A Midwesterner under the Influence of Rock and Roll
Album #1: Kiss, Destroyer (Casablanca 1976)

by tonydoug wright

I was born and raised in Springfield, Ohio, a Midwestern city of eighty-thousand people known by some as the birthplace of 4-H and by not as many as the city Newsweek featured in 1983 in their 50th anniversary issue chronicling the American dream. Springfield was the place where I began a rock and roll journey which featured many wonderful and at times some not-so-wonderful musical memories courtesy of 45s, 33s, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, record stores, parties, Friday night dances, MTV, college radio stations, study halls, car stereos, Walkmans, park festivals, county fairs, boom boxes, stereo systems, guitar lessons, cruising Main Street, and anything else that I’ve failed to remember.

This article and any preceding articles – Warning: I’m a lazy bastard so I hope to share more with you in future articles - are nothing more than commentary praising albums that have shaped my rock and roll soul with a few stories of my somewhat interesting life growing up in the Midwest. I want you to know that my list is by no means a definitive list of what you must own but it’s only a glimpse into my musically obsessed world. Like ‘em or hate ‘em, the albums I plan to share with you are heartfelt choices devoid of holier-than-thou nonsense and all that bullshit that only makes you roll your eyes and say to yourself, “Jesus, what an asshole”. I think Andy Dick said the same thing, except when he said that he was hanging out in a men’s restroom in Beverly Hills. I’m joking folks, calm down.

Most importantly, these articles will not provide you with a great deal of information about the history of the album or the artist. Go online or to your local bookstore and you will discover plenty of publications dedicated to certain albums featuring a lengthy back story and some self-congratulatory blah-blah-blah from the artists themselves, the album’s producer, the fans, and all the little people that made it possible. I find it more interesting to see how someone’s life was affected by a certain album. There are millions of great stories like this out there and sadly they have not been shared with the world.

You may be wondering why I chose Kiss’ Destroyer as my first entry. It’s simple; the articles go in chronological order to give you an idea about how my musical tastes have evolved over the years. Also, Destroyer was the first rock and roll album that I owned and in my opinion you have to remember your firsts no matter how embarrassing, blissful, painful, or regrettable.

Let’s go back to 1978, I was five years old, and my parents were indoctrinating my sister and me on the basics of popular music via a steady diet of top 40 hits, Motown, disco, and an assortment of favorites from the 1950s and 1960s. We had a stereo system in the dining room and when I say stereo system I mean we had a huge piece of furniture in our dining that when opened featured a turntable, 8-track player, radio, and a graphic equalizer – the only part of the stereo that I was not allowed to touch. Dad would get out the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, then mom would play The Best of Sam and Dave, and we’d kick it white people style. My sister and I were back-up dancers known as the Dimpettes. Good times.

But this five year old was interested in bands that stood out from the pack so therefore it was no surprise that I enjoyed Kiss because they had cool makeup, wore crazy outfits, and Gene Simmons, bass player and co-lead singer, really put the icing on the cake by spitting blood and fire. He didn’t spit blood and fire at the same time, although that would have been incredible. My parents did not mind that I liked Kiss and they would wake me up to come out to the living room if they made an appearance on television after my bedtime. That was nice of them to do that and it was nice that they did not freak out when I told them that I also liked the Village People. To this day I’m beyond surprised that they purchased for me the Village People’s Live and Sleazy - their answer to Foghat Live - as a Christmas gift.

My parents were comfortable with that fact that their son liked musical acts that dressed up in outrageous costumes. For my sixth birthday in 1979 they went to a local t-shirt store and put together a nice navy blue shirt with Paul Stanley of Kiss riding a motorcycle on the front with Tony spelled out in red letters on the back. To this day it remains one of my favorite birthday gifts. Now that I think about it, having my name on the back of the shirt made me a big ol’ target for the deviants of our town. Thanks a lot, mom and dad. I kid. I kid because I love my family too much.

So there I was, a kid in Springfield with a Kiss t-shirt. I told family, friends, and strangers that I liked the band and they would just look at me and reply “Oh” or “Um, ok”. One day, I informed our neighbors across the street – a free spirited couple that seemed to be groovy with everything and I’m pretty certain the guy’s name was Rocky – that I was a fan and they said to my mom that they had a Kiss album they did not want anymore so my mom and neighbors looked at me and asked if I wanted the album. It was a no-brainer and minutes later I was the proud owner of Kiss Destroyer on 8-track.

The family stereo was mine and I spent numerous hours playing Destroyer. I fell in love with the hard rocking opening one-two punch of “Detroit Rock City/King of the Night Time World” which featured the sound of a fateful motorcycle crash and things crashing or smashing are always cool when you’re a kid. The demonic “God of Thunder” scared me because Gene Simmons did a great job sounding like some lord of the underworld trying to eat an orphanage full of sweet little angels. The rebellious “Shout it Out Loud” and the underrated “Do You Love Me” needed to be cranked up on the family stereo so I broke the rules and touched the equalizers to obtain maximum rock. Live and Sleazy made few appearances on the family stereo but Destroyer ruled the house, although my Dad made sure we had regular doses of Saturday Night Fever while the Dimpettes made another appearance when The Best of Sam and Dave was played.

Sadly, Destroyer was eaten by the 8-track player – remember folks, the 8-track was the sorry ass cousin to the cassette - and I was devastated for about a day or two. I was a kid, and losing interest in Kiss was like your crazy little nephew losing interest in dinosaurs. You know what I’m talking about. For two years it’s T-Rex this and that but one day you show up with a dinosaur gift for his birthday and you get a mini-tirade from the kid followed by an explanation from his parents that Jurassic Park, Jr. has moved on to astronomy and wearing mommy’s lipstick.

Moving on, it was a tough loss musically but I survived because I decided to explore record stores and garage sales for a copy of Destroyer. Believe it or not, I found Kiss Alive, on vinyl not 8-track, at a church garage sale for $.50. Alive introduced me to the Kiss catalog of hits such as “Strutter”, “Firehouse”, and “Rock and Roll All Nite”.

About 10 years later, I was perusing the music section of a local department store in Springfield and noticed they had Destroyer, on cassette. I pulled the trigger, went home, played the tape, and it sounded better than it did when I was a young lad of five. Yes, it took me ten years to replace the 8-track but get off my back because I was a kid with a somewhat respectable allowance so I had to decide if I wanted to buy albums, comic books, or candy.

During my tape trading days in college, a gal in the Cincinnati area agreed to send me some Uncle Tupelo tracks and demanded to know what I had to trade. For some reason, I mentioned Destroyer and she was impressed so she asked that I send her a copy because she too had lost a copy of Destroyer. While volunteering at Wright State University’s radio station, WWSU, a fellow disc jockey named Pete asked what I was going to play during my Saturday night radio show. I mentioned Kiss and said something about playing “Detroit Rock City”. Pete’s eyes grew big and he said to me, “And you’re going to play “King of the Night Time World” as well, right?” Pete was right because playing “Detroit Rock City” without “King of the Night Time World” is like playing “We Will Rock You” without “We Are the Champions”: cruel and unusual punishment.

Destroyer is the first album on my Rock and Roll Journey list because it was the first rock album I owned plus it was my gateway drug into the world of rock music. I sat in my parent’s dining room playing that 8-track over and over again. While choosing CDs for a car trip I sill pick Destroyer because it has that special rock goodness that gets you pumped up. If an album still sounds good as it did 30 years ago then the artist has succeeded. Destroyer was not an album that opened my eyes to the injustices of the world because it was an album about being young and rebellious. Parents, teachers, and other authority figures don’t understand you and perhaps they never will. Who cares what they think because as Kiss sings in “Shout it Out Loud”, “We can’t do it any other way, everybody’s got to rock and roll.”