Glittering Space Captains and Mutant Rock-hungry Babies: Kiss Plays Sturgis, South Dakota:

A bulging line of people snakes out into the desert. They shift and twitch, trying to shuffle forward in line. Eyeballs pop out of heads. They begin to claw each other to death. The gate opens and they go running like horses on a track. They vacuum-seal themselves to the front of the stage with suction-cupped fingers. They clamp onto it with drooling vampire fangs, chew the footprints of their heroes out of the floor and eat them. Kiss comes on, a troop of glittering space-captains with platform shoes like skyscrapers. All air stops moving. Then…the first blazing note like a chainsaw to the sternum. The VIPs, with their $400 tickets, scream loud to show off professionally whitened teeth. They jump high to bounce expensive silicon in designer shirts. Behind them the violent ones rage with souls of steel, soaking up guitar sounds like gasoline. Behind them, in the chair zone, people sit back and melt in the sparkling explosions. The space captains float up high on platforms, ride zip-lines into the crowd. Everyone is screaming so loud they can’t hear themselves. In the morning their throats will feel like they’ve been thru paper shredders. We’re blasted into the air, zapped to pieces. We float down, fluttering like flaky confetti, catching fire in the smoking fountains of sparks. In the hills people maul each other, rip each other’s clothes off. Searing metallic screams weld them together at the genitals. They are creating monsters; mutant rock-hungry babies who will be born craving blood and the epic noise of the soar-and-scream guitar note. Their first words will be lyrics from the rock-and-roll party sermons that were woven into their minds at the moment of conception. They will taste life with undulating sex tongues, always on the look-out for mouths to suck. The Sunami crowd crushes the stage trying to get closer to the diabolical electric priests who stand wailing in happy Halloween costumes. They should be old. But they are not. Their costumes keep them from aging and changing and deteriorating. Face paint keeps them invincible. They are always in their prime, like photos in a picture album. They will never fall apart like humans. They will never disappoint, never fail, always blast the crowd to smithereens.

Advertisement