Weirdo

I recently heard an old soundbite of Gene Simmons asked by a facetious interviewer, obviously hip to his typical style of brand-promoting, image-conscious rhetoric, “Any last minute crazy things you’d like to say to conform to expectations?”

Simmons, while definitely a shameless self-promoter is also not an idiot, and he responded instead with a sincerity she didn’t expect.

“No,” the demon replied in a soft tone. “But I will say something to anyone out there who’s, you know, the weird guy or the weird girl who always has the weird things that their friends put them down for.

“Don’t think it’s so weird. Maybe someday someone might give you the chance to make a living out of it. Just stick to it. You be weird.”

That’s the Gene we Kiss fans know and love.

I’m a weird guy. I always have been. When I was about eight years old, I discovered this band with powerful, exciting music who looked like the last thing they wanted to do was fit in. They went further out of their way to be different than any band had before or has since. That’s what got me...I think.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought recently. I’ve been trying to nail down what exactly it is about Kiss that we fans get and no one else seems to get. Why do they speak to us?

I guess for a lot of us weirdos, they were the first people that showed us we don’t have to feel outcast and unworthy because we don’t conform to thinking, feeling, looking  and acting like everyone else. They showed us that you can actually celebrate being different.

In that sense they were real heroes to us. Champions of the weird. And they dressed the part.

The mentality in the little town I grew up in was if you weren’t a racist, homophobic Jesus freak, you weren’t just wrong. You were weird.

With Facebook I’ve been able to learn that little town hasn’t changed a bit. Most of those people stayed there, still think the way they did, and are teaching their children that everyone who is “normal” doesn’t question their values. That a “world view” need not be influenced by the world outside your little backwards-ass town. That ignorance is somehow a point of pride.

That anyone who DOES question their values is a communist, nigger-lovin’ faggot.

For some reason I thought a pocket of ignorance like Mooresville would have to have changed over the past 30 years, but that was naive I guess. In fact, it’s not such a small pocket. Indiana is probably the most backwards state north of the Mason-Dixon line.

I should probably explain the Facebook statement:

There was a certain friend-of-a-friend who added me on Facebook. I knew who he was, but never really ever got to know him. I soon learned however, that he was the quintessential Mooresvillian archetype.

After quickly tiring of his incessant, daily posts taken from unsubstantiated right-wing blog posts bashing Obama, liberals, non-christians, etc., I hid him from my feed. But then I found that every time I posted ANYTHING, he would leave the most hateful, racist comments. He made racist comments about African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans until I had finally had enough and un-friended him.

This set off a chain reaction and several of my other Mooresville friends un-friended me in retaliation.

So this is what Mooresville still is. “You’re either with us or against us.”

That’s okay. I don’t need friends like that. I’d rather be weird.

Kiss doesn’t involve themselves with politics. They’ve never been about saving the world, or promoting world peace, or saving the endangered plankton. They’ve never cared about making music that artistically elevates the culture or expands human understanding.

Kiss is about celebrating life, living in the moment, daring to be yourself no matter what anyone else thinks, and putting on the most spectacular show you’ve ever seen.

If you need more than that from a band, well...I guess you’ll never get it. I mean, there are tons of bands who have written great music, put on great shows, influenced generations of musicians and songwriters…but they’re not Kiss.