“If you listen to KISS, you’re stupid!” said an anonymous poster on a message board.

I’ve been through my Michael Jackson phases, KISS phases, Radiohead phases, King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Beatles, and too many others to list here. “Did you say you went through a KISS phase? You like KISS?” Sure, back when I was young, and all I wanted to hear were fun, silly, and artists who kept it simple. I grew out of them, to some degree, but I still listen to them every once in a while. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with keeping it simple and silly, anyway? It’s fun.  

There are no reported connections between the band members choosing the name, KISS, and the acronym, the latter of which many state stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid, but has any rock band ever embodied that acronym better than KISS? 

The brief history of the acronym KISS is that it was developed by a lead naval engineer who instructed his team of engineers to design aircraft to keep the designs so simple that they could be repaired quickly on the battlefield. 

A Brief History of KISS 

Wicked Lester was the band Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley belonged in shortly before they decided to form their own band. Wicked Lester, according to Stanley and Simmons, was all over the map. I’ve never heard the music on Wicked Lester’s lone album, but those songs apparently involved keyboards and a flute. The two of them confessed that they didn’t know who they were back then, and they didn’t know what they wanted to do. They didn’t say that the music of Wicked Lester was too complicated and complex, but that was my takeaway. My takeaway is that they wanted to create a masterpiece in the manner all young artists want to create the next Dark Side of the Moon, Zoso, Sgt. Peppers, Exile on Main Street, or Aqualung. Whatever they were trying to do, they realized that it wasn’t them. They decided to tear it all down and create KISS (the acronym) tunes that young kids could enjoy and their grandparents wouldn’t find too offensive. They decided to play big songs that could be played in arenas.  

KISS ended up being the perfect band for “stupid” young, pre-teen boys who didn’t care about sophisticated complications of deep, moving music that could be defined and redefined with repeated listens. The KISS demographic, for most of my youth, was almost exclusively young and male. Some girls liked the song Beth, but they couldn’t believe the song came from KISS. (When I was young, I considered Beth a betrayal, as I considered KISS the only band that I could trust to avoid going soft. I never heard of AC/DC at that point.) KISS was fun, theatrical, arena rock that lifted you up on your feet, with a fist held high while you sang the lyrics with them. 

My neighborhood friends and I used to pretend that we were KISS-in-concert. I was The Spaceman, my best friend was The Demon, and his little brother was Catman. (Nobody wanted to be Starchild.) We would play air guitar and air drums in an area they called the basement. I would arch back like Ace did when he played his solos, because I thought that was one of the coolest things ever, and my friend waggled his tongue, spat blood, and pretended to blow fire with Gene. So, while the rest of you were listening to the important and vital music, we were having fun. 

KISS didn’t invent the terms arena rock, pomp rock, corporate rock, or anthemic songs, and the terms weren’t invented to describe them, but KISS is now one of the first bands that come to mind when we hear such terms. 

Who you Is?

KISS albums were chock full of silly, simple songs that won’t move you spiritually or cause anyone to think of the philosophy of Epicurus, but as the aphorism that some attribute to Leonardo da Vinci says, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If you consider it a stretch to attach anything KISS did to the term sophistication, I feel you, but how much effort goes into achieving complex sophistication, and how much restraint does it require to keep it as simple as possible?

Who is the better writer William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway? Those who love Faulkner often talk about the beautiful language he used to paint an images in the mind. “It was powerful and provocative,” they say. Few would argue that Faulkner doesn’t deserve to be considered one of our greatest writers, but there was a feeling of “could we get to the point here” when reading him. Hemingway sought to paint with an economy of words, seeking picture perfect sentences to describe and characterize in the most succinct manner possible. One, it could be said, could not wait to show us what a great writer he was, and the other restrained such impulses to make his stories more readable to a wider audience. Both might suggest the other insults his audience in relative ways, and both might say theirs is the finer artform. Both audiences would claim sophistication in their own right and the sophistry of the other.  

The point is we all know who KISS were. All we have to do is look at them to know that subtlety and sophistication were not their driving force. The point is not to denigrate KISS, but to say they put together a package far different from the one employed by a Bob Dylan or a Radiohead. The point is we know who KISS are, yet message board contributors continue to take time out of their day to remind us how awful they were. “…But I like them.” “That’s because you have such poor taste in music.”   

Why does anyone feel the need to go to a message board to inform the world how awful YOU thought KISS were? “I can’t help it, I’m just so durn sophisticated.” That’s fantastic Papa Smurf 124, but you do realize that your precious anonymity means that no one really cares what you think?  

I used to denigrate people who listened to Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, in the manner people now denigrate the average KISS fan, but I realized the market is wide enough and divergent enough to welcome all. You can be a KISS fan, a Radiohead fan, or a Mariah Carey fan and know that no one is superior or inferior. They just enjoy listening to different types of music, and why do you care so much that they do? I choose Radiohead as an example of the complete opposite of KISS, on the musical spectrum, among mainstream acts. Radiohead writes complicated structures, with deep, provocative lyrics, and I am a huge fan. The question is do they write sophisticated material for the purpose of being sophisticated, so all their fans can prove their sophistication by saying that they enjoy listening to more sophisticated music? They get it, you don’t, because you’re a KISS fan, and they’ll spit the latter in the most condescending tone possible. KISS wrote simple, party music. Everyone knows who they are. Everyone knows they were a toe-tapping, foot stomping band who rarely tried to be something they weren’t (The Elder and Carnival of Souls excepted). 

Music is the tie that binds. It can be the only thing that you and your brothers share, the reason you fall in love, and the thing that helps you make friends from such divergent backgrounds. It, more than any other artistic medium, brings us all together. There’s a little something out there for everyone. For others, and they are in the minority, it can be the great divide.