"Unlearn what you have learned" - that's how I feel when talking about my (and several others, I guess) one-time favourite band, Kiss.

Kiss fans, in this day and age, are in one of two camps; fans of the old band and sentimental clods happy with the current monstrosity that treads creaking boards, bereft of voice, soul and shame. These fans feel that they have to exhibit some form of extreme loyalty to a band who seem determined to cock a platform-heeled leg up and piss all over their once-glorious legacy. A loyalty that should be saved for family and friends, not a band hell-bent on taking as much of their money as (in)humanely possible.

And, sadly, it always comes back to money when talking about modern day Kiss. The band is now a franchise, a giant corporation, the kind that counter culture connoisseurs rail against. Fighting these corporate terrors, however, needs rational reason not excuses for mayhem as championed by hooded hooligans who hijack demonstrations of worthy causes. And there are many rational reasons for people to demonstrate distaste in the face of modern Kiss, the application of classic face paint to rock 'n' roll ringers being a major one.  

But it wasn't always like this. Pangs of good ol' catholic guilt still prick the conscience when thinking about Kiss, that's why I quoted the timeless mantra of master Yoda at the beginning of this article; and because Gene Simmons has a lot in common with the Jedi master, of course. Now Simmons would no doubt claim this to be due to his wise words that have pointed many in the right direction as they face difficult life choices - he has been "happily unmarried" for how many years now? I've only read that quote in about 2,427 interviews, it hasn't quite stuck yet - but no, they are alike due to the misguided attempts of money-crazed corporations to resurrect them in pale imitations of their former glories. Yoda's place in the original Star Wars trilogy was, like Gene Simmons's place in the original Kiss, universally adored; Yoda's appearances in the Lucas cash cow of a prequel trilogy, like everything about the Simmons cash cow of modern Kiss, are open for universal criticism.

But this isn't about comparing Kiss to Star Wars (now there's a biting future article if ever there was one), this is about unlearning what I had learned about Kiss, about being able to look at their work in an unbiased fashion. But, boy, is it tough now. There are several Kiss bootlegs in my collection - yes, I had to get to it sometime! - including classic examples of incredible shows from the 1970s, but they might have to wait until around the time that Ace Frehley, the band's greatest ever member, plays the holiday camp where the third On The Buses movie was filmed. Just typing that makes me want to check that a pop culture-riddled sliver of my brain hasn't just slid down my nose and flopped onto the keyboard.

The teenage me could forgive Simmons for swanning off to make movies instead of making albums, could forgive his pre-wigged former self looking about as comfortable in the day-glo lycra of the 'Asylum' era as Gary Cherone did when he was in Van Halen, but what I couldn't forgive was when the Clod Of Thunder did an interview for Metal Hammer magazine around the time of the release of 'Crazy Nights' and, when rating the past Kiss albums, slagged off both 'Dynasty' and 'Unmasked', two albums that I held dear to my teenage heart.

When digging through my bootleg archive I stumbled upon not one, but two Sony HF 60 cassettes collecting one US show from the band's 'Crazy Nights' tour. It felt only right that, after Gene's harsh words regarding his own bandwagon-jumping recorded babies, I should listen to this show first.........

The show at the Civic Centre in St. Paul, Minnesota on December 1^st 1987 was the fourteenth date of the 'Crazy Nights' world tour that had begun midway through November in the US, a tour that would include a number of 'firsts' for the band. For instance, the show, a more scaled-down affair than previous tours, started with 'Love Gun', never previously used as an opener. Also, Bruce Kulick played keyboards onstage during the song 'Reason To Live', another first for the tour. If he actually parped those keys is debatable though as, in another first, the band were utilising the talents of an off-stage keyboard player. That man was Gary Corbett who, as well as working with the likes of Cinderella and Lou Gramm, wrote the timeless 'She Bop' song (about masturbating) with Cyndi Lauper, the song having masturbatory themes not actually being about masturbating with Cyndi Lauper - happy to clear that up. In hindsight, the fact that the band employed a ringer in an attempt to make them sound better seems pretty normal but back in the '80s it was obviously a no no no, hence the dude being stuck on the edge of the ball parp. There would be something different come encore time too but, well, I'll get to that in a little while.....

Using the 'humming' intro that had been premiered on the 'Asylum' tour a couple of years previously, Kiss hit the stage with 'Love Gun' and....it's good. Guitar solo is a bit widdly but, apart from a ridiculous attempt at a scream from Paul Stanley that would have caused a hearty guffaw then yet be the norm now, the band nail it. 'Cold Gin' follows and, again, is very decent. Then things start to go awry. "Somebody's gonna get banged tonight", screams Stanley and several hundred male rectums clench. 'Bang Bang You', the first of four tunes from the band's (then) new album to get showcased in this show, follows and is as poor as you have already imagined, culminating in a piece of audience participation so bad that I cannot write about it for fear of my fingers curling into a fist and punching myself for ever buying this horror in the first place.

'Fits Like A Glove' follows and is dreadful; forget licking it up, I feel like puking it up. Another breakdown for audience participation has Stanley interrupting Simmons to ask "Who has the biggest tits?" - umm, it would appear that at the time it was Mercury Records. 'Crazy Crazy Nights' is up next and, after the previous abomination, is remarkably listenable. Cheesy listening maybe but, incredibly, a step up in quality. A step that appears to be striped with dog shit scraped from the bottom of someone's shoe within moments. What starts as a drum solo (which would be bad enough if it wasn't at the hands of the awesome Eric Carr) suddenly mutates into a guitar solo, then an extended jam that goes on for-fucking-ever and sucks the little life left in this show out of it altogether. Awful. And how do Kiss follow it? With 'No No No', another 'classic' song that is squeezed out of the arse-end of the band's back catalogue onto the stage in a nasty, noisy mess.

Let's recap; after an opening one-two of a couple of the greatest weapons in the Kiss arsenal, the band have seen fit to pollute the mullets of the entire audience with, and this is still hard to accept, 'Bang Bang You', 'Fits Like A Glove', Crazy Crazy Nights', a solo suicide mission and 'No No No' in quick succession - so much for the Kiss live spectacle. This show is almost flatlining. How do they attempt to breath life into it? With the AORtrocity that is 'Reason To Live', full of so many keyboards, and sounding so perfect, that my guess is there was also an off-stage tape deck. The video (starring 'Weekend At Bernie's' eye candy Eloise Broady) was premiering on MTV the following Friday apparently - whoop-de-fucking-do. Forget 'Dad Rock', this is 'Nan Rock' - come back Starship, all is forgiven.

Thank the maker for 'War Machine', which makes a more than welcome appearance and saves a least a little face for the band. Someone throws a bra onstage and Paul Stanley offers to take the young lady backstage to fit it on her (playing dress-up with the girls - nice) before wailing the intro to 'Heaven's On Fire' which, although a little too fast, is one of the best performances of this strange show. 'I Love It Loud' provides another example of how decent song equals decent gig, although it is preceded by a plodding bass solo that contains the sound of either pyro or Simmons's flatulence.

Being into pantomime season, Stanley decides to put the Xmas in sex by putting a seasonal bent on a standard rap about walking into the ladies' locker room (accident?) at a local gym and seeing a woman with the biggest tits that he ever did see. Guess what? He doesn't wanna wait until she knows him better. 'Lick It Up' is another song that might not be the greatest that the band has ever written but, in light of the horrible setlist, it is welcomed here like a long-lost friend. 'Rock and Roll All Nite' closes the main set and, while again being a little too fast, is another step in the right direction towards regaining some pride; extra kudos here too for the badly-timed audience singalong - ah, the beauty of the bootleg experience.

Remember what I said about there being another oddity at encore time? Well, while some shows on this tour were graced with but a single song for the encore - generally 'Detroit Rock City' - this show actually had three. But what, from their fourteen studio album canon of work would Kiss choose to play? How about a cover of 'Whole Lotta Love'? Paul Stanley might have thrown a snatch of this standard into the parts of the 'Sonic Boom' tour where he screeched and squawked his way through all manner of supposedly ad-libbed bollocks when he should have, in fact, been saving his shadow of a voice in order to actually sing some of his band's own songs, but here the classic gets played out in its entirety. And it's a decent version, comparable to that of the version played by the band in the pub at the end of your road last weekend.

Like the setlist hasn't already been bad enough, to throw this rock 'n' roll cliché in instead of something like 'Firehouse' or 'Deuce' is just fucking criminal. Fun though, eh? The Zep segues seamlessly, kinda, into 'Tears Are Falling', another rare encore, which, quite remarkably, exudes a weird charm severely lacking throughout the set. The aforementioned trip to Detroit means that the journey is at an end, hardly the scenic route taken.

The tape stops abruptly, and a little shockingly, just like all great bootlegs should and I'm left a little weary. Could it be possible that I actually fell under the spell of this horror show back in the late '80s? I remembered little of it so, happily, I'm guessing that I didn't. Quite possibly, the fact that the godawful solo segment was the sole reason why this concert was spread over two tapes, therefore making me spend more money than usual on the trash, helped me to, not hate it then but try to ignore it like a school girlfriend when you were in college and destined to become an all-conquering cocksman. Like Gene Simmons.

Somebody's gonna get banged tonight and it might be Mrs Bin as these tapes fly into her like excrement-smeared ninja throwing stars.

Wait until December to dig out the 1970s classic Kiss tapes? I'm not sure I can wait that long for my crazy, crazy catharsis.