Kiss - novelty act or great hard rock band?

Intruder wrote: Kids didn't rush to the shop to buy Judas Priest cards, nor did kids dress up as Ronnie Montrose for Halloween, and I can'r remember kids applying temporary Iron Maiden tattoos.  Kiss were a marketing gimmick - the Monkees reprised; the Osmonds for the pre-teen crowd; a primer in hard rock for the high school glue sniffers.   Headache music - the gateway drug for future Whitesnake fans.

Kids probably would have bought Judas Priest cards if they were available. The leather and chains look was very appealing. A lot of rock fans, when younger, do follow the dress codes of their favourite bands. Kiss took it a step further and were very successful. Successful marketing doesn’t alter the fact that most of Kiss’ 70s output was fantastic. My gateway into rock music was Pink Floyd, Genesis, Black Sabbath and Rainbow. I still love these bands - even though they were the first bands I really listened to. Why should bands that first hook you be considered inferior?

rushfan4 wrote: Kiss were big here in Detroit.  I think they got their big break here on Detroit radio, and Alive was recorded here in Detroit.  And of course there is Detroit Rock City.  They were a good hard rock band, but a band of their times.  The makeup of course made them gimmicky.  Like AC/DC they were all about the double entendres, but plenty of times they just skipped the illusions all together.

Sex and hard rock go together like strawberries and cream. You might as well call it cock rock (or hard cock). Kiss’ sexual allusions are pretty obvious but so are many of Robert Plant’s lyrics:

Eg.

Squeeze me baby, 'till the juice runs down my leg
Squeeze me baby, 'till the juice runs down my leg
The way you squeeze my lemon, I
I'm gonna fall right out of bed, bed, bed, bed, yeah

What about Judas Priest’s paean to oral sex (for more of a gay angle):

Lunge to the maximum
Spread-eagled to the wall
You're well equipped to take it all
So eat me alive

So sex and hard rock are a perfect fit and Kiss do it as well as anyone else (if not better).