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As the 2009 summer festival season wrapped up I got wind that July 15th – KISS night – had been the single biggest day ever for the Ottawa Bluesfest. If I’m not mistaken it’s a record that still stands today. Crazy.
Though I was as interested as the next guy to see KISS I suspect I would have made it onsite even if they hadn’t been on the bill that night for I had seen two words in the program that had my curiosity piqued: Silent Disco. I was not disappointed.
Silent Disco is brilliant on a myriad of levels, but most particularly because of the name. Silent Disco stands in that rarified air where the title is the pitch, just like Snakes on a Plane, Undercover Boss, or Young Sheldon. Two key words and you’re interested.
The nuts and bolts of Silent Disco is a DJ spinning dance music to an audience that listens via wireless headphones. I arrived at the Black Sheep Stage to find a sizeable crowd collectively getting down in a big way but all I could hear was the eerie near-silence of shuffling feet and the occasional group “woo.” It was a wonderful experiment in the collective unconscious and it was a heck of a lot of fun to watch. I don’t think I ever went near a set of headphones but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
KISS was another thing altogether, of course. The crowd was huge and the fans were into it in a big way. Is it surprising that a three-chord power pop band that hasn’t had a hit since the very early ’80’s should command such attention? I mean, as the date drew near there had been talk of a Shannon Tweed Day and once they had arrived the paparazzi (paparazzi in Ottawa!) started tracking Gene Simmons’ every move*.
But you know why, and so do I: Showmanship. Remember, these dudes were wearing masks and experimenting with pyrotechnics when they were an unknown bar band. Waggling tongues, hidden faces, spinning drumkits, these guys had been going way over the top ever since day one. Heck, at the Bluesfest the band made their entrance by descending from the top of the stage. Only KISS has the audacity to lower themselves from the ceiling of an outdoor venue. They launched into a set that explored much of their first album and left a lot of casual fans in the dark while to the rest of us felt like we were pumping quarters into the world’s greatest pinball machine. Adding to the visual trickery were three hundred (yes I counted them: there were three hundred) faux speakers on the stage behind Paul Stanley, who was using in-ear monitors and commanded a stage that was, in reality, probably as quiet as Silent Disco.
There were pyros at the end of the first tune – a lot of them – and they just kept on coming with every new three-chord wonder. There was a surprising nod to The Who as the band segued into a bit of We Won’t Get Fooled Again near the end of the set, but really the whole closing section of the well-crafted song list was Solid Gold. They ended with their timeless classic, Rock And Roll All Night and encored with everything else the crowd had been waiting for, from Lick It Up to Detroit Rock City, with fireworks punctuating almost every downbeat.
For me, the peak moment of the concert was the drum fill that comes midway through KISS’s greatest disco rock number, I Was Made For Loving You. But then I knew going in that was going to be an emotional 2.4 seconds. If you’ll indulge me for a paragraph or two:
The year would have been 1982 or so. I was in the unfinished basement that served as my and my brother’s shared bedroom and I was listening to the only KISS album I have ever owned: Dynasty, which I picked up on cassette through Columbia House. I was in Grade 9 and taking music for the first time (trumpet) and though I could play the notes and follow the patterns well enough I had no idea what was going on.
So there I was listening to I Was Made For Loving You and I noticed that my foot was tapping along to the beat. Whoa! I had never been good at that. Previous to this moment I had been Steve Martin in The Jerk before he heard his first Lawrence Welk song. And not only was my foot tapping, I noticed that the song seemed to be following a pattern of four foot taps. Hey! That was just like that 4/4 stuff we did in school! As the drumfill was approaching I had a thought. What if this counting to four trick works even over the drum fill? I started counting out loud, 1, 2, 3, 4 and no, it couldn’t be…but yes, yes it was!!! 1, 2, 3, 4!!!! Dugga dugga dugga dugga, digga duggu dooga dugga! Oh. My. Gawd. I couldn’t believe it. I rewound the tape (remember having to rewind stuff?) and tried it again. Yes! It really worked! I tried it a third and fourth time and then I popped in a Pat Benatar cassette and 1-2-3-4…all of her songs fit too! Even the guitar solos and everything! Same with Joan Jett and Donna Summer! It was like everything I had on tape could be counted in four. Everything! Kermit had always been my favourite muppet but in an instant I became The Count! I started counting all the music I heard – tv commercials and everything – and I still do.
So that, my friends, is how I discovered musical time, a realm I have been wading in ever since, and for introducing me to the bread beneath my butter I will always owe KISS a level of true respect. When the drum fill inevitably arrived halfway through the inevitable song I tilted my head back and screamed out loud and proud: “One! Two! Three! Four!” I was in my glory.
But the main glory of the night had to be the closing number. Punctuated by a cavalcade of cutting-edge pyrotechnics was the band’s most ubiquitous sing-along, Rock and Roll All Nite (yes, that’s the actual title and that’s how it’s spelt. Gene Simmons used to be a school teacher…Imagine!). As I looked around the enormous crowd, the bulk of which were white-collar 8-4:30ers who were by no means going to be doing anything all nite (sic) besides sleeping and who would certainly be done partying well before any day approaches, let alone every day, I thought to myself: what a bunch of posers. And then, upon a closer listen I realized I was dead wrong.
‘Cuz the song doesn’t say that I (or you or we or whomever) was going to rock and/or roll all night (I’m sorry, I just have to spell it correctly), nor does the song say that we’re going to party ev-a-ree day. No, it’s says I “wanna” rock and roll, and I “wanna” party, and nobody wants to rock and roll all night and party every day more than some poor schlub who drank too many piss-warm Steamwhistle $6 lagers at the KISS concert last night and had to drag their sorry, hungover but responsible butt into the office because they have a mortgage and 2.4 kids? Nobody. And just like that, all those posing liars singing and clapping along to the final encore of the single biggest act to ever play Bluesfest, well, they all became working class heroes screaming their truth back at their momentary mentors of cheeseball rock and roll.
I, for one, rocked right up until the 11pm mandatory curfew, then I rolled my bike home along the city’s well-lit paved bike paths, after which I stayed up half the night writing a poorly-written review of the show for a generally disinterested internet. I spent the next day teaching guitar, seeing Styx at Bluesfest and yes, partying at least a little bit.
*Midset I was returning from a beer run when I ran into the Bluesfest’s cucumber-cool head poo-bah Mark Monohan. I asked why, in his opinion, was KISS drawing one of the biggest turnouts ever at Bluesfest? “Because lots of people bought tickets,” he replied.
Ba-dump, ptssss.
Todd Man Out 