Friday open thread: musical absurdity

Happy Friday! Today, let’s talk about music. Specifically, a musically absurd thing. I like to think I have pretty good taste in music. I don’t believe there are “right” and “wrong” bands to like, I’m very much in the “like what you like” camp, but I tend to like things that are a little bit outside the mainstream. I’ve never been one for top 40 pop, for instance, and I’ve always leaned towards the punk/local/indie/metal genres more than any other, although as I’ve gotten older, I’ve broadened my horizons a fair bit.

That taste extends to shows - I’m not a big fan of gigantic arena-rock shows, for the most part. Small, sweaty clubs where you pay $15 cash at the door, covered in decades worth of stickers and reeking of stale beer? I’ll do that every night of the week.* There are exceptions, though - there’s always bands you’ll never be able to see in a small venue like that.

So, tomorrow night, I’m going against both my musical taste and my preference for small shows, and the lovely mrs. pdb and I are going to see KISS at the Moda Center.

Why? A couple reasons. Like most suburban white kids, I was a HUGE fan of KISS when I was in grade school and junior high - I’m a bit young to have known them in their prime, but in the 80’s, KISS Alive II was a foundational document in my musical library. That record got me into their old stuff, and it made me realize that the stuff that was out when I was paying attention to KISS (Lick It Up, specifically, but also Music From The Elder, about which the less said the better) would never match up to that.

I never got to see them as a kid - my dad didn’t fall into the “KISS are satanic” school, he just didn’t like them and didn’t want to take me when I was too young to go myself. So the first and only time I saw KISS was as an adult, in 1995, and it was spectacular. The thing about KISS is they don’t surprise you - you know what you’re gonna get, you know when it’s coming, and it’s still a double barreled shotgun blast of awesome right in your ears when it happens.

Second, and this is the main reason - mrs. pdb has never seen KISS, and they have announced this is their last tour. Gene Simmons is a straight-up garbage person, and in a lot of ways, it pained me to give them money, but if it’s their last tour, I need to see it, and mrs. pdb can cross KISS off the “I need to see this band before they stop playing or die” list.

It’s gonna be a really fun show, though, and I’m really looking forward to it in a ridiculous throwback-to-being-in-junior-high-school way.

But enough about me. Do you have anything that you love unabashedly that is completely out of character given the other things you love? What else is going on with your weekend?

*I am an old person now and that lifestyle would probably kill me, but that sentence was 100% true for a whole lot of years of my life