I was driving down the interstate this afternoon headed home from my workout class around 6:00 as the sun was headed for the horizon. I remember the image of the sunset as I had just turned on “Classic Rewind” which is a channel I listen to at times but honestly not too much as I typically don’t like the repetition of the play list. Lately I have been listening to other genres other than rock and roll to take a break as many of the rock channels on radio play things I know by heart. All that said about the time I changed the channel there was a voice that started talking about how Ace Frehley had just died today. I sort of froze for a moment thinking “Did that voice say what I think it said?”
As I write this I have been thinking for a little while tonight about the past. I remember the year 1976 as snapshots of memories of that year. I remember being in North Carolina for the bicentennial celebration on July 4th and many details of that day from the keg cooler we made a few days before from plywood and Styrofoam insulation recycled from a motorcycle shop. The beer was Strohs and it was great stuff! Now if you do some math I was not quite old enough to drink but the statue of limitations on that topic are long over. Later after the summer ended I headed back home to Mississippi at the time to go back to school in August. Back in the hot late Summer I would ride around with two characters that were in a grade behind me in high school. I will give you a couple of names just for reference. One guy was the very skinny guy who had the strange nickname of “Worm” and the other guy was a friend of mine and a neighbor named Jim.
Back in the 1970’s there were some cars made that were painted in colors that should have never been put on an automobile. I would call them just plain butt-ugly. There were all these shades of brown and green that were just really not cool. Worm drove a cast-off car from his parent’s stable that was this large nasty looking color of brown green Dodge if I remember correctly. Maybe a “Polara” but I am not really sure. All I remember was the thing had six by nine inch coaxial speakers and a tape deck with a early model car amplifier in it. I can tell you these guys liked to party a little harder than I did but I liked to listen to music so I would ride with them at times. If you wanted to hear the music of rockers like crazy Ted Nugent aka ‘Fred Nugget” or Kiss they were the pair to go ride with on a weekend night. This is what I remember from that year. There I was riding with a driver who was high on Mexican weed and likely a beer. It is a miracle I am sitting here in 2025 writing this having put in so many miles with these guys. I could be the lone survivor of the threesome at this point. Hell I ran six miles this week on the treadmill and lifted weights so hard today I had to sit down for a bit tonight. But that is not what I should be writing about.
Kiss was extremely popular in the late 1970’s. If you listened to rock music on FM radio in those days Kiss was all over the airwaves. I enjoyed the music especially certain guitar riffs in some songs but likely my favorite tune which was written by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons is “Rock and Roll All Night.” I love the guitar riffs. I love the drums. The drums, oh yeah… go listen to the song. I can feel every beat of it. It is a steady, foundational four-on-the-floor beat in 4/4 time, driven by a simple, effective, and consistent rock rhythm. This steady, straightforward rhythm is a core element of the song’s classic rock feel. When you listen to it the timing is so perfect and the rhythm is just awesome. The guitar work on the song has a hard-charging rhythm overplayed with leads that span from Chuck Berry tones to just full on rock and roll. I will never get tired of hearing this song.
You show us everything you’ve got
You keep on dancin’ and the room gets hot
You drive us wild, we’ll drive you crazy
You say you wanna go for a spin
The party’s just begun, we’ll let you in
You drive us wild, we’ll drive you crazy
You keep on shoutin’, you keep on shoutin’… I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day
I went through the decades after the 1970’s and never really lived close enough to a show to see Kiss live back then. By the time the 1980’s came around music was changing and I I really didn’t listen to them too much. Fast forward to February 8, 2020. I had tickets to see Kiss with David Lee Roth opening solo. I remember the day well as a recent storm had damaged my roof at my hose. I woke that morning very early to the sound of a dozen workers tearing the shingles off my house to replace the whole thing. By 4:00 that afternoon they were cleaning up as I pulled out of the driveway to head to the show on that cold afternoon. When I rolled into the parking lot about 45 minutes later I saw twenty six 53 foot trucks lined up in the parking lot! They all had red cabs and plain trailers. All that gear! This was going to be a show. I just realized I never blogged a page on this show as with many others due to my insane schedule. Well the stage was amazing. The stage had elevators on both sides that would take the band from the stage to the roof which was very high. There was a platform at the back of the coliseum where a wire hung from just above all the way back to the main stage. At times band members would hook themselves to the wire and glide from one stage to the back while still playing! The band had a bucket lift to take them over top of the crowd! At several points there were pyrotechnics and of course there was confetti raining on the crowd during the show. It was a spectacle and a greatest hits rock show.
October 11, 2021. I was in uptown Charlotte to see a double bill with Alice Cooper and Ace Frehley. This was a very fun outdoor show. It was a damp cool evening. I had incredible seats and was very close to the stage. In fact if you go to the “Ace Frehley” tag at the bottom of the main page on my site you can go read my review of that show. Ace was great with his band and Alice always puts a smile on your face if you were a child of the 1970’s. Here is the direct link to those show notes. https://www.andrewtalbert.com/rock-music/charlotte-north-carolina-alice-cooper-with-opening-act-ace-frehley/
Those are a few memories I just wanted to write down as I heard the word of Ace leaving us today. When I hear of a musician leaving our living world it makes me pause and think of the good times I had listening to music and seeing great concerts. Ace is gone but not forgotten. His name will live on for a long time in the history of rock and roll music. Thank you Ace Frehley.