Life After Ace
By: Dave

First, let me say that I'm not one of these fans that heard Hot In The Shade, bought it, and started calling myself a hardcore fan. I was four when I heard Alive! and I have been a fan ever since.

Now, I could go on about them not playing anything but 70's stuff on the Reunion/Psycho Circus Tour. Or how although they feel the only ones who want rare stuff besides the hits are the hardcore fans, the hardcore fans are the only ones who will be there for this tour (those who went to the Reunion shows just for the novelty won't be back for a show that has the same set list other than 5 songs). I could go on about over merchandising, and overhype. But I won't because everyone else is voicing what I feel. Instead, let's talk about the future of KISS.

I looked forward to the Reunion show as much as everyone. I used to dream about what it would be like, and the only show that I got tickets to happened to be front row for about $40 per seat. And it was great. I had chills all through the show. Then I went home and thought, "How could they ever top that?"

In comes the Psycho Circus tour in Dayton, Ohio. As I stood there, I noticed that the band seemed VERY tired, and the songs seemed very slow. And this was after about only two months on the road. I was very disappointeded, and disenchanted. If only Gene had just told us what it was going to be like, instead of promising a full circus, and kick ass bands (get rid of the alternative and give us some ROCK, at least. No wonder metal seems to be dying. No one will support it).

Now, Ace says in an interview that he is leaving KISS next year. If he does, I don't blame him a bit. He gets one song on the big new KISS album, and it is stripped and rewritten by Gene. And then Gene and Paul turn around and say they haven't heard anything about it, and that KISS will go on without Ace if they have to.

Let's face it, if Ace wants to leave, no one's going to stop him. He's not a full member of the band, he doesn't get to record and release stuff he wrote for the album (in 1980 he got 3 songs on Unmasked, now he gets ONE? I'd be pissed, too). And Peter not only gets his stuff turned down, but other than vocals we don't know for sure if he's even on the album. He himself said he's pretty sure he's on there somewhere. Let's face it, Peter and Ace are hired musicians to get KISS back in the mainstream, and they knew it going in. Peter doesn't seem to care, because he is back on top of his career and has a good family life to occupy himself with. But Ace is sitting here, not only restricted from releasing more than one song on a KISS album, but not even allowed to release stuff on his own.

So after Ace leaves, then what? They have three choices:

1) Leave the makeup on, hire a new lead, and come up with new makeup for him. Unlikely since they didn't even bother to come up with new outfits for the Psycho tour, let alone a whole new character.

2) They could take the makeup back off and hire a new lead. But they know that no one but hardcore fans will follow that. They tried that with Lick It Up.

3) The most likely is that they will just hang it up as far as new albums, unless Gene and Paul write together and call it KISS (which is what they've been doing since Lick It Up). Psycho Circus is a Gene/Paul album, period. If you got a Gene solo album today, it would sound like his songs from that album. Same with a Paul solo album. So it appears to me that Ace has KISS by the balls, and they need to work something out with him.

A friend of mine said when the Reunion Tour happened they should have kept Eric and Bruce on standby, told them when the tour would be over, and when the Reunion was done gone back to the Revenge lineup. In my opinion, Revenge and COS are metal albums - Psycho Circus is not.

What I think will happen is either they will do a short tour for Psycho and that will be it, or Ace will leave before it even happens, letting Gene try to talk his way out of the breakup with the press. Ace will sell big since his recent exposure with KISS (hmm, maybe that's why he came back to begin with). And Gene will do like Jimmy Page did with Zeppelin, releasing unreleased stuff and repackaging the same old stuff. We will see Alive IV, we will see at least one new video tape, and we WILL see the box set finally come out, because Gene knows it will sell. Gene will continue to lose money on movies like he did with DRC, and will find that a little work with some old material will sell for over $100 a pop in box set form.

I hate to see it like this, but KISS isn't the hungry, hard working band they were in the 70's. The magic has turned into dollars, and the fame is raping them as it did in the late 70's.

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