Other people’s nostalgia can be a scary thing. But it’s a godsend for the members of Kiss, who after 16 years of laboring along in varying degrees of obscurity have put their original lineup and stage show back together and taken to the road with a set list dating from 1978. They may end up as the highest-grossing tour of the year. And they’re just the biggest slice in today’s wheel of rock-and-roll cheese. If music hasn’t tamed your savage breast since ““Dust in the Wind’’ dropped off the charts, this has been a summer of embarrassing riches. There’s the Can’t Stop Rockin’ tour, a triple bill of ’70s sounds from Peter Frampton, Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. Styx and Kansas are tag-teaming through amphitheaters. Choose your poison: Bad Company or the Doobie Brothers? Lynyrd Skynyrd or Ted Nugent? Call Ticketmaster and break out the tube top, because high-school days are here again.
So how is it that bands that weren’t really that cool even then are getting a warm reception now? The Sex Pistols reunion – that makes sense. But in an era when sentiment is for suckers and guitar solos just waste time that could be better spent haranguing audiences over gender issues, it’s hard to see where Peter Frampton fits in. ““Baby, I love your way’’? Alanis Morissette sure doesn’t. Maybe that’s the problem. ““At some point, everybody gets a little tired of hearing people sing about how terrible life is, especially when we live in America, the land of opportunity,’’ says Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley. ““If you want misery and bad news, pick up the newspaper. If you come to our show, maybe we’re musical Tylenol.''
Listening to Ace Frehley bash out Beethoven’s Fifth on a guitar that bursts into flames seems an unlikely headache remedy. But there is a respite of sorts in the simpler axioms of the past: Partying is fun. Relationships are difficult, but worthwhile. A groupie in the hotel suite beats two in the lobby. Besides, if ’70s bands can be accused of being out of step with the rage and alienation of the ’90s, they can also lay claim to the ultimate mantle of hipness. ““We’re like the new alternative,’’ says REO Speedwagon front man Kevin Cronin.
Not that you’re likely to see packs of pierced teenagers moshing to ““Keep On Loving You.’’ More typical would be someone like David Paglia from Akron, Ohio. Paglia, 30, is enjoying a picnic at the Blossom Music Center outside Cleveland, where he’s looking forward to seeing the Can’t Stop Rockin’ package tour. He’s wearing an REO Speedwagon concert shirt dating from the early Reagan years, but he’s a fan of all three bands. ““I just had to choose which T shirt to wear,’’ he says. Paglia caught a Bob Seger show earlier this summer and says it’s definitely old-time rock and roll that soothes his soul. ““They sing with more feelings in the old stuff,’’ he says between bites of a double Quarter Pounder with cheese. ““I mean, you can listen to it and know what they’re saying. This new stuff, you can’t understand half of it.’’ The feeling, of course, is mutual. What’s the reaction of today’s kids to, say, Kansas? ““I don’t think there is one,’’ says Phil Ehart, the band’s drummer, with a laugh.
That’s OK – attitude would just spoil the fun. ““People stand out there, and they sing all our songs back to us,’’ says Styx singer Dennis DeYoung, who’s been ““absolutely overwhelmed’’ by the audience response to his concerts. ““There’s a feeling of joy and exhilaration, and what I could only characterize as happiness.’’ Of course, the smiley faces come cheap if you’re playing only old material. ““To get people’s attention for a new song, that’s the challenge,’’ says Speedwagoneer Cronin. And a challenge it can be to scale the ““mountain of bullst’’ that a band like his faces when releasing a new album. ““I think there are preconceptions that REO Speedwagon did a certain thing at a certain time,’’ says Cronin. ““It’s really hard for someone to let in the fact that people grow and society changes.''
And that they have to wait another five minutes before they can hear ““Take It on the Run.’’ Still, it’s tough to get too upset about close-minded fans or radio programmers. Most of the older acts are just glad to be here. In 1981 REO, fresh off the multiplatinum ““Hi Infidelity’’ album, sold out Houston’s Astrodome and the New Orleans Superdome on successive nights. A decade later it was struggling after two original members left the group. ““I think the worst it got was, we played a club in Mexico City and we shared the bill with a ventriloquist act,’’ recalls Cronin. ““It’s those things that build character in you or destroy you.''
Just how far it is from sharing a stage with a talking dummy to sharing one with Peter Frampton and his talking guitar is for the reader to decide. But there’s no denying that Frampton still comes alive – he just does it in more intimate settings. At Blossom, the British idol and his band run through a crisp hourlong set of the sort of sunny, guitar-infused anthems that sold 15 million copies of his 1976 live double album. Fans shout and sway their upraised arms like a squad of football referees. Frampton smiles and waves. So what if there’s only one woman screaming ““We love you!’’ between songs? That’s one more than you’ll hear at a Nine Inch Nails show.
