KISS ROOTS

KISS ROOTS

Few people pay them credit today, but the fact is that Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention set the stage for a lot of the rock ‘n’ roll that emerged in the early part of this decade. Specifically what they did was wear dresses on the cover of their We’re Only In It For The Money album in 1968. That simple. While it may be hard to believe, nobody else had done anything quite as outrageous (and on such a scale) at that juncture in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Even the most dedicated of the rock rebels wondered in their heart of hearts: “What are they? Transvestites or something?” They weren’t. The Mothers were just carrying on in the grand rock tradition of shock and defiance. Nevertheless, it took a year for it to soak in at all.

In 1969 Zappa started Straight Records, and one of his first releases was an album by a band that posed in mini-skir.ts and billed itself as Alice Cooper. It would still be a while beforq drag rock caught on commercially, but with Alice, it was here to stay...for the time being. The band hit the road with a stage act that teased audiences with androgyny and morbid “dead baby” jokes.

By 1971 when an unknown named David Bowie hit the record racks with an LP that took drag rock into outer space, New York City kids were becoming hip to the new jive. For the hippest of those, platform shoes, feminine blouses, and makeup became the way to thumb their noses and get attention, the new way to rock ‘n’ roll. By 1972 the media finally came around to certifying it as a brand new sensation and giving it a name. Glitter Rock, they called it, after the glittery clothing and eye makeup of its practitioners.

Seeing as Glitter Rock was more of a visual style and made more demands on the performer as a dress-up artist than it did on him as a musician, it was pretty much all right if a band couldn’t play so hot. If they looked right, they were cool. So here came the Glitter Rock rank-and-file, the garage bands—so named because in every other garage in Brooklyn, kids were picking up guitars one day and landing onstage ihe next.

The most notorious places to play in New York’s Glitter Rock scene were the Mercer Arts Center on the fdnge of Greenwich Village and Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue South. The two biggest in the early days of the local Glitter scene were Teenage Lust and the New York Dolls. The reason being, they were the most effectively outlandish posers, wearing dresses and high heels, lipstick and makeup, lots of jewelry and oversized sunglasses.

The Village Voice, Manhattan’s hip organ, seemed to run an article every other week on the Dolls, Lust, and the burgeoning scene at Max’s and the Mercer. Soon glitter bands were popping up in New York at such a fast and furious clip that it became impossible to keep track. The Harlots of 42nd Street, Ruby and the Rednecks, Eric Emerson and the Magic Tramps. Then the range of venues began to expand to accomodate the glut, now including Village lofts, the Diplomat Hotel, and various clubs in the outer boroughs. The Dolls landed a. recording contract with Mercury, Teenage Lust were reportedly near terms with another label, and the scene really looked like it might take off nationally.

It didn’t. And eventually the Dolls were dropped by Mercury and the hotel in back of the Mercer Arts collapsed onto the club, halfdestroying it and rendering it unsafe and unusable. But you know the old saw about monkeys? Well, they say that if you put a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, i at least one great piece qf literature will result^and that’s the way it was with Glitter Rock and the garage bands. There were just so many musicians playing around that something, onexsuccessful piece of rock ‘n’ roll, had to result. Which it did—Kiss.

Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley saw Glitter Rock as their opening in 1972 and made their run for it. Fortunately for them, they stopped 'short before they hit the brick wall behind the fad. Or maybe, just maybe, they hit that wall and, by some strange twist of fate, ricocheted off towards rock ‘n’ roll heaven.