
What made KISS special was that this bizarre spectacle — this otherworldly amalgam of ridiculous super-heroics, pyromaniacal bombast and high-decibel rock catharsis — was all the work of four more-or-less regular dudes. Sure, they looked like interplanetary shock troopers from another dimension, but you knew that it was still a human endeavor. Somehow, a schmuck from Inwood, an Israeli expat from Long Island, a stoner nogoodnick from da Bronx and a tough ex-gangbanger from Brooklyn all somehow coalesced into this whole different thing. Obviously cribbing from forebears like Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls, they upped the ante across the board, laying waste to all semblance of nuance and subtlety in the process to go whole goddamn hog. Whether you were onboard or not, you can’t take that from them. The end result was always “What the Hell is THIS, and how are they actually doing that?"
It’s a comparison that would entirely repulse members of both ensembles to their respective cores, but I remember reacting the same way when I first saw Devo on "Saturday Night Live" in 1978. I was only 12, but was allowed to stay up late, as we were visiting my cousins at their place in the Berkshires. “Saturday Night Live” — unlike today — was still a new, novel and wholly unpredictable entity — all bets were off as to what you were going to see. When host Fred Willard first introduced Devo, everyone in the room fell silent as this entirely bizarre gaggle of weirdos started playing this lopsided cover of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones — no one could tell whether it was an actual band performance or just another surreal sketch.
But, again, with Devo — as entirely strange as they were, you ultimately knew that these were just …well, maybe not “regular guys,” but still highly imaginative human beings with a specific concept — a polar concept from KISS, of course, but curiously aligned by their comparatively shocking approach and out-there aesthetic.
Back to the KISS virtual avatar thing, though — all it does is separate the artifice from the individuals. So, all you're left with is the trappings of the *brand*. By subtracting the human element, all it is just another high-gloss video game. I suppose kudos will be due to whatever digital animators are behind the scenes, but there’s absolutely nothing exciting about watching a hologram Gene Simmons breathe fire. There’s no risk, no spontaneity, and no human element. It mean, KISS haven’t really been an organic entity for decades, but this will just be the nail in that coffin.
But, y’know, what do I know?
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