SHARING THE SHOWS
Writer’s Note: I wrote movie reviews for my junior high school newspaper, as well as for a website while in my early 30s, the name of I can’t quite recall. The creator sent me $25 as a thank-you. Since concerts aren’t happening, I thought I’d dust off my movie reviewing skills, as I am a film buff in addition to being a concert hound.
I like Kiss enough to have their Very Best of compilation on my iTunes, but not enough to pay money to see them live. Still, I chomped at the bit to see Detroit Rock City back in the summer of ’99. I had just seen my first Phish show that July and had become obsessed with the foursome from Vermont. Knowing it was about four teenagers trying to get to a show, I could identify, and the movie filled my expectations. Nearly twenty-one years later, I own the DVD, and I’ve seen it about a dozen times. As I watched it last Saturday night during our quarantine, I realized why I liked the movie so much. From a film criticism standpoint, it doesn’t exactly meet the criteria of master cinema. The story’s predictable, the character arcs aren’t that deep, and the movie is cheesy overall. But I loved it just the same precisely because the concertgoer in me can identify with that primal desire to do what it takes to get to the show at all costs. The makers also understand the teenage mindset around concertgoing (well, around any visceral desire, really), which is that the world will end if you don’t get to that concert TONIGHT. The story is pretty simple. In 1978 Cleveland, four teenagers who comprise a Kiss cover band, after having had their concert tickets set on fire by the hyper-religious mother of one of their members, head up to Detroit on a mission to get tickets for that big Kiss concert. Of note: they actually SOUND like a high school rock band, not some professional musicians brought on by the studio executives. The movie has a very high-energy feel to it, and while I wouldn’t describe it as a character study, all four kids have some problems they’re facing, and the trip works as a sort of applied emergency therapy on them. Jam (Sam Huntington) has a domineering mother, who’s responsible for the act of arson that necessitates these kids needing to scramble for tickets in the first place. Hawk (Edward Furlong of Terminator 2), their lead singer and de facto group leader, has a bad case of stage fright. Trip (James DeBello) is the Jeff Spicoli of the band and is on a road to nowhere. Lex (Giuseppe Andrews) is the group’s voice of reason and has the least developed character arc; his distinguishing character feature is that he hates dogs, a fear he has to overcome in order to recover his Mom’s car, which has been stolen in Detroit after the kids have commandeered it for their trip. They have some authentic teenage stoner banter and fun adventures in their quest for the tickets, including run-ins with car thieves, religious zealots, and disco kids. The movie has a zany energy, which it spices up with a soundtrack of wall-to-wall Kiss tunes, along with some other 70s rock staples from groups like Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, and the Runaways. We don’t get to hear the film’s eponymous song until the very end. While we know the story is predictable, I identified with the film on a deep level, precisely because I’m as devoted to shows as these kids are, even as a 41-year-old English professor. Even during my fifteenth or so viewing, when I knew quite well where the movie was headed, my heart sunk and my eyes nearly teared up when Jam’s mother used the kids’ much-treasured tickets to light a cigarette. She then sends him up to a boarding school as a rehabilitative measure from “the Devil’s music.” After his bandmates break him out, they head to Detroit, and they’re mystified by all the Kiss fans lining the streets outside of Cobo Hall. The look on their faces suggests a feeling of “this is the best thing ever.” That, reader, is how I feel every time I go to Madison Square Garden and see hordes of Phish fans walking up and down Seventh Avenue. The movie gets that feeling, which is why it’s been in my DVD collection and why I rewatch it about once a year or so.
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April 2024
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