On 30. January 1973, Kiss played their first ever live show. It was at the Popcorn Club (which later became The Coventry) in Queens, New York. They were paid $50 for performing two sets that evening.
Paul Stanley rents a truck to transport the band’s gear from their loft. Then Kiss plays their first concerts ever. Kiss already had some original material for their set. Most of their songs had been worked on during late-1972, prior to Ace Frehley’s addition. During those first two sets at the Coventry the band performed: “Deuce”, “Watchin’ You”, “Want You Beside Me” (aka “Life In The Woods”), “Baby, Let Me Go” (aka “Let Me Go, Rock ‘N Roll”), “Firehouse”, and “Black Diamond”. This material was augmented with revamped versions of Wicked Lester’s “Love Her All I Can”, “She”, “Simple Type”, and “Keep Me Waiting”.
At the first shows the band had done a certain amount of visual experimentation from the basic plain mime “white” face to the more “street” glam look similar to the New York Dolls. For the first show Paul wore jeans and a sports jacket over his Mom’s glitter shirt; Ace a white turtle-neck and jeans; Peter, a blue shirt and red pants; and Gene brown bell-bottoms and white sailor-suit top (he’d also worn the dreadful outfit at the final Epic showcase in November 1972). Of the four, only Gene would be wearing any substantial amount of makeup, having a coat of white-face with black “splotches” around the eyes looking more like a whore who’d been crying. This was nothing like his later “demonic” design. With a set of originals, and tentative visual presentation, the band was taking baby-steps with elements ripe for refinement.
Dale Sherman:
“The band was able to snag three nights of gigs at a bar called the Popcorn Pub on 47-03 Queens Boulevard, near 47th Street. The band was to play their first gig there on January 30, a Tuesday night, and finish up by Thursday so that the headliners, Salty Dog, could fill up the bar during the weekend. The bar was owned by Betty Smyth who at the time was best known for managing cult rocker Link Wray’s career. She was in the midst of trying to upgrade the business. This included changing the format of the music that was pumped into the place from that of folk music to more modern acts, such as the Magic Tramps; and changing the name of the place to Coventry. She had agreed to try KISS out for their first professional gig, but did not go out of her way to promote it. The February Ist edition of THE VILLAGE VOICE featured an ad boldly stating that the “Popcorn Pub becomes Coventry” and that Salty Dog was to perform “February 2-3-4.” The Harlots of 42nd Street were also listed, and in the smallest type available and in the far corner of the ad appeared the words, “Wed. & Thurs. Jan. 31-Feb. 1 KISS.” Across from the small note of a legend brewing, was a big ad announcing Bruce Springsteen playing “upstairs at Max’s Kansas City,” while two ads below the Coventry ad was one announcing Stan Penridge’s band St. Elmo’s Fire playing at a bar called Folk City.”
– “Black Diamond: The unauthorized biography of Kiss” by Dale Sherman.
David Leaf:
“KISS’s first appearance was scheduled for a place called Popcorn. Gene remembers how “we started handing out these little leaflets. ‘Come see KISS on January 30.’ We also had this picture of us in which we looked like the Sons of the Dolls. One of Peter’s friends blew it up into a big five-foot picture. We wanted to put it in the window at Popcorn, but I said to Ace, ‘We can’t do that. Nobody will know what it is. They’ll think it’s a drag show. Put the name of the group on it and make it look fancy.’ And Ace did it, just created our logo.”
By the time January 30 arrived, Popcorn, located at the northeast corner of Queens Boulevard and 47th Street in Queens, had changed its name to Coventry. “Needless to say,” Gene admits, “there was nobody there.”
– “Kiss: Behind the mask” by David Leaf.
Peter Criss:
“Now it was time to play. At the end of January 1973, we booked ourselves in a little rock club in Queens called Popcorn (the name was later changed to Coventry). Of course we had no following then, so the audience, all four of them, was Lydia, Gene’s girlfriend Jan, her friend, and a friend of Ace’s. But we played our asses off. We played like the place was packed, and afterward I realized that this band was the band. I was so proud of the guys. We were all drenched in sweat, and we had given the performance of our lives for four people.”
– “Makeup To Breakup” by Peter Criss
Ace Frehley:
“By the time we hit the stage for our first performance, at a Queens nightclub called Popcorn, interest in KISS hadn’t exactly built to a thundering crescendo. There might have been more people in the band and crew than in the audience. You try to put experiences like that out of your mind, but it isn’t always easy. My memory suffers sometimes, thanks to all the drinking and drugging, but the brain has a funny way of cataloging events as it damn well pleases. You forget some of the good stuff, and you remember some of the pain. A lot of it, actually.
Of course, even the stuff that hurts can be kind of funny. And to me, in those days, just about everything had its humorous side. So I could stand up there alongside Paul and Gene, the three of us jockeying for space on the stage, unsure how to move or where to position ourselves, and thus sometimes crashing into one another or wrapping our legs around each other until we looked like some multiheaded, hard rock serpent. And I could laugh at the absurdity of it all, even as I looked out over the “crowd” and spotted not a single unfamiliar face. A few of our family members and girlfriends, and that’s about it. A lesser band might have been humiliated to the point of quitting, but we weren’t deterred in the slightest.
We had less than two weeks to prepare for that gig, and I suppose if anyone had captured it on video, and I saw it today, I’d be less than thrilled with our performance. I’m not even sure how we managed to put together a full set in such a short amount of time, but I know that we did. KISS played nothing but original songs that night—a dozen or more tunes that Paul and Gene had already written, and that I’d tried to absorb as quickly as possible. I faked a lot of it, using my natural musicianship to cover gaps, hoping no one would notice. Then again, since the place was practically empty, it wasn’t like there was a lot to lose.”
– “No regrets” by Ace Frehley.
