Rock 'n Roll All Nite

Ok, so you've had the brilliant notion that you're gonna cover a song by cartoon rock monsters, Kiss. And not just any Kiss song. You're covering THE Kiss song; the Kiss anthem of all anthems, "Rock & Roll All Nite". What are you gonna do? More importantly, how are you gonna do it? (Why is another thing, but..)

This much we know. You CAN NOT do this song any bigger or better than Kiss did it, so don't try. It's a long way to fall. Doing a completely straight cover that simply mimics the original Kiss recording without trying to out-big them is simply pointless. The only thing you can do is what any decent musician would do (besides run away) and that is to completely deconstruct the song, so it doesn't sound like Kiss at all. And what better place to do that than on a band-authorized, label-commissioned Kiss tribute album?

The regrettably titled album, "Kiss My Ass" was released in June of 1994. It contains mostly pedestrian versions of Kiss tunes by performers of the day such as Lenny Kravitz, Anthrax, Gin Blossoms, Extreme and even country music cottage industry, Garth Brooks, who turns in a fetid take of "Hard Luck Woman". If they'd gotten Rod Stewart, for whom the song was originally written, then that might have been more interesting. But no.

And then, there's Toad The Wet Sprocket.

Yes, Toad The Wet Sprocket, who took their name from a Monty Python comedy sketch called "Rock Notes", in which a journalist delivers a nonsensical music news report. (More on this later.) The men from Toad do a fine job of reinventing this arena rock pounder into a waltzy acoustic number that invites, rather than demands, a singalong during the chorus. Nice job, fellas.

Ok, just for a refresher, here's the original 1975 studio cut of  "Rock 'n Roll All Nite" from Kiss.

Now, check out this sublime cover version by Toad The Wet Sprocket. 

At the time, I had a strong feeling that Toad was one of those bands that would one day release a most excellent best-of or greatest hits CD. I was not wrong. Get all that and more Toad as well at Amazon. 

And if you just gotta have more Kiss albums, they're at Amazon too. Cheap.

Before I forget, Eric Idle, the performer of the Python sketch, reflected on the band's name in an interview: "I once wrote a sketch about rock musicians and I was trying to think of a name that would be so silly that nobody would ever use it, or dream it could ever be used. So I wrote the words "Toad the Wet Sprocket". And a few years later, I was driving along the freeway in L.A., and a song came on the radio, and the DJ said, "...that was by Toad the Wet Sprocket", and I nearly drove off the freeway!"

Which proves that you can name a band just about anything at all.