YOU DRIVE US WILD, WE'LL DRIVE YOU CRAZY (LITERALLY)

Friday Morning. Time again for the Friday Silly Movie Of My Youth Of The Day. Let's get to it.

KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park

Let's set the scene: 1978. Kiss is about as huge as a band can be, as the popularity of disco, the emergence of punk, and the bloated excess & corporatism of mainstream rock have split the music scenes into subcultures. It seemed that every kid between the ages of 8 and 18 was completely obsessed with Kiss. The makeup, the spectacle-filled concerts, the merchandizing.

And their horrible music.

Say what? That's right. I was not a Kiss fan, and I hated them in fact. Most of my friends loved them. I owned a cassette version of Rock n' Roll Over, which one of them gave me for my 10th birthday in December 1977. I secretly liked the make-up and the over-the-top image. But even at 10, it was about the music. And on that count, as we all know today, Kiss sucked.

Just awful. Beth was, and remains, one of the worst songs I've ever heard. It's unlistenable, except as comedy. All of my friends loved Destroyer, and insisted on playing it at ear-shattering volume every time I went to their houses. They were all completely nuts about Detroit Rock City, which while a fantastic title for a song, was not actually a good song to listen to. I liked the Beatles, and declared that the Beatles were better than Kiss to any-and-all who listened.

Where are those who argued with me today? Huh? HUH???

Anyhow, I started a new school, in 5th grade, which represents a story in its own right at another time. (For instance, that's where I began to follow a sport I hardly knew about before then -- NHL Hockey, and the Rangers in particular -- one of my late-70's and early-80s obsessions. I actually ended up attending all Ranger home games in the 1994 Stanley Cup playoffs with a friend I met in 5th grade.) And, more germane to this tale, every freakin boy in my class was a Kiss fanatic. Fanatic! And . . . new kid in school, everyone liked the same thing which I hated, I wanted to fit in . . . Do the math.

I still never liked them, and still never added to my one album collection. But I became more superficially open-minded. I joined the teeming masses in drawing the "Kiss" logo, with the vaguely Nazi-ish, jagged "SS" at the end of the name.

(Which reminds me. Remember in 1980-81, when the Jim Morrison bio, "Nobody Gets Out Of Here Alive" and The Doors Greatest Hits came out, starting a Doors renaissance? I remember everyone drawing the "Doors" logo, with the weirdly-formatted, two-part letters, on notebooks and textbooks all the time.)

Return to scene: Spring of 1978, flying back from great-grandmother visiting in North Miami Beach with my mother (on the now defunct National Airlines), trying desparately to find something listeneable on the in-flight music. One of the loops was called "Contemporary Hits," or something along those lines. Among other "hits," it featured Evil Woman, by Electric Light Orchestra (Bloated Excess & Corporatism alert!), Slip Slidin' Away, by Paul Simon, and wouldn't you know it, Shout It Out Loud, by none other than the glam boys from NYC.

{Whispering} And I liked it.

And told no one. Oh well. And then KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park came out on TV the following autumn. As usual for the FSOMYOTD, I remember absolutely nothing from the movie. In fact, until I looked it up today on IMDB, I thought it was a cartoon movie. I mean, it was, in a way, but it wasn't an animated movie. That should tell you something about the relative quality of today's movie, as well as most of the FSMOMYOTDs. I can remember particular songs from a flight 28 1/2 years ago, but I can't remember anything about this movie, which if you were alive & sentient in 1978, you'll remember was quite hyped up.

And I guess it marked the pinnacle of Kiss's popularity. After 1978, they were never the same cultural icons. Dynasty, with the dreckish I Was Made For Loving You followed in 1979, the year of the disco crossover hit: Blondie with Heart Of Glass, the aforementioned ELO with Don't Bring me Down (Bruuuuuuuuuuuce), and many, many others (recall others off the top of your head?). In fact, by 6th & 7th grade, the "music wars" were rock vs. disco and classic rock/hard rock/new wave vs. punk/glam (the ever-reliable Beatles now facing off against The Ramones & David Bowie, and I have to hand it to the two kids who supported the latter: not bad for 6th grade!!!). In my school, none of the boys liked disco, and only one or two girls liked rock at all.

And Kiss was nowhere to be found in any of the battles.