#88 "Hard Luck Woman" by KISS

I kind of feel like KISS just might be the cheesiest of the cheese. It's not that they're not talented or don't have good songs, but all of the hair, make-up, sequins, platform shoes, hairy chests, and exposed tongues just add up to a lot of kitschy silliness if you ask me. But you know what... KISS knows that the performance can be as important, if not more important than the songs themselves. After all, isn't the old saying, "It's not the story, but he who tells it"? KISS had that figured out a long time ago.

I first remember KISS when I was just a kid. I didn't know any of their songs. Their albums certainly never got any rotation in our conservative little house, but since the band was so cartoonish in their image a lot of people knew who they were even if they weren't familiar with any of their work. As a matter of fact, I remember my brother and I getting a KISS Destroyer puzzle for Christmas one year, and being totally psyched about it! And even though I thought Gene Simmons and his dragon boots were totally cool, when I heard that one of my cousins was going to a KISS concert, all I could envision was a very dark, loud place with a lot of scary long-haired people in attendance. And I remember the old legend that Gene supposedly, in between bouts of spitting fire and spewing blood out of his mouth, had occasionally stomped baby chicks in those fanged boots!?! Was my uncle insane or something?!? Letting his boy go to a KISS concert?!? In the end they were harmless. Shoot... for all I know, KISS put the baby chick story out there themselves. Like most rock stars, they knew that any press was good press.

"Hard Luck Woman" is one of a few songs sung by original drummer Peter Criss. I first heard it when my brother, years after our innocent youth, came home with the KISS Double Platinum record. Amidst all the party all night songs and the sleezy innuendo-filled songs and the god-of-thunder songs was this cool kind of country number. If I'd had a thousand choices, my last guess for who sang this would've been KISS, but sure enough it was. I found out that this little 1976 number was originally penned by Paul Stanley for Rod Stewart, who ultimately passed on it. Knowing that now, when you hear the beginning of it and Criss' raspy delivery, it's not a far cry from "Maggie May" and could easily have fit in with Stewart's early solo work. Regardless, this is a big favorite of mine. I get excited whenever I hear it.

On a related note, in 1994 country super-star Garth Brooks covered this song for a KISS tribute album. Now I think that Brooks is one of the cornier country stars around, but I have to give him some street-cred for picking such a cool song to sing, getting the original KISS line-up to back him on the track, and showing the world that there's more to him that big hats and ugly shirts.

"Hard Luck Woman" is from the album "Rock and Roll" over. To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.