KISS meets the Painter
Back in 2008 I had been growing tired of Newfoundland themes and had to find a few new subjects to paint for at least a painting or two.
A 24 X 24 canvas I had laying around gave me an idea, why not paint an album cover of some sort?
The hard part was picking out a design I liked, Rush is by far my favorite band but not one of their covers made for an easy painting. I needed something that was somewhat easy to do but more importantly fun.
KISS released Rock and Roll Over in November of 1976 and I was 8 years old at the time. I remember as a kid growing up in Cowan Heights dressing up as Gene Simmon's Demon character for halloween for several years.
With 3 other friends we would end up dressing as the whole band and hit the neighbourhood with a vengence.
That's where my like for KISS ended.
Fast forward to the summer of 2011. I wake up to the radio station announcing the line up for the summers concert series for the annual Salmon Festival in Grand Falls. KISS was the headliner!
My wheels immediately started turning.... How am I going to get my painting signed by the band?
From that moment, I was on a mission! I first started my contacting everyone that I knew in media, our ad rep at the newspaper, all the radio stations we advertised with all to no avail. A friend of a friend was even the mayor of Grand Falls at the time, still nothing.
Finally, I pitched the idea to my friends on Facebook and one came back mentioning that on the bands website was "meet and greet" packages for sale. Only problem they were $750 each!!!
At this point I was dejected. I had exhausted all my resources and the only route was to cough up $750 plus the price of the ticket to the show. That wasn't going to fly.
I mulled it over for a few days and figured that if I printed and sold enough reproductions of the painting I could pay for the
"meet and greet". As you can imagine, that's exactly what I did.
The day of the show brought with it a long process of waiting, i.d checks, wristbands and more waiting before going backstage to a small tent for the eventual photo and autograph session with the band.
To be absolutely honest, I was an odd man out. Besides myself, there were 11 other rabid fans who lost their absolute minds when the boys came in the tent. It was crazy.
We first did the photo session then the band made their rounds to sign any item you might have. The boys all seemed nice with high fives and "Are you ready to rock tonight??"speak.
Gene was the only one to really chat, he asked "Did you paint this?" I said I did and the continued "I like it, it's nice" and that was it.
I have to add a few things about the whole experience.... The concert was fantastic, the band really puts on quite a show. I saw them again when they played in St. John's in 2013 and it was worth the price of admission. Even if they weren't your favourite band you certainly walked away entertained.
Also, as I am sure most know, they are business men through and through. $750 each, times 12 for 20 minutes. Easy money.
That's my story of how KISS met the Painter.
