Kiss at 50 by Martin Popoff is an attractive and informative book celebrating this iconic band.

I like the use of fifty separate "career highlights" told in roughly chronological order, it is more like revisiting those days than reading a history of the band (though it is a history of the band). Like Popoff I bought their first album when it was their only album. I don't remember how close to the release date, I wasn't waiting for it, I had heard about them and when I happened to see the album I bought it. That was the beginning of a rocky but ultimately long-lived love of Kiss. I was five years older than Popoff so my memories, especially of those first albums, will be different. But I did catch them live for the first time in 1974, and seven times since.

I mainly mention my fanhood because this is one of those books that is almost exclusively about the band, minimal contextualization with the world around them other than where it impacts their music or career decisions. That isn't a bad thing, but it might make it just a little less appealing for non-Kiss fans. Still solid if you enjoy learning about musical artists but maybe a bit less fun than for those of us who enlisted.

On a slight aside, but still very much Kiss related, this book made me think about how we, as fans, remember those artists we have followed for decades. I remember these moments in the band's trajectory, other than a few little details there wasn't a lot new to me. But as far as what I readily called to mind when I thought about them took a jolt. I had, unintentionally, blocked some of the lowlights from their career, well, lowlights from my personal perspective. Maybe an album or two, maybe some music business nonsense, whatever. The point is it reminded me how we remember our favorites very selectively. Not quite through rose-colored glasses, those less-than-ideal moments were in my memory banks and if I had ever been on a panel discussion of the band, I would have acknowledged them. But when just remembering them as a band I liked I kept the positives at ready recall while hiding the negatives in the back under some old clothes. It was good to remember those times, mainly because it also made me remember how I was then. Sometimes too picky, too judgmental, sometimes just plain out of sync with what they were doing.

I would readily recommend this to anyone with an interest in reading about iconic musical artists, though I would even more highly recommend it for those who are fans and might remember all or most of the events highlighted here. Come for the pictures if you want, but make sure to read about how they travelled this long road.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )