In the mid-1990s, when the original line-up of the rock band Kiss briefly reunited, I was a teenage alternative rocker. I took my rock music very seriously, and although I had never heard anything by Kiss other than “Rock and Roll All Nite,” I instinctively knew they were precisely the kind of music to which the self-serious rock of the ’90s was meant to provide an “alternative.”
So, I assumed they sucked. I mean, they looked like they would suck — all that dumb make-up, the frizzed-out perms, and studded leather? It all seemed to typify bloated rock excess and, by extension, inauthenticity. I didn’t listen to a full album from Kiss until about 2005, but when I did, I quickly realized I had been wrong. It was fantastic. I loved it. I loved it so much that years later, I delayed taking my son to his first rock concert to make sure it would be Kiss. If that didn’t turn him into a lover of the genre, nothing would. It worked.
Still, there are things I don’t like about the band. Most recently, my frustrations have stemmed from various public statements from frontman Paul Stanley. Stanley has a tendency to wade into contentious political debates. His opinions on Covid-19 were especially grating to me: He was among the many celebrities who railed against those of us who refused vaccination. He often made social media posts that touted his fully boosted vaccine status (he still got Covid, of course).
