THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! KISS, "Rock And Roll All Nite [live]"

Drawn from previous posts, this is not part of my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1).

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

KISS: Rock And Roll All Nite [live]

Written by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons

Produced by Eddie Kramer

Single from the album Alive!, Casablanca Records, 1975

As young rock 'n' roll fans, our needs are pretty basic, and our desires are easily expressed: "I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day."

In the mid-'70s, I was a pop-obsessed teenager in love with my AM radio. I was old enough to remember the British Invasion, and my affection for '60s rockin' pop remained undimmed: The Beatles. The Dave Clark Five. The Animals. The Monkees. The Hollies. Paul Revere and the Raiders. Over time, those stalwarts had been joined (but never replaced) by irresistible '70s radio fare by Badfinger, Alice Cooper, Slade, Raspberries, Sweet. Somewhere in there, I developed an insatiable taste for the Kinks. 

That period of late 1976 through the end of '77 saw a huge transition in my musical tastes. Or did it? As I bought more records, as I burrowed through used records stores and flea markets, as I learned about exciting new stuff in Phonograph Record Magazine, as free-form FM radio drew my attention away from the increasingly disco-dominated AM airwaves...as all this was going on, I still loved the Beatles.  And everything else I loved was an extension of that.

And that included KISS. KISS was a pop band, and a very good pop band at that. The best KISS records were infectious in a way Led Zeppelin wasn't, accessible in a way Pink Floyd and ELP could never be, thrilling in a way that the Bee Gees would never even understand. KISS, though certainly not a punk band, was also my gateway to punk, a whole new world that nonetheless still drew inspiration from the prevailing and pervasive appeal of 45 rpm records played loud and distorted over a tiny transistor radio speaker.  

I saw KISS in December of '76; a year later, I wrote my first-ever piece of rock criticism, an emeritus contribution to my high school newspaper, drawing a line forward from the greatness of the Beatles to the virtues of the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Blondie, the Rubinoos...and KISS. Punk. Pop. Rock 'n' roll. For me, it was all part of the same continuum, and I loved it all.  I still do.

Not only was "Rock And Roll Alll Nite" the first KISS record I ever heard, it is beyond doubt the sine qua non of KISSdom, the one thing without which there is no other thing. I got into the original studio version in the early '80s, when I snapped up a beat-up free copy of the 1975 Dressed To Kill album (the same album that gave us a superb, underrated LP track called "Anything For My Baby"). But the in-concert version from Alive!, also in '75, is definitive. It really is what put KISS on the map, what got them on AM radio, and what brought them to my ears in the first place. Hijinks ensued, even if the result was belated for teen me. Rock 'n' roll all night. Party every day. Message received. Initiative approved. You drive us wild. We'll drive you crazy.

I avoid getting sucked into arguments about whether or not KISS is power pop; they're not, but honestly, I think some of their songs (particularly "Rock And Roll All Nite" and "Shout It Out Loud") come closer to my idea of power pop than, say, 20/20's (still wonderful) "Yellow Pills" does. KISS isn't my all-time favorite rock 'n' roll group, but I'm always going to have a spot in my heart for them, and I'm always going to dig in my heels and reject the blabbering of anyone who tries to tell me not to like KISS. I'm in charge of what I like and what I don't like.

Love of music is its own reward. Enthusiasm is its own reward. All of us who do anything at all within this broad category of indie pop music--performers, players, singers, producers, songwriters, promoters, record label go-getters, DJs, pop journalists, bloggers, even naive mooks who write books about The Greatest Record Ever Made!--do whatever the hell it is we do because we feel a compelling desire to do it. We'd like some financial reward--I would, anyway--but chasing the dollar isn't our primary motivation. We love the music. We love the experience of music. We love the sheer sense of life within the grooves of the music we love so much.

Maybe KISS isn't the most appropriate band to attach to a stated embrace of music without mercenary goals. But "Rock And Roll All Nite" is a perfect song. It's cool. It's hot! It's sincere, it matters, and it's about something of great importance to me:

It's about making something happen. 

We absolutely mean it. We couldn't keep on shouting--and we do keep on shouting--if it weren't the motherlovin' truth.

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I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.