INTERVIEW: Alive! ’75 are more than just another Kiss tribute band

Photo: Anthony De Lucia Jr. portrays the Demon in Alive! ’75. Photo courtesy of Brian Matus / Brian Matus Photography / Provided by press kit with permission.

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Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter. The Demon, the Starchild, the Spaceman and the Catman. If this seemingly random list of words makes no sense, then your life hasn’t been Kiss-ed yet.

Kiss, perhaps the quintessential rock band, have given their fans decades of blazing songs, catchy lyrics and head-thumping beats. Their original lineup — featuring Gene Simmons on bass, Paul Stanley on vocals, Ace Frehley on guitar and Peter Criss on drums — was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and supplied many memories for rock boys and rock girls throughout multiple generations.

Today’s Kiss is a little different than those early days. Simmons and Stanley are still with the band, while Frehley tours solo and Criss enjoys some time off. The band’s supposedly final tour, which continues to play venues around the world, has instigated fans to call for the original lineup to reform, but that dream hasn’t happened just yet.

To relive some of those early memories of the foundational Kiss albums in the 1970s, tribute bands continue to honor the band and their blaring sound. One of the top East Coast tribute bands are Alive! ’75, featuring Joe Gillies as the Catman (Criss), Anthony De Lucia Jr. as the Demon (Simmons), Pasquale “Pat” Porpora as the Spaceman (Frehley) and Marc Fox as the Starchild (Stanley).

Alive! ’75 will bring their Kiss antics to The Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie, New York, Saturday, July 20. They are the headliner, with opening acts Everwar, Dizzy Parker and Never Say Die — The Ultimate Black Sabbath Experience.

Kings of the Night Time World

The tribute band came together a few years ago because the original members had a lifelong love of this influential group and their music.

“I was playing in a rock ‘n’ roll party band with three of the four guys in the band, also Kiss fans,” said De Lucia in a recent phone interview. “We were kind of getting bored of the everyday. I had personally this brainstorm about doing a Kiss tribute, but not just dressing up and playing Kiss songs in makeup, but really making it more experiential and more complete.”

That idea resulted in a one-off concert in November of 2014. De Lucia described that initial gig as two shows brought together into one. The first half was that “experiential” factor in which the band tried to have the audience relive the 1975 era.

“We used all sorts of sensory things,” he said. “We had movie reels, we had poster art galleries, we had live actors working the crowd, we had the smell of marijuana in the audience area of the theater, we had an emcee that did a 20-minute comedy routine on the period. ‘Imagine paying for TV,’ this kind of stuff. We reminded people that Captain & Tennille had the #1 song on the radio. There was all sorts of stuff going on. We wanted to really bring people back to that time period.”

Once the atmosphere was firmly rooted in the mid-1970s, the curtain went up, and Alive! ’75 took the stage for a rocking tribute concert. That night they brought the band’s 1975 Alive! album to life — featuring such songs as “Deuce,” “Strutter,” “Got to Choose,” “Hotter Than Hell” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” — and the response was electric.

“So we did that album cover to cover with all of the effects and visuals,” De Lucia said. “And it was meant to be a one-time fun thing to do. We hadn’t seen any Kiss tributes out there doing anything that complete. We also didn’t want to be out there among a sea of Kiss tributes that basically just play the songs, so we wanted to do something a little different. After we did that, we got a ton of feedback that folks enjoyed it. They really liked it, the whole thing end to end, never seen something like that before. The guys talked about it and decided, all right, we’ll do that some more, so the following year we pretty much took that same show and replicated it in and around the Northeast in a number of different places.”

Rock and Roll Party

De Lucia and company found that audience members were coming back for repeat shows, sometimes driving up to two hours for a gig. That led the band to become more permanent and also expand its repertoire.

“So the name of the group came from that initial project, Alive ’75,” he said. “We’ve kept the name because we got significant recognition, but we then over the next few years took the band through different time periods and continued with the attempt to bring those periods to life.”

He added: “So we started following Kiss’ original trajectory. We went from the Alive! album to actually playing the Alive! era tour sets, so we did the early European tour when they introduced just a couple of the early cuts from Destroyer. Then we played a Destroyer tour. Then we played the Destroyer ’76 tour. Then we started to [change it up] when Rock and Roll Over came along, so folks who were coming to see us two, three, four times over a two-year period were getting a flashback of what it was like back in the day as Kiss was coming on the scene, introducing their new music, changing a little bit what was going on up on stage.”

Throughout their tenure, some of the deeper cuts have included “Love Her All I Can” and “All American Man,” and this keeps the diehards satisfied.

Over the last five years, the band has seen some lineup changes. De Lucia reported that Alive! ’75 have gone through a few Starchilds, but their current “Paul” has been with the band for two-plus years.

“The original Spaceman character from the original shows was with us right through the end of last year, and then we had a mutual parting of the ways between he and the band,” De Lucia said. “We just brought on Pat Porpora, who is a phenomenal Ace. I don’t want to take anything away from the original guy in Alive ’75, but Pat really takes the band to a whole new level.”

Shouting It Out Loud

De Lucia admitted that he chose the Demon character because he has been in love with the music of Simmons ever since he was a 12-year-old.

“I’ve been the Demon since 12 years old,” he said with a laugh. “For me, personally, I started playing bass guitar at 12 years old because of Kiss, because of Gene Simmons. It was my first influence, and I’ve always kind of felt a little bit of that style. I like the performance-oriented delivery. I’m not a big fan of the bass players who are sitting in the corner and thumping away. I want to compete with the lead singer and the lead guitarist for some stage time, and so Gene gives me that opportunity to do all that and more.”

He’s able to bring that dream to life at each gig of Alive! ’75. The band members don the extravagant costumes, apply the face makeup, wear wigs and, depending on the venue, light props on fire.

“Ordinarily it’s 90 minutes for us to get into costume and makeup,” De Lucia said. “We roll with a 6-by-10 elevating drum riser. We do the blood. We also do the smoking guitar, the fire-breathing, the confetti at the end. … Alive! ’75 may be the only Kiss tribute that’s out there regularly breaking a guitar at the end of every show and putting a souvenir in a little kid’s hands, so we try to do all of the elements of the show, even the effects.”

Authenticity is their middle name.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Alive! ’75 will play Saturday, July 20 at The Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie, New York. Click here for more information and tickets.