Taking Sides: Vintage, Make-up-era KISS vs. PUNK ROCK

This is going out primarily to sad old American farts in the mid-to-late 30's like myself (though I'm dead sure it'll attract "hataz" like a dollop of steaming rhino dung attracts flies)

Rewind to the late 70's, and my pre-teen ears are just starting to get into music. First come the Beatles by way of the parents, and then comes Queen and...bizarrely enough...Parliament by way of my then-seemingly-savvy sister. But above all others loometh the greasepainted demigods, KISS. As a rampant comic book reader and horror/sci-fi geek, KISS were the seamless fusion of all my favorite things. Larger than life, louder and ruder than the Beatles. A whiff of evil. Clad in battle armor and festooned with spikey metallic finery. How fuckin' cool! In very short order, I became a massive Kiss fan around aged 9 or 10, swiftly gobbling up whatever Kiss albums (and subsequent merchandise...of which there was plenty) was available.

It was all or nothing in those days. You were either a Kiss fan, or you weren't. And if you weren't, then chances are you HATED them (and vice versa). The thing is, though, that the older I got, the more I realized that not only were Kiss pretty damn shallow, but that I couldn't relate to them in the slightest. The band asserts that their music represents pure escapism. While that's fine, it rang a bit hollow after a while (I suppose one can only shout it out loud so many times before it seems like an entirely pointless thing to do). By the time of Dynasty, I'd lost most of my enthusiasm for the band (and I was a bit of a die-hard, as most of my friends had abandoned that particular ship much earlier).

Around the same time as I was growing out of Kiss (and growing into a rather petulant state of adolescence), I found myself more engaged by angrier brands of heavy metal (a category that Kiss arguably fall into, though never quite neatly) but even that felt a bit flat (singing about troopers, indians and Rue Morgue murderers still didn't quite fit the bill). Then, inevitably, came my fascination with Punk Rock. While I didn't live in Queens or spend my time gulping down thorazine, the Ramones (just as one example) presented a vision -- albeit cartoony, though not as much as Kiss -- that seemed a bit more realistic. Hardcore bands took it a bit further -- lamenting about issues, however juvenile much of the time, that a teenager could completely understand (the Circle Jerks make a whole lot more sense than Kiss). The more I got into Punk Rock, the more ridiculous Kiss seemed.

Time goes on. Things change. Fads die. The tectonic plates of youth culture shift. I still love and listen to Kiss today, although it's largely through a filter of nostalgia. The same can be said for much of Punk Rock, but it still seems more satisfying.

Boy, does this thread stink of a mid-life crisis or what?

Anyway, weigh in if you can fathom whatever the fuck it is I'm getting at.