"It" ain't great horror, but it's still a good movie

“It” ain’t scary – at least, it didn’t scare me. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad movie. Funny thing about this one: It worked better as a drama than it did as a horror movie.

Full disclosure: I think it’s pretty hard to do good horror. Most movies I’ve seen in this genre end up drowning in clichés, cheap gotcha scenes/jump scares and an excess of blood. “It” had all of these things at various points, and it was then that it lost my interest.

On the other hand, it held my attention when it focused on the drama behind the horror – how the kids of the town reacted to it emotionally, how they bonded and how it helped reveal and forge their character.

“It” works best as an allegory. The central message, as I saw it, was inspiring: A group of supposed misfits may be better equipped than two-dimensional heroes to do battle with great evil, because they’ve already experienced great evil/adversity. Of course, this theme is nothing new; it’s been explored in everything from the X-Men to the Rocky series. But it’s done very well here.

Stephen King

The main characters are outcasts, reviled and bullied by peers and mistreated/abused by their parents. Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) is the overweight kid who tries to hide the fact he listens to New Kids on the Block; at one point, he’s physically – and brutally – attacked by the town bully. Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) talks with a stutter and feels responsible for the death of his brother. Beverly (Sophia Lillis) has been abused by her father and unfairly branded as “loose” by the mean girls on campus; she finds refuge hanging out with Ben, Bill and their friends.

The true horror in this film is provided by the bullies, Beverly’s father and some of the other adults, all of whom are pretty two-dimensional but work well as a means of developing the younger characters. This is where the film really succeeds. You get to know Bill, Beverly, Ben and their friends, and you get to feel some of what they feel. Few films manage this, and “It” deserves major props for pulling it off.

Bill Skarsgård does a good job of acting psychotic as the villain, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but the film never truly belongs to him. Instead of the villain stealing the show from the hero, as Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson did as The Joker in “Batman” films, the heroes steal “It” from the villain. This is not a knock on Skarsgård, but rather recognition of how well the young characters were written and acted.

(I don’t generally find clowns scary, funny or interesting in general, so that element of the film didn’t connect with me.)

“It” is best at the beginning and the end, when it first develops the young characters and, later, reveals their inner strength. Each of the young actors (particularly Lillis and Taylor) does a great job. Finn Wolfhard provides some fun comic relief as Richie, and Chosen Jacobs is effective as Mike. The middle of the film, however, degenerates into a series of gotcha scenes, a supernatural bloodbath and a haunted house excursion that could have been plucked from pretty much any standard horror movie template. Yawn. There are only so many times the monster can jump out “unexpectedly” from behind the curtain before you start, well, expecting it. At such times, I found myself saying, “Get on with it, already.”

Fortunately, the movie does, and it picks up well from there.

I haven’t read the Stephen King novel on which this was based or seen the 1990 TV production with Tim Curry, so I’m reviewing this film solely on its own merits. Coming in cold, I interpreted the villain allegorically, as a personification of the townspeople’s fear, which I thought made the film even stronger; I was a little disappointed to find out that the clown is, apparently, a real being, but the film still works well based on first-rate acting and, overall, good writing.

While there’s clearly a sequel in the works, "It" stands up well on its own. (One loose end: We find out the monster appears every 27 years, but the film never explains why.)

Although I thought it didn’t really work as a horror flick, “It” more than succeeded as an examination of the human condition … which is a heck of a lot more interesting to me, anyway. I’d give it a B overall, and say it’s definitely worth seeing. Acting: A. Story: B-plus. Horror: D-plus.

The 30 worst songs in the modern history of popular music

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

“If you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all.” That’s generally good advice, but I’m about to violate it. I consider it my duty as a music lover to provide fair warning about a handful of songs I think are so bad they should never have been committed to vinyl, compact disc or any other auditory medium. Some ear worms, to be blunt, just aren’t ear-worthy.

All of the songs on this list made the charts (many of them went to number one), so chances are I’ll be offending some folks with my picks. Just remember not to take any of this personally: It’s all a matter of taste. And if radio DJs can come up with their top 30s (or 40s), I can pick my bottom 30.

So here they are, the members of Stephen’s auditory Hall of Shame, starting off with a little number that earned a Grammy for Sweet Baby James.

30

Handy Man by James Taylor (No. 4 in 1977)

I like James Taylor. I really do. I’ve even seen him in concert. It helps a little that he didn’t actually write this song, which repeats the nonsensical comma-comma-comma line far too many times. Couldn’t he have just finished this song off with a period and spared us to the egotistical prattle about fixing broken hearts? I’ll use Liquid Plumr instead.

29

Wonderwall by Oasis (No. 8 in 1995)

Oasis was lauded as the heir to the Beatles in the UK., but it was their only top 40 single in the U.S. But just what the hell is a Wonderwall, anyway? The song never explains it.  Maybe it has something to do with the 1968 film of that name, for which George Harrison composed his first solo album, “Wonderwall Music.” But if you’re looking for an explanation in that musical collection, you won’t find one: It’s all instrumental … at which point you’ve probably stopped caring what it means anyway.

The Captain & Tennille, 1976

28

Muskrat Love by Captain & Tenille (No. 4 in 1976)

This is the song that gave the jitterbug a bad name. (You couldn't possibly do the jitterbug to music like this, anyway.) If Love Will Keep Us Together hadn’t dominated the charts a year earlier, Muskrat Love wouldn’t have made a dent, except maybe on Sesame Street, where it belonged. It would have made the perfect B-side to Rubber Duckie.

27

The Freshmen by the Verve Pipe (No. 5 in 1997)

The forced angst of the only hit by this Michigan band is bad enough without it being driven into your head like an ice pick by the oft-repeated, impossible-to-dislodge line “We were merely freshmen.”

26

American Pie by Madonna (No. 29 in 2000)

This was a great song when Don McLean did it. Madonna synthesized, sterilized and lobotomized it by leaving out most of the verses. It should have been retitled American Stale Slice. And it’s not even the worst Madonna song on this list.

Dan Wilson of Semisonic

25

Closing Time by Semisonic (No. 11 in 1998)

The opening line, which is also the title, is even more annoying than “We were merely freshmen.” A little math will demonstrate why this song is so annoying: It has, in all, 32 lines, nine of which merely repeat the title and 12 of which are either “I know who I want to take me home” or “Take me home.” That leaves just 11 lines that say anything else at all ... and even these don't say very much. This vapid piece of drivel makes Eddie Money’s Take Me Home Tonight sound positively inspired.

24

Every Morning by Sugar Ray (No. 3 in 1999)

This song starts out with the singer talking about using the “halo” hanging from the corner of his girlfriend’s bed for his own one-night stand. If that’s not disgusting enough for you, the melody will push you over the edge. There's nothing angelic about this one at all. It’s pure hell … but it’s still not as bad as another song by the same band, which managed to crack the top five.

23

Mr. Roboto by Styx (No. 3 in 1983)

This piece of wannabe rock operatic fluff from the album Kilroy Was Here is an affront to everyone from Robbie to R2D2. No wonder guitarist-vocalist Tommy Shaw quit the band after the release of the Kilroy. The seemingly endless repetition of the Japanese phrase “domo arigato” probably pushed him past the brink, thank you very much.

22

Like a Virgin by Madonna (No. 1 in 1984)

There’s got to be some reason an artist named Madonna would record a song with this title, but I don’t really care. Weird Al Yankovic’s parody “Like a Surgeon” is infinitely more fun – and it’s his lyric that comes to mind whenever the music to this tune invades my ears. Madonna's original requires a hefty dose of general anesthesia.

21

Michael Jackson

Bad by Michael Jackson (No. 1 in 1987)

About the best thing to be said about this song is that it more than lives up to its name. Atrocious would have been more appropriate, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue. 

20

 Playground in My Mind by Clint Holmes (No. 2 in 1973)

Maybe your name is Michael, and perhaps you have a nickel. Maybe it's even shiny and new. But whatever its condition, have pity on yourself and do not use it to buy a copy of this song. In compiling this list, I chose this over the terminally maudlin “Seasons In the Sun,” which came out around the same time. That should tell you something.

19

The Pina Colada Song by Rupert Holmes (No. 1 in 1979)

Rupert Holmes is no relation to Clint Holmes, but he put out a similarly bad piece of music that became the last No. 1 song of the ’70s. Its actual title is “Escape,” which is what you’ll want to do if they start playing this on the radio. It’s an affront to the Journey album of the same name, which includes the endlessly overplayed “Don’t Stop Believin’” – a song that, nonetheless, would be a welcome relief after hearing this one.

The Bee Gees, 1977

18

Fanny (Be Tender With My Love) by the Bee Gees (No. 12 in 1975)

This gets my vote as the Bee Gees’ worst song of their disco period ... and it isn't even disco. Think about that for a moment. In the opinion of this author, whose teenage motto was "death to disco," this song is actually worse than Night Fever, The Hustle and Hot Stuff. (But not as bad as Ring My Bell, which appears later on this list.) Believe it or not, the Bee Gees were far better in their first incarnation, when they were turning out sappy syrup like Words and I Started a Joke. Everything after that was just jive talkin'. Moral of the story: Be tender with your ears and avoid this one.

17

You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone (No. 1 in 1977)

This was written as a love song. The singer, however, considered it a devotional song to God. I suppose a pyromaniac would find yet another interpretation, and if someone had set fire to the sheet music for this saccharine serenade and used it as kindling on a cold winter night, the world might have been a brighter place. 

16

We Are the World by USA for Africa (No. 1 in 1985)

How do you guarantee a No. 1 chart position for a tune? Assemble dozens of best-selling musical artists and dedicate the money earned from sales of said tune to a high-profile charity. You don’t even have to write a decent piece of music. Here’s proof.

15

Lovin’ You by Minnie Ripperton (No. 1 in 1974)

I wasn’t a morning person when this came out, so the gimmick of having songbirds chirping incessantly for 3-plus minutes did not endear me to Ms. Ripperton’s biggest hit. Neither did the la-la-la-la-la refrain that made her sound like a drunk hippie. These days, I have to wake up early, but I still don’t like this tune. Call me silly, but I prefer my songbirds in trees, not on vinyl.

Paul and Linda McCartney in 1976

14

Let ’Em In by Wings (No. 3 in 1976)

Paul McCartney is perhaps the pre-eminent example of a musical genius who also has an incredible knack for writing crappy music. Let ’Em In is Exhibit A. The song consists entirely of a narrator telling someone to let various people in at the front door. The effect is only slightly less grating than Mrs. Wolowitz yelling, “Howard! Get the door!” on The Big Bang Theory. Think of this half-baked musical concoction as John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, minus the message.

13

Love Shack by B-52s (No. 3 in 1989)

This was supposed to be a fun party song, which I suppose is why everybody still wants to sing it during karaoke night at the bar nearly 30 years later. Trust me, it gets old real fast: That tin roof rusted a long time ago. (And please, no questions about why I spent so much time hanging out in karaoke bars. That’s beside the point.)

12

Cherry Pie by Warrant (No. 10 in 1990)

This song may have single-handedly killed the hair metal era, for which many people are probably grateful. But it still deserves a place on this list, if only for the ridiculous lyric “swingin’ in the living room, swingin’ in the kitchen; most folks don’t ’cause they're too busy bitchin’.” Huh? That almost makes ob-la-di, ob-la-da sound literate.

11

 Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band (No. 1 in 1976)

The song’s music sounds like it belongs in a summer camp singalong. Its lyrics are, well, more than a little suggestive. Those two things simply shouldn’t go together.

10

Having My Baby by Paul Anka (No. 1 in 1974)

The only good thing about this song is that you’ll never hear a deadbeat dad singing it. The only good thing. This song will send you running from the maternity ward to the emergency room ... if it doesn’t render you comatose first. It’s so bad that you have to wonder why it only made No. 10 on this list. Until you see what finished ahead of it, that is. Read on.

9

Mickey by Toni Basil (No. 1 in 1982)

Toni Basil has a reputation as one of the best choreographers around, which explains why this song’s video casts her as a cheerleader. MTV played it in such heavy rotation it was impossible to avoid it – which is precisely what I want to do whenever I hear it. Maybe Basil should have listened to the Bee Gees before recording this. They would have given her some good advice: “You should be dancing.” Not singing.

Phil Collins

8

 Sussudio by Phil Collins (No. 1 in 1985)

It’s unclear whether Sussudio is a woman’s name or a word that she’s supposed to say. Why should she say it? Mr. Collins never bothers to explain. Of course, he's no stranger to nonsensical lyrics. We’re never told, for example, what exactly is “coming in the air tonight” or why we should “hold on.” We ask in vain what “paperlate” might mean. And if “abacab isn’t anywhere” why should we go searching for it? We’re better off just leaving it behind to keep Sussudio company while we go find something worthwhile to occupy our eardrums for a while.

7

Ring My Bell by Anita Ward (No. 1 in 1979)

This song about talking on the telephone was reportedly written for an 11-year-old to sing. It sounds like it. But Anita Ward managed to make it sound sexually suggestive, which would be impressive if it weren't so disturbing. The singer also makes the word "bell" sound as though it's got three syllables, which should count for something. But it doesn't.

6

Spill the Wine by Eric Burdon and War (No. 3 in 1970)

This song is supposedly a sexual allegory, which, when you visualize it, makes you feel like you’re watching a bad porn film. (The song was actually used in the soundtrack to Boogie Nights, a movie about a fictional porn star.) I didn’t know what the lyrics meant until I looked them up ... which made me wish I hadn’t, because I like the song even less now. If there’s one thing I like less than unintelligible lyrics, it’s graphically obscene lyrics. Plus, I like wine.*

Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray

5

Fly by Sugar Ray (No. 1 in 1997)

The lyrics to this one are even more nonsensical than Phil Collins’ stuff. The line “Twenty-five years old, my mother God rest her soul,” seems to have been lifted from the maudlin but at least coherent 1972 hit Alone Again, Naturally. Its inclusion here makes about as much sense as inserting a line from Monster Mash  into The Battle Hymn of the Republic. To make matters worse, the melody is just as irritating as the lyrics. The fact that this band's two biggest hits both made this list is all you need to know. 

4

 Who Let the Dogs Out? by Baha Men (No. 40 in 2000)

I’m a sports fan. My alma mater’s mascot is a bulldog. That alone should tell you why I hate this song so much, but it would still be near the top (bottom) of my list, regardless. The dogs should never have been let out, and this song should never have been released.

3

 Jump Around by House of Pain (No. 3 in 1992)

For some reason, this song became insanely popular at shoot-arounds prior to high school basketball games. It would have been harmless enough had the band not decided to include a sound that can only be compared to horse whinnying in agony after falling down and breaking its leg. Over and over and over again. It’s enough to make your ears bleed. Someone please put this tune out of its misery.

2

Do Ya Think I’m Sexy by Rod Stewart (No. 1 in 1979)

There was a time when Rod Stewart put out some great, or at least near-great music. Every Picture Tells a Story. Stay With Me. I Know I’m Losing You. This was not that time. This was the disco era, and this particular song was Stewart’s supposed attempt to spoof the disco culture. The only problem is that it was too convincing, which made Stewart seem like a preening egomaniac. Come to think of it …

Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, 2011

1

My Humps by Black Eyed Peas (No. 3 in 2005)

Many of the songs on this list became more annoying because I heard them repeatedly on the radio. I seldom heard “My Humps,” which alone is testament to why it’s so earsplittingly godawful. The lyrics are disgusting and the music is, quite possibly, just as bad. I’ve heard it maybe two or three times in my life, which is 100 times too many. Only a deaf camel could like “My Humps,” and being neither a camel nor deaf, I can’t recommend it. In fact, I’d walk a mile to get away from it.

Dishonorable mentions:

Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice and any other song that “samples” original material from a more talented previous artist. In fact, the only reason this didn’t make the list is that the song it sampled was so damned good: Robert Van Winkle (Ice’s real name) “borrowed” from Queen+David Bowie’s Under Pressure. Freddie Mercury. David Bowie. Robert Van Winkle. To revisit the Sesame Street theme raised briefly earlier, “one of these things just doesn’t belong.”

Any duet featuring Paul McCartney in the early 1980s (Say Say Say and The Girl is Mine with Michael Jackson; Ebony and Ivory with Stevie Wonder). I told you McCartney could be bad.

Songs included in movie soundtracks about ocean disasters, specifically The Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion from Titanic in 1997 and The Morning After, Maureen McGovern’s theme song to The Poseidon Adventure in 1973. (Despite the title, it has nothing to do with sex.) Both hit No. 1, and neither is quite bad enough by itself to include on this list. But together, they go to show that a singer’s loose lips really can sink ships.

I Can Help by Billy Swan could easily replace Handy Man on this list. Both are songs about some conceited jerk waxing philosophical about how he’s God’s gift to women. This list just wasn’t big enough for two songs with a sexual messiah complex.

Late addition:

After I compiled this list, a few readers mentioned Wildfire by Michael Martin Murphy, which I'd mercifully forgotten. This song about the ghost of a girl who died searching for her escaped horse (the Wildfire of the song) reached No. 2 in 1975 and was played so often that year that I began to dread the next time it would come on the radio. This is perhaps the best example of why "story songs" shouldn't be played in heavy rotation: Listeners get sick of hearing the same story over and over again ... especially when it's as depressing as this one. See also: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

* No, I’m not going to tell you what it means. Google it.

"Rogue One" is no Force to be reckoned with

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

This time, the Empire has no clothes.

Critics and fans seem to be enjoying the latest Star Wars movie, with 85 percent of critics and 89 percent of fans on Rotten Tomatoes saying they enjoyed it.

I’m not sure what movie most of them are watching, but I’m not sure it was the same one I saw on New Year’s Day. The one I watched featured two-dimensional characters, hackneyed dialogue, a parade of clichés and action scenes that seemed interminable.

It’s almost as if fans were so relieved at how good The Force Awakens was, they were willing to assume Disney would roll out the same level of quality in its second visit to the Star Wars universe.

No such luck.

Rogue One fell flat for me almost from the outset. The backstory for its main protagonist, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), seemed all too familiar: The Empire sends its goons to an isolated outpost to disrupt a family that’s apparently minding its own business. Jyn’s mother, inexplicably, leaves her daughter (who looks like she’s about 6 or 7 years old) out in the middle of nowhere to run back and confront a heavily armed group of men intent on taking her husband away.

Bad idea. It might have made sense if she had some command of the Force, but as it was, all she had was a gun and her misplaced bravado wound up getting her shot and killed – leaving her husband to be carted away and her daughter an orphan without food or shelter. I don’t know whether I’d nominate her for a Darwin Award or cross her off my Mother of the Year list first.

I hoped that the ensuing script would develop Jyn into a complex character I could root for, but that never happened. She seemed to little more than a pale imitation of Rey, the protagonist from The Force Awakens … but without any Force to awaken. In fact, there’s only one light sabre in the entire movie, and the Force seems largely relegated to the sidelines. It appears most often in empty pseudo-religious references, none more annoying than blind martial arts wizard Chirrut Îmwe’s (Donnie Yen) frenetic repetition of the mantra “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”

I found this as annoying as many people found Jar Jar Binks.

The saying could have been employed with some gravitas at high-tension points to show the character focusing his resolve. But instead it seems to have been inserted almost randomly, and at a 78-rpm speed that makes Imwe sound like he’s channeling the Chipmunks. The result is that he seems more distracted than focused.

Beyond that, the Force takes a back seat to machine-gun shootouts and a space battle that seems tedious minus Luke Skywalker’s piloting prowess.

Boredom at breakneck speed

How can a viewer get bored with so much going on?

It can happen, believe me. The movie sets a frenetic pace but winds up taking us almost nowhere not fast enough. It starts out by hopscotching from planet to planet like a manic Bugs Bunny in space – without Marvin the Martian as comic relief. (There’s very little comedy in the movie, which is another of its failings; most of the humor involves throwback references to other Star Wars films.) And it ends with an overly long space battle in which X-wing fighters are really doing little more than providing cover for the really important stuff going on down below.

The writers seem to have been so absorbed with their action sequences that they ran out of time for meaningful character development. Forest Whitaker offers a hint at some complexity as Saw Gerrera, a radical who has broken with the Alliance to fight the Empire as a terrorist. But the conflict between this approach and the more cautious course charted by the Alliance is never explored fully (beyond the decision of Jyn and company to fly off to Scarif against the council’s order’s). Meanwhile, Gerrera himself chooses to stay behind and get crushed by an earthen tidal wave rather than trying to escape. In essence, the character acts against his own survival instincts and passes up the chance to continue a fight to which he has dedicated his life.

It makes zero sense.

For some reason, the writers ate up valuable screen time with a meaningless flashback early in the movie, a “feel-good” cameo by C3PO and R2D2 that had no relevance to the script and several “appearances” by a CGI version of Peter Cushing – who was reanimated (he’s been dead for more than two decades) to reprise a role that could have been left out of the script without being missed. Better yet, the writers could have used Darth Vader in a more central role, given the fact that Vader’s voice – James Earl Jones – is still very much alive and his armor requires zero CGI. But maybe that was the point: The filmmakers wanted to show off their CGI prowess, and if you think whiz-bang special effects are what made the Star Wars franchise interesting, that’s exactly what you’re likely to do.

And yes, the special effects are part of it. The climactic scenes on and above Scarif are dazzling, but the scene – with its palm trees and tropical setting – reminded me of the climactic scene of Men in Black 3, which played out similarly with a tense encounter atop a high tower, and to much better effect. Then again, I challenge anyone to argue that Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones or Josh Brolin wouldn’t have made Rogue One a better movie.

Killing spree

If you’re introducing new actors and new characters, it’s hard to care much about them when they’re getting killed off left and right before we get a chance to really know them. George R.R. Martin may dispatch beloved (and hated) characters with gleeful abandon, but at least he lets us get acquainted before they die. The same can’t be said for the characters in Rogue One, virtually all of whom perish before the carnage is over – even a reprogrammed imperial droid. The scene in which Jyn and nascent love interest Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) die on the beach at the end fails to elicit much pathos because there’s not enough time for their relationship to develop any depth.

Killing everyone off, to be sure, saves the writers from explaining why they don’t appear in the series’ “next” movie, chronologically speaking (the original Star Wars), given the fact that it was released nearly four decades ago.

Maybe CGI could have solved that problem for them, too. Thankfully, they knew better than to monkey around with a classic.

And a classic is one thing Rogue One is not. If you're expecting a film on a par with the original trilogy, this is not the Star Wars you're looking for. No offense to those who enjoyed it, but if The Force Awakens injected a new hope into the franchise, this installment did the opposite. My personal hope is that Disney returns to the Rey-Finn storyline launched in the 2015 film and dispenses with further prequels, which always seem to be more disappointing than the movies in the series that advance the story chronologically.

I’ll go see that movie. Rogue One didn’t kill my enjoyment of Star Wars, even though it tried its best.

Ace Frehley: Finding the Holy Grail in San Miguel

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

I sit on the edge of my parents’ bed, frantically pressing redial on their push-button phone. It’s a very cool piece of new technology in 1978, and I’m sure it will give me an advantage in my quest for the Holy Grail of my teenage years: Tickets to see KISS in concert.

This isn’t just any concert, mind you. It’s at Magic Mountain, the amusement park about half an hour up the freeway (minus traffic) from our San Fernando Valley home, which is where the band is filming its forthcoming TV movie, “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.”

I’m 15 years old and grateful that my parents tolerate, even if they don’t understand, my preoccupation with KISS. I dress up as Peter Criss for Halloween, I (of course) own all their records and some of their releases on 8-track – which I can listen to as much as I want as long as I stay in my room with the door closed to muffle the sound.

My mom kind of likes Beth, so I guess that’s something.

I dial and redial and redial until it seems my fingers will become as calloused as guitar virtuoso Ace Frehley’s, but to no avail. KISS is so popular that even my modern secret-weapon phone is of about as much use in this pursuit as Anthony Zerbe’s warped malevolence is against our heroes in the TV movie.

That movie, for the record, turns out to be bad. Really bad. But neither this inconvenient truth nor my failure to obtain the tickets sours me on my allegiance to KISS, which remains strong enough nearly 20 years later when I finally do get to see the band in concert, on their reunion tour at the tail end of the 1990s.

The Revelation

And it remains strong in 2016 when, on my way from the Central Coast to Fresno for a book signing event (my book “Fresno Growing Up” came out last year), I happen to see a poster in the front window of a convenience store in Paso Robles. On it is the face of founding guitarist Ace Frehley, sans makeup, promoting a concert he’ll be playing March 4 just up the road from where my wife and I now live.

It’s in less than a week.

My wife, Samaire, is even more understanding about my affection for KISS than my parents were. Before she met me, she’d never heard of the KISS Army and wouldn’t have known the Starchild from the Spaceman. But she knew I still had a connection to my childhood idols, so as a gift, she bought us tickets to the KISS-Motley Crue show in Irvine a couple of years back. There, KISS put on a great show minus Frehley and original drummer Peter Criss, who haven’t been in the band for more than a decade, but the band still rocked, even if Crue was a disappointment.

Now, when I mention that poster in the convenience store window, she urges me to get tickets. I put it off, but when she sends me a Facebook message the day before the show, that reads, in all capital letters, “WE CAN DO THIS!” I decide to see whether any are available. They are, so I pick up a pair: $45 each for general admission (no VIP tickets were left) to a place called The Ranch.

The drunk

We arrive at the venue a little before the doors are supposed to open at 7 p.m., then wait around 45 minutes past that as the crew inside tries to resolve some unnamed technical problem.

We finally enter, and find ourselves with a clear path to the front row, front and center, about three feet away from where Ace himself will be standing. I’ve been to dozens of rock shows in my 53 years, but the only time I’d been anywhere near the front was at a Sammy Hagar concert where I sat in the fourth row: close enough for him to splash me with some of his trademark blue tequila.

Speaking of booze, plenty of concertgoers at The Ranch have had their fill and more. What do you expect from a rock concert, right? I indulge a little – but only a little – myself.

But it goes too far when this clearly inebriated, annoying little varmint (about 5-foot-3 with thick-rimmed glasses and a goofy looking hat) keeps trying to muscle his way into the front row between me and another guy. We stand our ground and don’t let him in.

Still, he refuses to go away. Instead, he starts pushing up against my wife, who’s standing just behind me.

I turn and give him a couple of angry looks, hoping my 6-foot-5 frame will scare him off, and when that doesn’t work, I finally shout at him to get the hell away from my wife. He just sticks out his tongue at me in about the palest imitation of Gene Simmons you can imagine. What do I do now? Pop him one and get thrown out of the concert – and maybe in jail? Alert security? Just about then, Samaire – who, at 5-foot-10, is a fairly imposing figure in her own right – grabs him by both shoulders and pushes him forcefully back into the crowd. Security gives the guy some stern words and he disappears.

Good riddance.

The Ranch

A little bit about the venue: The Ranch is a roadhouse-type joint in San Miguel, an unincorporated town of about 2,500 people along U.S. 101 in northern San Luis Obispo County.

It's about as far, figuratively speaking, from Magic Mountain as you can get.

In fact, it’s so far off the concert circuit map that the road crew tapes a piece of paper to the stage that reads “San Miguel TX,” then hurriedly realizes its mistake and crosses out the TX, scrawling in CA underneath.

Even Ace, who points out during the concert that he’ll be playing in Beverly Hills the next day, notes the contrast. And when, at the end of the show, he says goodnight, I can swear I hear him say “San Ramon.”

Not that I can blame him. I wouldn’t have known where San Miguel was, either, if I hadn’t lived in the county and worked as an editor/columnist at the local newspaper for four years.

The Opening Act

Backing up a couple of hours, it does take Frehley and his band a seemingly interminable amount of time to actually get on stage.

The music itself doesn’t start until 8:45 or so, and then it’s the opening act, a local cover band called Soundhouse. The lead singer, an imposing character with a shaved head ala Chris Daughtry or Disturbed’s David Draiman, spent some time reassuring antsy concertgoers outside the bar as they waited for it to open. Samaire and I had both mistakenly assumed he was the bouncer.

The bad news: Soundhouse plays a lengthy set of, if I remember right, nine tunes, further delaying Frehley’s arrival. The good news: They’re a surprisingly kick-ass outfit. The vocalist, Erik McCornack, churns his way through tunes from Ozzy, Guns ’n’ Roses, Bryan Adams, AC/DC and Stone Temple Pilots, among others, as though he’d recorded them himself.

Unlike most concerts, where opening acts tend to range from nuisance to awful, Soundhouse’s set is actually a lot of fun.

The Main Event

Even after Soundhouse concludes its set, the stage stays empty for a good half-hour, and Frehley’s band doesn’t appear until nearly 10 p.m. Some in the crowd joke that he’s fallen asleep or is boozing it up in his tour bus – an unfair accusation considering that Ace, a onetime prolific imbiber, has been sober for quite a few years now.

When Paul Daniel Frehley finally does appear, it’s more than worth the wait. He might be on the verge of turning 65 years old, but he’s in top form throughout the 16-song set, which he performs along what he calls “the best band I’ve ever assembled.”

Not the best band he’s ever been in, of course, but this band lives up to its leader’s billing. It consists of guitarist Richie Scarlet, a member of Ace’s first post-KISS band, Frehley’s Comet; bassist Chris Wyse (The Cult, Owl) and drummer Scot Coogan, who's toured with Lita Ford and Lynch Mob.

Ace doesn’t have a problem sharing the limelight, stepping aside as Wyse performs an impressive bass solo segueing into his lead vocals on “Strange Ways,” an Ace classic off KISS’s second release, “Hotter Than Hell.”

Coogan’s vocal chops are even better. He takes Paul Stanley’s lead on the KISS classics “Love Gun” and “Detroit Rock City,” and nails them to the wall.

The Set

I wonder if Ace is going to allow us to take photos (some artists don’t even allow the media to do so), and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that no one’s objecting when I whip out my cellphone and start clicking away.

Frehley opens his set with “Toys,” off his 2014 studio album, “Space Invader,” and hits a couple of KISS highlights early in the set when he launches into (pun intended) “Rocket Ride” and “Parasite.” He omits a couple of tunes from the set list taped to the stage floor – “2 Young 2 Die” and “Rip It Out” – perhaps because of the lateness of the hour, although he does return to the stage for a two-song encore of “Detroit Rock City” and the Simmons-penned “Deuce.”

Other highlights: The classic KISS debut album cut “Cold Gin,” which has the audience singing along with gusto, and “Rock Soldiers,” in which the audience repeatedly shouts out the lyrics “Ace is back and he told you so” and “He’s going to play without an ACE in his DECK.”

Frehley also debuts the battle anthem“Emerald,” off his forthcoming album of cover tunes, “Origins, Vol. 1.” Originally performed by Thin Lizzy on its “Jailbreak” album, it came out in 1976, the same year KISS released its classic “Destroyer” and “Rock and Roll Over” LPs.

The takeaway

Before Frehley hits the stage, I think back on my vain attempt to secure tickets to that Magic Mountain show back in 1978 and tell Samaire, “If someone had told me then that I’d be in the front row for an Ace Frehley show in San Miguel nearly 40 years later, I would have said they were crazy.”

Why? Because Frehley was still playing? Because KISS had gone on without him? Because he was playing in San-flippin’-Miguel? Because I was there in the front row?

All of the above.

Sometimes, you do, eventually find your teenage Holy Grail; it just takes a few decades to reach it.

Def Leppard releases worthy companion to 'Hysteria'

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

"Do you really, really wanna do this now?" Joe Elliott asks at the outset of Def Leppard's self-titled 2015 release.

My answer? Hell yeah. I've been waiting nearly 30 years for a worthy follow-up to Hysteria, and it sounds to all intents and purposes like this is it. That's not to say that The Leps' other releases between then and now didn't have their share of highlights, but - with the exception of the fantastic cover album Yeah! (2006) - they haven't put all the parts together in a single release since then.

That changed with this fall's eponymous outing, which guitarist Phil Collen has called "probably the most diverse thing we've ever done." Full disclosure Part 1: I don't write many music reviews (this is the first one on this blog). Full disclosure Part 2: I've been a Def Leppard fan since I first heard Rock Brigade on the radio in 1980, and the only published music review I have written was of a DL concert earlier this year.

The Leps didn't play any songs from the new CD at that show, and it had been so long (seven years) since they'd put out an album of all-new material, they caught me napping and sneaked this one by me, releasing it in October when I wasn't paying attention.

This album accomplishes something unique: It manages to be derivative and entirely original at the same time. That might seem like a cut, but it's not. Only a band with this level of expertise and breadth of influences could manage to acknowledge so many of them and still sound fresh 35 years into their recording career. No, this won't rocket to the top of the charts the way Hysteria did back in '86 (pun intended) - musical tastes have changed too much. And I'm not going to go as far as to say it's a match for that classic CD, but it comes a lot closer than anyone had a right to expect.

Bands often go through a three-album "peak" during their careers. The Beatles had an arc of Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Queen had A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races and News of the World. (I mention those particular bands in part because their influence is apparent on this album.) For Def Leppard, it was High 'N' Dry, Pyromania and Hysteria - three releases produced by Mutt Lange.

(Fun exercise: Take a listen to Honey I'm Home by Lange's then-wife, Shania Twain, and tell me it doesn't sound like countrified Def Leppard.)

To climb back close to that level at this stage in their career is quite an accomplishment, and they've done it by paying tribute to both their influences and their own history. The album opener, Let's Go, was obviously written to be a concert opener, as well. With lyrics like "welcome to the carnival, welcome to the party, welcome to the edge of your seat," it of reintroduces the band to its audience in much the same way KISS reintroduced itself with the tune Psycho Circus  17 years ago (has it really been that long?).

Let's Go sounds familiar right out of the blocks. It starts off like the intro to Let's Get Rocked (Adrenalize, 1992), morphs into a riff reminiscent of Pour Some Sugar On Me (Hysteria, 1987) then takes off in a different and thoroughly satisfying vein altogether. The band's fondness for Queen, which has surfaced at various points throughout their career, appears for the first time in this track, the album's first single: I could almost swear that's Brian May on parts of that guitar solo.

The album's second track, Dangerous, is reminiscent of Promises, one of the two best tracks (with Paper Sun) off 1999's Euphoria, spiced with a dose of Hysteria-era styling. It doesn't quite live up to Promises, but it's not a pale imitation, either.

It's the third track, though, that seems the most familiar of any on the album. Try singing the lyrics to Queen's 1980 megahit Another One Bites the Dust along with the music to DL's Man Enough. It doesn't quite work, but it's close, and the fact that both tunes are built around pounding bass lines makes them seem even more similar. In all, Queen's heavy bass-funk era is my least favorite, but even with that said, I found myself enjoying this tune. It works the same way DL's take on Rock On worked on Yeah!

We Belong, the fourth track, is a lighter-raising ballad along the lines of Hysteria that, again, doesn't quite live up to that tune - but not much does. It's also fun to hear different members of the band take turn on vocals, giving Elliott a break. As Phil Collen proved on a dynamite cover of Rod Stewart's Stay With Me (Yeah!), he has the chops to carry off lead vocals.

The next three cuts - Invincible, Sea of Love and Energized - all hold their own. I liked the first of the three out of the gate, and the other two grew on me with repeated listening (this is the first album in years that I've enjoyed enough to keep on continuous iPod repeat for more than a day). Sea of Love particularly has quite a kick, but it offers an inverted song structure: The verses rock hard, while the chorus chills out a bit. This put me off initially, but I got to like it as time went on.

The second half of the album is, if anything, stronger than the first. At 14 tunes, it's actually two songs longer than Hysteria, although its running time is about 8 minutes shorter because the cuts are more compact.

All Time High features a rousing chorus that sounds like something out of the Pyromania/Hysteria era. It's followed by Battle of My Own, which slithers along through the sonic Bayou like a gator on the prowl. One of the album's best cuts, it's also one of six that founding member and bassist Rick Savage had a hand in writing. (Interestingly, that collection doesn't include the bass-heavy Man Enough.) Each of the six is among the album's standouts.

If you can get past the opening lyrics ("I'm not well, I'm mad as hell. Come over here, I'll ring your bell"), Broke and Brokenhearted really rocks, with a mid-section jam that keeps it humming along through a charged-up, fast-paced 3-plus minutes. 

Forever Young is probably the only song on the album that I tend to skip past. I can't tell you exactly why; it just didn't quite work for me.

The last three songs, however, more than make up for any deficiency there. The acoustic strummer Last Dance (a tune Savage wrote solo) sounds like something the Eagles might have left of The Long Run and reminds me a bit of Orleans' Dance With Me. 

Wings of An Angel sounds the closer to High 'N' Dry-era DL than anything else here, and stacks up well against cuts from that classic release. 

But it might be argued (and I will contend) that the band saved the best for last with Blind Faith, which veers from intense acoustics to Beatlesque bridge to bombastic rock near the end. In that sense, purely on structure, it's built like a condensed Bohemian Rhapsody. The Beatlesque interlude sounds like something straight out of Strawberry Fields Forever and is, fittingly, introduced by the phrase "follow you down" - a takeoff on "let me take you down?" Perhaps.

If you think I'm overreaching with the Queen comparisons simply because I count both bands among my all-time top 5, I'll defer to Elliott, who made the comparison himself in an interview: "Every single aspect of anything we've ever wanted to put out - acoustic, heavy, soft, slow, fast - it's there. That's why we call it 'Def Leppard,' because, just like Queen were, we're capable of coming up with vastly different kinds of songs."

Bands routinely talk up their latest releases as the best thing they've ever done, and they're almost always full of hot air. But while Def Leppard-the album may not be Hysteria or Queen's A Day at the Races, it's as close as anyone's come in a long time.

When is a Rock Concert Not a Rock Concert?

About halfway through the concert, I turned to Samaire and remarked, "This is a first. A rock concert where I haven't caught a single whiff of pot smoke." No one was - in the words of Jay from Dogma - "rockin' the ganj."

It doesn't matter who's playing. Queen. Aerosmith. Fleetwood Mac. Van Halen. I've seen them all, and each one of them was accompanied by an entourage pungent smoke drifting through the ether. But on this particular evening, so far, I hadn't "sensed any milla" to speak of.

Lest I leave the gentle reader with the wrong impression, I should point out that I don't smoke the stuff myself. As an asthmatic, I don't fancy emulating a smokestack. Still, it almost seemed like something was missing when none of that distinctive odor wafted my way that evening at The Greek in L.A.

This was a rock concert, wasn't it? 

I looked around. Headbangers in the audience? Check. Laser lighting? Check. Musicians whipping their long hair around more frenetically than those wildly dancing strands of fabric that attack you from the ceiling of an automated car wash? A big 10-4 there, too. But that familiar smell ...?

Wait. I had spoken too soon. No sooner had the main act, Nightwish, taken the stage, than someone, somewhere lit up and reassured me that, yes indeed, I was at a rock show after all. And a good one, too. All three bands - Delain and Sabaton were the other two bands on the bill - put on a show that made paying $4 for a small bottle of water and $20 for parking more than worth it.

We even stuck around after the show and met three members of Delain, an opening act that deserves to be a headliner. I've always been timid about approaching celebrities, figuring they had better things to do than to hear fans gush, "Dude, you guys ROCK! I'm totally your biggest fan!" Then again, if people said that to me, I don't imagine I'd mind it too much.

Bassist Otto Schimmelpenninck was happy to answer questions - seemingly as many as I wanted to ask. He, drummer Ruben Israel and singer Charlotte Wessels all consented to have their pictures taken with me, and Schimmelpenninck even accepted my friend request on Facebook. Very cool people.

I'll admit it: I envy anyone who has a lot of hair and (or?) sings in a rock band, so maybe that made me a little more self-conscious. Besides, I'm an ultra-cool professional journalist. I've actually gotten paid - not a lot, but money's money - to talk to famous and semi-famous people; I therefore have an image to maintain. But so does Gene Simmons, and he wears a wig. I don't. That's got to be worth something, right?

Who am I kidding?

To be honest, I have Samaire to thank for my new willingness to stick around after an event and "meet the famous people" without feeling like some kind of a middle-aged toadie. A while back, she persuaded me to hang out after a play called Allegiance to meet George Takei. Depending on which generation you're from, you'll know him either as the godfather of social media and a champion of gay rights, or as a helmsman for a starship in the 23rd century. Oddly, he was piloting that starship before same-sex marriage was legal in California, which may (or may not) prove that time travel is possible if you're the Enterprising sort. 

The once and futuristic Mr. Sulu talked with us for about five minutes, about everything from Star Trek to then-California Gov. Earl Warren's support of the Japanese Internment during World War II. He, like the members of Delain, was pleasant, gracious and didn't seem the least bit put out by yours truly or any of the several hundred others waiting for an autograph. A class act all the way.

There was one minor difference: I don't remember smelling any pot smoke at Takei's performance. It wasn't a rock concert. But it still rocked.

Pictured: Me (bald guy at right) with Otto Schimmelpenninck (left) and Ruben Israel of Delain.