Anglophile

As the responsible adult I am, I'm giving Aaron a guided tour of Rock. And I swear his Kiss fixation had nothing to do with me - for a change.

So I gave Aaron a little background about Kiss, and told him that they wouldn't have happened without Slade. Both Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons will happily admit that Slade were a catalyst for the kind of thing they wanted to do with Kiss. Stanley and Simmons saw Slade perform in New York during the summer of 1973 and were transfixed by what they heard and saw. So now, when you see videos of either band side by side, there's a very, very similar vibe to what each are doing.

Although Slade didn't really mean much to mainstream American music in the early-mid 1970s, they left their mark on Cheap Trick, as well as Kiss. CT bass player, Tom Petersson, always recounts the story of where they got their name from because he and Rick Nielsen saw Slade perform on this same 1973 American tour. He says that seeing Slade made him think they "...used every cheap trick in the book...."

And Cheap Trick have recently excellently covered Slade's "When The Lights Are Out" from the "Old, Borrowed and Blue" album of 1974. Brilliant stuff. I've always admired Cheap Trick's taste in covers.

There's a particular strain of American Rock that took all, and I mean, ALL its' pointers from what was going on concerning British guitar pop of the late 60s/early 70s. Cheap Trick are so Anglophile it's untrue. Much the same can be said for Kiss.

Here endeth the lesson!