Fishbone

My Fishbone profile, including new interviews with Angelo Moore and Christopher Dowd, is up at The Aquarian.

Howie Klein

My Howie Klein remembrance is up at the site he founded, Down With Tyranny.

Ice-T Solo Records Ranked

“In order to get big sponsorships from these companies, you have to buy into the American way,” Ice stated in his 1994 book The Ice Opinion. “It’s not important enough to me that I would change my beliefs.” Looking at Ice-T’s thriving, prolific career today as a national treasure, one sees an America that bought into him, a pioneer rap entrepreneur whose stardom crosses over to music, film, TV, video games, literature, advertising, social media and beyond. But don’t forget—what earned him that status is his music.

Call him a businessman and he’ll agree, once stating, “I think I'm a musician first. More of like a writer, whether I'm writing books or writing rap, or just a lyricist and a writer, first. But bottom line, hustler.” But those business skills include quality control, and to deny his talent and innovations as a rapper would be like pretending Ice’s former LA club scenester pal Madonna is all business and no bangers. In honor of his recently announced upcoming album Criminal Migraine, here’s the good, the bad, and the O.G. of one of hip-hop’s greatest creators.

8. Gangsta Rap (2006)

None of Ice-T's last three studio albums get mentioned in his excellent autobiography Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption, and it’s not hard to hear why. Ice's last rap studio album to date, his first in seven years, sounds like the work of a man who had moved most of his hustle into acting, with cover art that tries too hard and music that doesn't try hard enough. “Walking in the Rain” is an enjoyably romantic spin from the man most of us didn’t know would turn into such a wife guy, but the album’s weighed down by forgettable guests and boasts Ice could have delivered in his sleep.

7. The Seventh Deadly Sin (1999)

In his 2000 episode of VH1's Behind the Music, Ice stated that he was more interested in making money than making music. Previous comments contradict this, so maybe he was joking or being defensive, but on The Seventh Deadly Sin, released one year earlier, he sounds disinterested in music, running through second-rate production and rap themes that he's stated better elsewhere. Released on Ice’s own digital record label Coroner Records (“The old-school major labels are going to die, only the coroner will continue to have a job.”) and less memorable than the home studio video interview the same year, in which he predicts the future of music and movies online: “Anybody who's ever seen it actually work cannot honestly believe CDs got a chance in hell in the next five-10 years….Right now, I can go get Lauryn Hill’s album from the Tower Records, rip it and email it to everybody in the world if that’s why I choose to do. There’s nothing you can do to stop that, right?”

6. Ice-T VI: Return of the Real (1996)

“I didn’t really mind doing little low-budget films because I never looked at myself as a movie star.” Ice remembered in his stellar 2022 book Split Decision. “But the drop-off in my music sales—yeah, at first that was a real fucking ego blow.” Much as one roots for Ice, it’d be hard to imagine any listener preferring VI: Return of the Real to Ice’s golden era rap masterpieces. The beats adapt for the post-G-Funk and Wu-Tang soundscapes, and Ice delivers the charm and wit, which are almost enough to carry storytelling that occasional hints at Ice’s peak game over 21 songs. The moving "I Must Stand" and the rapidfire "The Lane” are on 2000's Greatest Hits: The Evidence, the best place to hear both of those songs, where at least you can also get his soundtrack hit “Colors,” too.

5. Rhyme Pays (1987)

If not for some dated production and some touches of homophobia (which Ice was quick to frequently renounce in interviews), Rhyme Pays would be a notch or two higher. As it stands, Ice’s full-length debut starts one of the greatest five-album runs in rap history and the breakthrough of one of its most formidable artists. Starting with The Exorcist and Black Sabbath samples, as well as live drums by future Body Count drummer Beatmaster V, Ice established himself as a rapper of astonishing skill and range. The violence of the genre-inventing “6 ‘N the Morning” is still chilling, and the life of luxury exaggerations on "Somebody Gotta Do It (Pimpin' Ain't Easy)" are as funny as peak Weird Al. Ice proves himself as deft at throwing a party (“Make It Funky,” “409”) as he does laying down the facts (“Pain,” “Squeeze the Trigger.”) On the latter song, Ice closes the album by attacking both the law enforcement (“Cops hate kids, kids hate cops/Cops kill kids with warning shots”) and the government (“We buy weapons to keep us strong/Reagan sends guns where they don't belong”)  that would eventually try to shut him down over the Body Count song “Cop Killer.”

4. Home Invasion (1993)

At 77 minutes, Home Invasion could stand to be cut to a single LP. But at the height of his infamy Ice had a lot to say, and despite being the first Ice-T album to not improve on the previous one, Home Invasion features some of Ice’s most effective music, thumbing his nose at officials who complained about his influence on young white listeners by baiting would-be censors with his cover art and lyrics. For his Priority Records debut, Home Invasion delivers unadulterated Ice, with heated tracks like “Addicted to Danger” and “Race War,” and forgoes Ice’s usual humor to lean on Ice’s age and experience, one of his defining MC traits, on the autobiographical “That’s How I’m Livin’” the LA truce retelling “Gotta Lotta Love” and best of all on the edgy first single “I Ain’t New Ta This,” though these days the album’s best-known song is a deep cut that never received a single or music video release, teaming up with 2 Live Crew’s Brother Marquis on “99 Problems.” Without major label support, and many retailers still hesitant to stock his albums after the “Cop Killer” scandal, Home Invasion’s chart presence was short-lived, but 30 years later it holds up as a powerful, literary slice of gangsta rap game, and Ice’s most underrated record. Be sure to spin the bonus disc The Last Temptation of Ice for the fantastic “Ricochet,” a soundtrack hit to Ice’s 1991 film with Denzel Washington and John Lithgow.

3. Power (1988)

Duff McKagan called it "the soundtrack to my life in ‘88.” Kirk Hammett credits "Personal" as the inspiration for his "Enter Sandman'' solo. According to Bob Dylan's autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan was listening to Ice-T during the making of 1989's Oh Mercy, meaning he was likely enjoying this album and songs like "Girls L.G.B.N.A.F." Even fans of Rhyme Pays must have been struck by Power’s versatility, with Ice reinventing himself as a modernized version of the blaxploitation and crime novel heroes of his youth, even doing a spot on impression of his namesake Iceberg Slim’s spoken word Reflections in the homage “Soul on Ice.” The first hit “I’m Your Pusher'' built on a Curtis Mayfield sample to pioneer the rapped verses/sung hook format and show off Ice’s cinematic chops in the music video, described by author Greg Tate as “new jack’s first successful blaxploitation movie,” while applauding Ice as the “first gold rapper to emerge from a bona fide Black criminal enterprise, the gangs of Los Angeles.” Ice scored again with the crime drama hit “High Rollers,” but Power is Ice’s first front-to-back masterpiece, from the hard-edged title track to the slinky “Drama” to the entourage party in “The Syndicate.” Ice even transcended coastal rivalries to be the only West Coast act on 1988’s The Dope Jam Tour (Say No to Drugs), with Eric B & Rakim, Doug E. Fresh, Kool Moe Dee, Boogie Down Productions, Biz Markie. “I never thought I could out-rap any of the New York legends, but I was a bit more thought-provoking than the other rappers in the game.” Ice remembered.

2. The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! (1989)

In most careers, this would be the definitive statement, but in an oeuvre as deep as Ice-T’s, this is just one of Ice’s classics. Darker, heavier and more political than his previous work, The Iceberg forgoes the rich and infamous lifestyle of his first two album covers (Ice chilling with his then-partner Darlene “the Syndicate Queen” Ortiz and DJ Evil E) for a harrowing sketch of a young Black man with three guns pointed at his head. The Black Sabbath and Jello Biafra-sampling opener “Shut Up, Be Happy” was heavy enough to serve as Megadeth’s entrance music for years. and the title track earned him spite from Tipper Gore and Oprah, who underestimated Ice’s intellect and debate skills when they tried to make an example of him on Oprah’s show. The Iceberg was both Ice-T’s edgiest and his biggest crossover move (it hit No. 1 on Harvard’s College Radio charts) to date, honing his storytelling into some of his wildest exploits (“Peel Their Caps Back,” “The Hunted Child”), dropping wisdom (“You Played Yourself,” “Freedom of Speech”), telling jokes (“My Word is Bond,” “Black ‘N’ Decker”) and rocking as hard as his punk and metal contemporaries (the hit “Lethal Weapon” and the hilarious “The Girl Tried to Kill Me,” featuring Body Count bandmates Ernie C and Beatmaster V), delivering banger after banger into a certifiable classic. Ice also touted his cinematic qualities with an self-designed MPAA-style sticker on the album: “'Rated X. Some material may be X-tra hype and inappropriate for squares and suckers.’” 

1. O.G. Original Gangster (1991)

The gangsta rap Exile on Main St. Something completely different. One of the greatest records ever, regardless of genre or era. 72 minutes of hip-hop brilliance that without a wasted second among its 24 tracks. The biggest hits were the soundtrack jam "New Jack Hustler (Nino's Theme)" and the American vernacular-reshaping title track, but the deep cuts are every bit as invigorating, from the brilliant "Mind Over Matter" through the unnerving, Black Sabbath-sampling “Midnight” and the closing "The Tower," infiltrated with drops of humor and wisdom like "Ya Shoulda Killed Me Last Year.” Listeners barely had a moment to catch their breath from all the curveballs by track 18, when Ice introduces his "Black hardcore band" Body Count and proceeds to out-thrash his contemporaries with a hard blast of punk and metal. As a  Musician profile noted, “Ice assembled a crew of four producers — D.J. Aladdin, DJ Su, Bilal Bashir and long-time associate Afrika Islam — and assigned them musical "missions," spurring creative competition in the old Motown tradition. The result is a fresh group of wildly contoured riffs and rhythms, from funk to speed metal to '70s rock, melded together in ways that render their origins unrecognizable while deftly complementing the moods of Ice-T's cinematic narratives.” Witty, catchy, groundbreaking and nearly always prescient (he does predict he'll never win a Grammy and that Nelson Mandela won't get a deserved Nobel Prize, because even someone as visionary as Ice-T didn’t know how ahead of its time this album was), O.G. Original Gangster reimagined gangsta rap as multifaceted music with novelistic lyrics, paving the way for 2-LP epics like All Eyez on Me, Life After Death and Wu-Tang Forever. The skits are funny and the interludes are catchy. Popular music would never be the same.

Bonus: Pimp to Eat (2000)

Two of horrorcore's greatest pioneers, Ice-T and Kool Keith, united for 2000's wild one-off Analog Brothers album Pimp to Eat, playing Ice Oscillator and Kool Korg respectively in a dizzying adventure packed with horror, sci-fi and sex. Our heroes, including Marc Moog (Marc Live,) Silver Synth (Black Silver) and Rex Roland JX3P (longtime Ice associate Pimpin' Rex) reimagine Marvel-style comics as an R-rated action movie, shifting between settings, languages and personas over avant-rap stories like “Analog Technics” and “More Freaks,” set in a futuristic 2005-6 but still sounding visionary in the 2020s. One could be forgiven for missing Pimp to Eat among Ice and Keith's workaholic creative turnout over the past 30+ years, but one would be remiss to skip over this gem of a record, the alternative rap equivalent of a collaboration between Charles Mingus and Sun Ra.

I Think About This a Lot: John Rzeznik in the Replacements Documentary

Gorman Bechard’s 2011 Replacements film, Color Me Obsessed, feels like a fans-only experience. It’s made for someone who cares enough to know where the title comes from (“Color Me Obsessed”, off 1983’s Hootenanny, a record underloved even by Replacements standards), which means a high percentage of the ‘Mats fanbase. If you like the Replacements, the lovable college rock losers famous for their ragtag music, appearance and performances, you’re probably a big enough fan for a two-hour oral history film about them. The band and their music never appear in the movie, but we get accounts from friends, fans and collaborators who've been touched in some way. If you care what people like Chicago's Sound Opinions critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis think about the Replacements, you are going to love this movie.

But it’s not a moment from DeRogatis or Kot, or any of the film’s considerable cast—writers David Carr and Robert Christgau, actors Dave Foley and George Wendt, and producer Steve Albini among them—that I keep going back to. It’s the Goo Goo Dolls' John Rzneznik. The Goo Goo Dolls are one of many bands influenced by the Replacements (Rzeznik even co-wrote a Dolls song, 1993's “We Are the Normal”, with Replacements leader Paul Westerberg). But on the Color Me Obsessed web site they stand out among musician participants—“Hüsker Dü, Babes in Toyland, The Decemberists, The Hold Steady...and Goo Goo Dolls.” The Goo Goo Dolls are the only one of those bands with a platinum record or multiple Grammy nominations, plus the only one likely to get invited to perform at the Macy Day Parade, which the Dolls' Rzeznik and Robby Takac have apparently done three times. I don't know what the kids thought, but people who spent the 1990s in grade school seemed mostly startled by NBC anchors referring to “classic rock group” the Goo Goo Dolls, and/or Rzeznik's face, his heartthrob good looks now hardened by plastic surgery. They're the only band in Color Me Obsessed with a smash worldwide hit, 1998's “Iris” from the City of Angels soundtrack, plus a slew of radio hits, including “Slide”, “Black Balloon” and “Name”, more popular than the biggest songs by the Replacements or any other band in Color Me Obsessed.

But there they are in the movie, Rzeznik, Takac and drummer Mike Malinin, talking the Replacements. “The first time I heard Don’t Tell a Soul, I got a copy of it for my birthday," Rzeznik recalls. "We were sitting in our friend’s apartment...and I opened it up, tore it open, put it in the CD player...and I heard it, and I pushed the eject button, put it back in the case and threw it out the window. And I was like ‘No way! This is not the Replacements.’”

I imagine people who saw this in theaters laughing. Who invited Prom King here? Mr. Don’t Want the World to See Me thinks the Replacements sold out? Did the movie’s filmmakers invite him here to make fun of him? A friend I recounted this too sounded similarly disappointed by John Rzeznik's career moves (“Has he even heard Superstar Car Wash?”). But Rzeznik is serious. He loves the Replacements and felt betrayed by the overproduced, ballad-heavy record that sounded less like Let It Be and more like, well, the Goo Goo Dolls. 

Rzeznik’s moment is a touching realization that artists don’t think of themselves as the bad guy. Rzeznik doesn’t feel like the prom king. He feels like the kind of outsider who’d find solace in the Replacements’ songs about loners and coulda-beens. He's a capital A Artist who writes songs from the heart, just like Paul Westerberg, only Rzeznik’s connect on a much bigger scale. He didn’t write Dizzy Up the Girl to be a corporate rock poser. It’s just the record he was feeling at the time. Paul Westerberg wanted to write hits too, signing with a major label and filming music videos. We might view the Replacements differently if Don’t Tell a Soul was the hit Westerberg hoped it to be. Maybe their scrappy past would be overshadowed by the polished soft rock band behind hits like “Achin’ to Be” and “I’ll be You” (the opposite seems to have happened—2019's Dead Man's Pop box set attempted to rescue Don’t Tell a Soul’s songs from their 1989 gloss). Let It Be or Tim could have been their Superstar Car Wash.

In The Onion's brilliant Sting sendup "You Know, I Used to Be Kind of Cool Once," the author concludes "Then again, Eric Clapton, of 'Tears In Heaven' fame, really used to tear it up, too, come to think of it. Or, hell, just take Paul Westerberg. Now there’s one to ponder." If one of Paul's maudlin solo albums were a big hit, more Replacements fans might view him the way some Police fans view Sting's solo career, or Cream fans view Eric Clapton's. But since the Replacements’ attempts at major success failed, they get to be scrappy underdogs with devoted fans who line up to be in a movie like Color Me Obsessed. Maybe if “Iris” tanked we'd be watching a Goo Goo Dolls movie and laughing at an appearance from Train.

Howie Klein

Howie Klein, president of 415 Records, with heavy-metal group Rude Girl in San Francisco, Calif., 1984 (Iris Schneider, Los Angeles Times - https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz0002sf7c)

Sad to see that Howie Klein, a political and music industry hero as well as one of the best storytellers I've known, has died. He relentlessly fought for important causes and used his stature to help artists and marginalized people. Great punk rock sense of humor, too. 

I was surprised to hear Jello Biafra tell me how much he loved Howie, and that I needed to talk to him. Not that I didn't have utmost respect for Howie—it's just that he was in the upper ranks of the corporate music industry, against so much of what Jello stands for. Of course, within minutes of speaking with Howie I could tell they were kindred spirits. Howie had a mischievous, anarchic streak that was constantly superseded authority and sticking it to the man, long after so many of the music forms he championed had become mainstream. From his concert bookings at a Stony Brook University student (the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Otis Redding, the Who, many others) through his interviews as a San Francisco DJ (the Cramps, Devo, Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, many others) through his stints at 415, Sire, and Reprise Records (the Cure, Green Day, Fleetwood Mac, Ice-T,  Madonna, Alanis Morissette, the Pretenders, Ramones, Lou Reed, Romeo Void, the Smiths, Neil Young, many others), he's almost certainly worked with some music you love, likely something you'd never have heard without Howie's efforts and influence.

He signed Body Count out of a love for their music and the musicians, and staunchly defended them against pressure from America's government and police forces when the "Cop Killer" scandal broke. He spoke with me about flying out to New York solo to defend "Cop Killer" from corporate (when asked if he had a suit for the journey, his response was that he'd gotten one for his bar mitzvah), and revealed that the Time Warner bomb threats were being delivered by angry policemen. But my favorite Howie story is when the Body Count record went gold he had plaques printed for Dan Quayle and Charlton Heston. He was a critical help with my book, sharing stories he hadn't told before, and still made time to talk to me about getting Lou Reed to meet Vaclav Havel at the White House. Today I learned his buyout resignation amidst the disastrous Time Warner-AOL merger occurred a day before his successor infamously rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Howie continued to fight for free speech, artists' rights and progressive causes long after the banning of "Cop Killer," even from his deathbed. I wish he'd written a book, though he certainly cared more about improving the world than promoting his brand. I cherish our conversations and will miss him. Thank you, Howie. 

Cashing In

For years I disliked hip-hop. Of course I liked Run-DMC and Public Enemy, both of whom I’d discovered through their rock songs, and both of whom were too cool (read: old) to appear on MTV with all the most popular rappers. But I didn’t like the genre; the commercial, capitalist, materialist, millionaire hip-hop that dominated the pop charts throughout my middle school and high school years. The fakeness of it all repulsed me.

In fifth grade, I bought Green Day's Dookie with all my saved allowance money. It was funny, catchy, bratty, and affecting—the first music I loved that I didn’t get from my parents. I had never seen or heard anything cooler than alternative rock, and I jumped at any chance to find it wherever I could. In the nascent internet era, I couldn't see what the bands I loved looked and acted like unless I ended up at a friend's house with unregulated access to MTV, or if someone dropped me off somewhere with a comprehensive magazine rack. It didn't bother me in the least that Green Day left the independent Lookout Records for the major label Reprise, or that Offspring had jumped from Epitaph to Columbia Records. I loved Metallica’s cult favorite Kill ‘Em All as much as their Diamond-selling hit Black Album, and didn’t understand why some people who liked the former detested the latter. Why would Metallica’s success bother me? Didn't we want the bands we liked to be popular?

In ninth grade I started to understand “selling out.” It was around the time I met my first girlfriend, who loved Rent and the show’s anti-sellout theme about as much as I loved Metallica. She brought up selling out nearly every time we spoke—I wasn’t sure why she thought Francis Ford Coppola was a sellout for putting forth the idea for another Godfather movie, but she felt strongly about it. She also seemed smarter and more mature than me, as did the kids at my new high school who had moved on from Green Day to the Dead Kennedys long before I met them. People who knew the music that was on the radio and chose to listen to something different had me in awe. At some point, I didn’t want to listen to artists who had sold out. I didn’t stop loving Green Day, but I’d much rather be seen wearing a Dead Kennedys shirt.

If you were a 90s kid, especially a fan of punk rock, there was little worse that you could be than a sellout. If a band made money from anything that wasn’t music or shirts, their integrity was in question. The music industry was at its commercial peak, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate growing bigger each year, which all of us patronized but none of us liked. Our artistic heroes looked, dressed, and acted like our idea of slackers. “The nineties were not an age for the aspirant. The worst thing you could be was a sellout,” wrote Chuck Klosterman in his book about the decade. “Selling out meant you needed to be popular, and any explicit desire for approval was enough to prove you were terrible…It meant someone was compromising the values they originally espoused in exchange for something superficial (which was usually money, but not necessarily).” 

My father, a lawyer who constantly pushed me to defend my beliefs, would poke holes in my arguments. “You’re pretty tough on Moby,” he said when I complained that the musician had sold his songs to commercials. “David Bowie’s in commercials now. Is he a sellout?”

“David Bowie was already famous. He didn’t do it to make himself rich and popular,” I protested. I still cringed whenever I heard “Changes”  in that software ad with all the fishbowls. 

Keeping up with who did or did not sell out was exhausting, and standards weren’t easy to maintain. Slipknot had gotten too popular, but maybe if their next record would be too heavy for their mainstream fanbase I could like them again. Lou Reed was in a Honda Scooter commercial, but that was because he didn’t care about alienating his fans, not because he sold out. Rage Against the Machine preached Marxism from a Sony-owned record label, but they had only signed with the corporation to spread their message, right? If Ozzy sold out with a TV show we could still like his music, right? Was any of this hypocritical?

As much as I didn’t like sellouts, I could do some mental gymnastics to keep liking my favorite artists. I started to make more exceptions for hip-hop when I found Cypress Hill and Snoop Dogg, for no reason other than I liked their records too much to cut their music out of my life. Not to mention my hardcore favorites Body Count led me to the rap career of their quick-witted frontman, Ice-T. “The feeling in the ‘hood is, if you leave you’re selling out. I would like to know who invented that idea,” Ice told Musician magazine in 1991. “I don’t think it was nobody Black.”

“I think of what it is to grow up poor in one of your city's worst neighborhoods and dream of money. To grow up with an eye toward gold while young Black men who look like you and come from a neighborhood like the one you come from in a city just a highway away are covered in gold from rapping,” I read years later in Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Unless They Kill Us. “There is generosity in one who goes out of their way to look fly and raise the bar of the room they're in…As someone who grew up with no money, I know what it is to want to show someone, anyone who will look, what little you have earned. Whether it's drinks, or jewelry or some combination of both. Whether it's donating to a school or throwing a fistful of dollar bills to the sky. I believe all of these things to be noble acts."

Letting myself love hip-hop started opening a scary and fun world to me, with a refreshing difference from the one I lived in. But still, I didn’t want to listen to music by people that sold out. My favorite artist was GG Allin, the punkest of all punks, too raw and edgy for anything to come close to commercializing him. I loved GG’s music enough to separate it from the fact that he was an unrepentant misogynist, racist, and serial abuser. At least no one was calling him a sellout. Besides, punk was clearly ethical enough that we could afford to make room for guys like him. Us punk rock feminists liked Liz Phair, until she made a pop album with Avril Lavigne's co-writers. We liked Kathleen Hanna, too, unaware that more in-the-know punk circles were already calling her out for being a hypocrite who worked in a strip club during the day and sang Bikini Kill songs at night. Watching the controversy unravel years later in the Hanna documentary The Punk Singer, I’m awed by her perseverance and a little ashamed to think of how I’d have reacted in the 90s.

In Hanna’s memoir Rebel Girl, she recalls being asked to justify her position as a professional stripper and outspoken feminist artist. “The DC scene did not think my working as a dancer was a good look,” writes Hanna. “I wasn’t stripping as a statement, I just didn’t have a trust fund like so many DC punks did. And thanks to the Royal Palace, I’d already made the $1,000 we needed to get the van and start playing shows again.” She was consistently expected to prove her authenticity, over everything from stripping to writing dance hooks for Le Tigre to falling in love with and marrying a Beastie Boy. I’m guessing none of Hanna’s purist detractors have written anything as transcendent as “Rebel Girl.”

Not long ago, I met up with some friends at Tattoo Bar for pregame drinks before we headed next door to Kings Theatre for the Bikini Kill reunion. The bartenders knew their audience and played 90s alternative rock while we waited. When the playlist landed on No Doubt's "Just a Girl," a forty-something riot grrrl at our table looked up from her drink upon hearing the first notes.

"When this came out, to me, No Doubt was the enemy," she said. "It was fake punk, it was fake riot grrrl, I hated it. And now this is my karaoke song," she smiled. "I even get teary-eyed when I hear 'Don't Speak.'”

I also catch myself enjoying music that I wouldn’t have let myself like in high school, so much that I’ve started losing track of my teenage standards. I heard a popular song where a woman seethed at her ex who preferred “some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.” She sounded hurt. I didn’t know that was the kind of thing that could make a popular person feel hurt. I also really loved the song. GG Allin would’ve been appalled.

More recently, Ice-T has been appearing in an ad campaign for Honey Nut Cheerios. I’ve watched the commercials numerous times, laughing and sharing them with my friends who’d appreciate seeing the author of “Cop Killer,” “KKK Bitch,” and “Evil Dick” showing off his dance moves with a cartoon bumble bee. I might have been irked by those ads 25 years ago, horrified by the thought that Ice compromised his integrity by acting silly, and worried that nobody would take him seriously again. But Ice doesn’t care, and neither do I, listening to his music with the same reverence I’ve felt for most of my life. It’s hard for me to imagine younger listeners, most of whom have never bought a CD, caring either. Watching a hot newer punk band like Turnstile sell a song to Taco Bell with no discernible backlash, I’m thankful their fans aren’t wasting a month arguing over it like my high school buddies might have.

In college I met Pan Asian Repertory Theatre co-founder Ernest Abuba, whose acting career had included on-screen roles with Bruce Willis and Laurence Fishburne. While he regaled me with stories, I learned that he had turned down a role in 90s sci-fi hit The Fifth Element. “I had the part,” Ernest told me. “I was working on the scene with Bruce, when Luc Besson, the director, came over and said”—Ernest drew out an exaggerated French impression—“‘Uh, can you do this scene again, and this time do a funny Chinese accent.’”

Ernest laughed. “I said ‘Fuck you, racist!’ and I left,” he stated, punctuating the story with another laugh. Still a little shocked, I laughed too.

"But you know what," said Ernest. "If I were starving, I would have taken it."

I’ve never worried about starving in my life. It feels like I've worried about almost everything else that’s ever crossed my mind. But never starving.

Ace Frehley

Ace seemed like one of us. Kiss were superheroes, obviously, who could fly, breathe fire, spit blood and send smoke from their instruments upon command. Space Ace was right up there with them, shaking his axe in unison with his bandmates, riffs punctuated by arena-shaking explosives. But when the make came off and we started to see the men behind the Starchild, the Demon, the Spaceman and the Catman, Ace above all seemed like a regular guy, a laid back stoner who basically stumbled into company with his ambitious band dictators Paul and Gene. Nothing could stop those two guys from being rich and famous, and they've made it clear that money, power and (to use a nicer term than Gene's) women were their priorities. But even at the top, Ace seemed like he got there just because he was a nice guy who loved to rock. He could sing about as well as his fans, and that was perfect for "Rocket Ride," "Shock Me" and of course "New York Groove."

It's easy to see why Kiss fans, famously some of the most devoted and obsessive in modern music, almost universally prefer the Frehley lineup. He was there for the classics, and his contributions—that life-affirming guitar work on "Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll," the haunting breakdown in "Strange Ways," the skyscraping leads on "Shout It Out Loud"—are as entrenched in Kiss' DNA as anything the band ever recorded. It's no surprise that adolescents who listen to Kiss grew up to be Dimebag Darrell, Ihsahn, Tom Morello, Mike McCready and more than any published remembrances will contain. Young Kirk Hammett dressed as Ace for Halloween and Jason Newsted changed his musical direction upon hearing Dressed to Kill. Two members of Body Count (D-Roc the Executioner and "Ill Will" Dorsey) have cited Kiss as the reason they make music. Out of all Local H's storied Halloween shows, Scott Lucas cites their Kiss performance as a personal favorite.

Ace was not above embarrassing rock star indulgences or abhorrent political preferences, and much as we wish he'd stayed in Kiss, his habit seemed like more than his taskmaster bosses could bare. But I'd bet the most expensive piece of Kiss merchandise (maybe the Koffin? No, the Gene Simmons box set that he personally delivered to your house) that if polled, the Kiss Army would overwhelmingly pick Ace as the one we'd most like to hang with. He seemed like a genuine Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth type who was thrilled to be there, sometimes at the behest of this teetotaler bandmates (mention Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show among the Kiss Army and we'll all know exactly what you're talking about). But even Gene and Paul were willing to tolerate an inordinate amount of Ace tomfoolery in exchange for the joyous, unmistakable solos Ace put on record, a perfect dose of cheerful sloppiness for an otherwise Apollonian band.

Kiss' decision to release four solo albums from each member on the same day is widely viewed as an indulgent decision that helped tank the band's popularity. But like George Harrison releasing the best solo Beatles album, Ace stepped up from behind the confines of his bandleaders, proving that he had more good ideas than Gene and Paul knew what to do with, or had the sense to include on Kiss albums. "Rip It Up," "Snow Blind" and the underrated instrumental "Fractured Mirror" are worthy of classic-era Kiss, and his improvement of Hello's "New York Groove" has gone from being a Kiss Army favorite to a city anthem closing in on the ubiquity of Sinatra's "New York, New York." It now feels as beloved outside the Church of Kisstianity as "Rock and Roll All Nite" or "Detroit Rock City." It's covered by everyone from Yo La Tengo to the Roots. It's played over the PA at Citi Field Mets victories and soundtracks COVID-19 recovery campaigns. It's no surprise that Kiss now include in on their compilation albums, claiming it as one of the band's own.

Not long ago, I saw a mother out with her young daughter, a little girl in full Kiss make up. When I expressed my delight, the mother told me they were on their way home from a Kiss-themed birthday party, where all the kids got their faces painted and won Kiss goody bags. It reminded me that Kiss fandom is like Star Wars fandom, or Batman fandom—we read books about it, we dress like them for Halloween, we play along with their various ups and downs. Kiss are often criticized for being more of a business than a band (fair—part of that business is quality control, which Kiss delivers live and on record in droves), but Ace was an undeniable fan. No one could question his love of music or performing. Through much of this year, he was still playing Kiss songs as well as his body would let him, basing his setlist on fan favorites, happy to be anywhere he could play guitar. Thank you Space Ace, forever in a New York Groove.