Jonathan Davis Article

Got the Life
Inked Magazine March, 2008

Jonathan Davis is the last guy in America you’d expect to be well adjusted. Think about it: The guy’s whole career has been built on being a fuck-up. And here is the rest of it. For the last 15 years, Davis has battled and exploited his inner demons as the lead singer of Korn, gaining legions of fans that empathize with his tortured childhood and share his dark fascinations. Born with severe, nearly life-threatening asthma, Davis was abused by a family friend as a boy, ostracized and ridiculed by his classmates as a teen, and became a drug addict and a rock star in his 20s. By the time he hit 30, he was one of the most famous singers in the world, with a legendary reputation for drug consumption and skewed fixations. I spoke with Davis the day after he finished his first solo tour, a two-month slog he described as a blur of “shitty little showers and fucked-up shit holes.”Logically, a goth rock deity like Davis should have been clubbing baby seals for kicks or hiring a private detective to bury a bizarre sex video. Instead, he was resting at his Malibu home looking forward to the following day, when he planned to take two of his children camping on the beach. “I love it. I set them out there in the sand and a tent and that’s it,” Davis says.

What? No drugs? No sex? No blood? Sun, sand, and children? Frankly, it doesn’t sound like a day in the life of a rockstar. “I don’t give a fuck. What’s a rockstar? Trying to be a rock star is what got me in trouble in thefirst place,” Davis says.

These days, Davis spends his time off the road earning his World’s Greatest Nu Metal Dad coffee mug. Sober for almost a decade, he is a happily married father of three boys: 12-year-old Nathan, 2-year-old Pirate, and his newborn baby, Zeppelin. During our conversation, Davis’s voice rarely rose above a whisper, but he booms with happiness on the subject of his kids. “I really love my children. It’s the one thing in this world that makes me truly happy, other than music,” Davis says.

?sible that Davis could some day be too well adjusted to sing for Korn? “No chance. I got issues, bro. I’ll always have issues,” he says.

Davis might be living the straight and narrow, but his version seems wider and more crooked than most. His adoring wife Devon is a former porn star (for the record, she was only in girl-on-girl films, which is like the Coors Light of porn). He sings through a microphone set on a $50,000 stand designed by H.R. Giger (the Swiss artist who created the alien in Alien), he’s collaborating on an opera with Clive Barker (the sicko British horror writer behind the Hellraiser movies).

And as a former collector of serial killer art—a topic, he says, he now can’t ??storm lyrics. “I’ve gone to those places and I’ve written what I needed to write there,”Davis says. “I’m not going to go and try to repeat myself, write some fake shit. With each new record, I’m tapping into new things and just exploring different ideas.”

And while he doesn’t party anymore,well,he still kind of parties.“I’m at the parties and I’m chopping up lines of cocaine, rolling joints, and pouring drinks,”Davis says. “I can hang out with everybody, but it’s not for me. I just can’t do it.” When Davis grew up in Bakersfield, his hometown was about as close to the farm town in Footlooseas a southern Californian city can get. While its demographics have shifted a little since then, the town is still called the “buckle of California’s Bible Belt.”Not surprisingly, Davis had a tough time fitting into the sunny, Reagan-loving community, and his tattoos are a testament to that. He has a monstrous bishop on one arm, and HIV—the nickname his tormenting high school peers gave him—on the other.

Even though he grew up listening to English new romantic bands like Duran Duran—he didn’t embrace metal until hearing Pantera in his 20s—Davis was cautioned against becoming a musician by his father, a touring musician him­self. “My dad didn’t want me to be a musician because he tried and he went out. It was hard and he wanted to protect me,” Davis says. So he followed his father’s suggestion and, at 17, he became employed in a more wholesome profession; through a high school program, he got a job at a mortuary.

“It was a very fucked-up line of work,” Davis says. “I did it ’cause I really like dark, sick shit. It sounded interesting to cut up dead bodies.” He was in­terested, but not entirely prepared for the experience. “The first day … I was terrified. I went back to school and I was ghost white. I had just faced my mortality. The first guy I cut open was in a motor vehicle accident. The guy was smashed the fuck up. I’ll never forget the sound of the scalpel opening up his flesh. It still rings in my ears to this day.”

But despite finding success, or at least stability, as a coroner, Davis re­tained his passion for music. He formed the band SexArt, which gained the attention of two Bakersfield guitar players, James “Munky” Shaffer and Bryan “Head” Welch. Impressed by Davis’ stage presence and voice, Shaffer and Welch asked him to join their band. Loyal to his SexArt cronies, Davis con­sulted a higher power of sorts. “My aunt’s a psychic and astrologer. She told me all of this stuff was going to happen. It definitely impacted my decision to join the band,” Davis explains.

Welch and Shaffer were experimenting with new dissonant and down-tuned guitar styles. Davis started mining painful childhood memories for lyrics. Korn and the genre of Nu Metal was born. The music was gnarled and aggressive, the vision was dark and personal. Their self-titled debut album was some­thing increasingly rare in popular music: a truly original sound. The lifestyle the band’s success afforded them, while epic and dangerous, was stolen whole­sale from classic rock icons. “When I first started, I would watch that Doors movie. I wanted to be Jim Morrison, you know? I tried to be as fucked up as I could possibly be, all the time,” Davis explains.

By 1998, Korn had attained a new level of popularity. They headlined their first Family Values tour. Their album Follow the Leader debuted at number one on the Billboard chart. But the years of partying and touring had taken their toll on Davis, and he hit rock bottom in front of the worst possible audi­ence. “[My son] Nathan saw me fucked up, and two days later my grandfather passed away. That’s when I got sober. Two drastic, traumatic things in my life happened back to back,” Davis says. “I flew into Atlanta for a show. I sat down at the bar. I said it was my last Jack and Coke and my last cigarette. They all laughed at me, but I haven’t touched them since.”

Getting sober changed his life, but it didn’t make it perfect. In 2003, Welch left the band to become a born-again Christian. In his 2007 book, Save Me From Myself, Welch renounced his wanton rocker ways. Surprisingly, Davis has read it: “It could have been a lot worse. There are a couple of things in there he didn’t need to say, but he did.” But, Davis adds, while most of Welch’s accounts of rock star debauchery were essentially true, some aspects were sensationalized. “He never partied a lot like he said in the book. He never had chicks. That was never his style.”

Davis says Welch is now living in a Christian community in Arizona that main­tains a cult-like hold over the former Korn guitarist, and he also believes they prevent Welch from communicating with his former band mates. But despite the apparent rift, Davis wishes him luck. “I’m glad he found something to get him sober and make him happy. And the whole God thing, if he needs that, it’s fine. People need God and all that stuff to do something positive in their life. In my opinion he traded one addiction for another. But at least it’s a positive one.”

Welch’s departure didn’t stop Korn, but while on tour in Europe in 2005, Davis had a health scare that almost did. After noticing a series of mysterious bruises on his body, he was diagnosed with a rare blood disease called Immune Thrombocytopenia Purpura, or ITP. His blood couldn’t coagulate, which posed a unique occupational hazard for a heavy metal singer; head banging became potentially lethal. The six-month steroid cure was as painful as the disease. “Steroids make you just go crazy in your head. You’re aggressive and your body aches when you’re coming off of them. You can’t sleep. And when they start weaning you off of them, your joints ache. It really fucks with you,” Davis says. Now completely recovered, Davis is excited to work on his solo projects and more music with Korn. But even more than that, he’s glad to spend time with his kids. “I’m not saying I’m some boring dude. I’m just an artist that’s a really good father. That’s rare. People trip out on that.” Read more!

Steve-O Interview

Professional Jackass
Steve-O talks about taking his act on the road, thinning the herd, and how his finances are his own damn business
Hartford Advocate September 23, 2004

Somebody might have thought to staple their own genitals before Steve-O, but no one made a career out of it. As a cast member of MTV's seminal shock-reality show Jackass, Steve-O's innovative approach to self-mutilation -- like stapling his testicles to his leg or getting a tattoo while off-roading in a Humvee -- made America laugh, cry and cringe. His stunt nature show Wildboyz is in its second season.


A: What can we expect from your live show?
SO: Expect a horrifying display of alcoholism and self-mutilation. We get really drunk and hurt ourselves. We have a set list comprised of acts that censors won't let us do on TV. I'm not going to give away the whole show, but there's blood everywhere, there's vomit, a bunch of urine and broken glass. And also a bunch of testicular trauma. If people want to get kicked in the balls I can pretty much work that out.

A: Is there going to be another season of Wildboyz?
SO: Yeah.

A. How did you guys come up with the idea for the show?
SO: When we were doing Jackass we got tangled up in a lot of wildlife. I don't know. I guess we just wanted to travel the world. And we had Pontius (Chris Pontius, Steve-O's co-host on Wildboyz. He's also "party boy" fromvJackass). He has his homosexual influence and he's a nature freak.

A: Is Pontius gay?
SO: Is Pontius gay? No. but we both think it's funny to act gay.

A: Have you guys ever made out?
SO: We never made out. I mean, for the benefit of paparazzi one time we kissed each other. We only do stuff when there's a camera around. We're only gay on camera.

A: Do you watch real nature shows?
SO: I've never been a fan of nature shows. I mean, maybe a good Predators and Prey. I think everybody likes to watch one animal eat another animal. I did get my personal morals and values from watching nature programming. There ain't no monogamy in the wild, pal. Survival of the fittest. Go after the weakest of the herd. That's our motto. We slay the weakest individuals in the herd.

A: Aside from Pontius, are you still in touch with the other guys from Jackass?
SO: Oh, yeah. If we're all in the same city it's trouble. We all go out and party together. I saw [Johnny] Knoxville a couple of weeks ago at the Video Music Awards. We hung out and did a lot of drugs.

A: What kind of drugs do you like to do?
SO: I'm basically a big pothead. But I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

A: Especially if the gift horse has a bunch of cocaine.
SO: (Laughs) Yeah.

A: What's the dumbest thing you've done this week?
SO: Maybe I used a rubber or two. The dumbest thing I did was mess around with latex. I don't know. I had a family reunion the other day in Canada. Going to that was pretty dumb. I might as well have dressed up as the devil and walked into a church. Let's just say that my extended family isn't terribly proud of me.

A: I heard that you were the only Jackass cast member not to take a percentage of the movie's profits.
SO: That's not true.

A: OK. So what's your money situation like in general?
SO: I'm one lawsuit or injury from being in debt for the rest of my life (laughs). Hey, how unprofessional do you have to be to ask your interview subject about how much money they have? That's actually totally rude. How much money do you make, pal?

A: Oh, I make --
SO: -- I don't want to know. I'm not that rude.

A: What's life like for Steve-O these days?

SO: I'm enjoying myself. Touring really kind of wears you down. Probably the hardest thing is dealing with people all day long. When you got thousands of people coming to see you every night, you just start to hate people. Being onstage isn't bad, but everyone wants to engage you in some conversation you're not interested in whatsoever.

A: Do you kind of want to be left alone?
SO: Kind of. But then I think about the day when no one gives a crap anymore and that's even more depressing.

A: How long do you think you can keep being Steve-O?
SO: I think forever. I don't know if people are going to remain interested in watching me hurt myself for the rest of my life. I'll always be a big ham for attention.

A: Some of the stuff you do must take a physical toll on your body.
SO: I pick my battles fairly carefully. I'm not really interested in becoming paralyzed. I've never permanently injured myself. When I snorted that wasabi, whatever nerves I had in my nose were all so long gone from the cocaine that I didn't care.

A: You were on an episode of the show Blind Date and you poured lemon juice in your eyes. Would you recommend that guys squeeze lemon juice in their eyes when they've run out of stuff to say on a date?
SO: Yeah, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't squeeze lemon juice in your eyes for a date, if you get laid -- Oh God, I'm so hung over right now it hurts. And if you thought I was wasted last night wait until you see me tonight. I am gonna get trashed.

A: Do you get drunk every night?
SO: Pretty much every night, yeah. Recently I had a night where I couldn't deal with it and I didn't get drunk. But that was so creepy. I felt like I was possessed. Everything about not drinking that one night was really weird. Read more!

Cops Against the Drug War

You Know the Drug War is Going Badly When Law Enforcement Turns Against It
Originally published by the Hartford Advocate in August 31, 2006, no longer online

The idea that America's 35-year-old war on drugs has serious problems isn't new. Multiple long-standing organizations ranging from NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) to Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute have advocated drug legalization for decades.

The debate has even permeated American popular culture to a degree, with films like Traffic and Maria Full of Grace exploring the human impact of drug prohibition.

The message that drug policy reform group LEAP is bringing to Connecticut in a series of speaking engagements in September - that the drug war is unwinnable and indefensible - is neither novel nor unique. It's the people making the argument, not the argument itself, that's noteworthy. The members of LEAP, which stands for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, are retired and active police officers and government agents who helped shape and enforce America's drug laws. These are veterans of the front lines of the war on drugs who are now speaking against it.

"[What better group] to challenge the efficacy of the policy than the people tasked with promulgating that policy?" LEAP member Mike Smithson asked.

Smithson said he believes LEAP's message is supported by the majority of Americans, but needs the authority that the police and other law enforcement veterans in LEAP offer for it to resonate.

"We believe that most of America is opposed to this prohibition, but are afraid to say it," Smithson said.

The group is largely the brainchild of retired New York State Police Captain Peter Christ. While Christ doubted the effectiveness of drug laws during his time as a cop, he still enforced the law.

"I went into law enforcement with the hope that I would see the stupidity of my position. I hoped I'd look into the drug business, see its effects and say "boy am I ever wrong." What really happened is the more I saw, the stronger my position became," Christ said.

When he retired after 20 years on the force in the early '90s, he started working full-time to change those laws. After attending conferences by NORML and the Drug Policy Foundation, Christ realized many cops shared his stance, and enlisted them in the cause.

"I started talking about creating an organization of law enforcement people basically modeled after Vietnam Veterans Against the War. That was a group of people that you may not have agreed with their position against the war, but you couldn't dismiss them by saying they didn't know what they're talking about," Christ said.

He hooked up with Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran of the New Jersey state police, to create an organization of his peers who advocated ending the drug war. With the help of three other retired police officers, Cole and Christ founded LEAP in 2002. From those beginnings, membership swelled to over 5,000 in four years.

Their website, www.leap.cc , has a 12-minute video in which speakers make the case against the government's prosecution of the drug war. The video has made the rounds of the blogosphere, including being featured on Time magazine's daily dish.

"Prohibition doesn't work. ... The bad thing is that it creates crime and violence that need not exist," Christ said.

When he speaks, Christ says the war on drugs has destabilized society.

"We know from studies that 85 percent of the drug-related violence in our society is not related to drug ingestion and the high from the drug, but from people fighting over the market place," Christ said.

Christ was careful to distinguish between being against the war on drugs and supporting drugs.

"There's a drug problem, the use and abuse of these dangerous substances, which I am not minimizing. It's a serious problem we have to deal with as a society," Christ said. "Then there is a crime and violence problem attached to the drug problem the same way we had it attached to alcohol prohibition."

Christ believes the war on drugs enables rather than fights the drug problem.

"When you institute a blanket prohibition, at that instant you give up all your ability to regulate and control that thing. Who regulates the purity of these drugs on our streets? The gangsters and the mobsters. Who determines the selling points and sets the age limits? The gangsters and the mobsters," Christ said.

"We at LEAP believe that a regulated and controlled marketplace is superior to a prohibition marketplace that creates crime in our society."

Eric E. Sterling was Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary from 1979 until 1989 and is now a LEAP speaker. Sterling, who helped write many of the drug laws passed by Congress in the 1980s, now says that much of the drug legislation in the '80s resulted from misguided political opportunity seeking.

"I began to see the way in which criminal justice and drug policy were taking a backseat to political opportunity," Sterling said.

Sterling said the policy set in the '80s has had a regrettable effect on America's legal system and economy.

"Most people are not aware of the enormous economic consequences of what we are doing. By giving out millions of felonies for drug offense convictions over the course of your anti-drug crusade, we have put a tape worm into the American economy that is sucking a lot of life out of it. One out of nine men in America has a felony conviction," Sterling said. "Once you have a felony conviction your ability to get a job is dramatically reduced. Once that happens, your role in the global economy is substantially undermined."

The felony convictions have a cumulative, debilitating effect on our consumer-driven economy. We're making it harder for potential consumers to consume.

"Your felony conviction becomes part of a background check that goes into your credit score. Even if you have a job, and can afford a car, your ability to finance it is greatly lessened. Your ability to buy a car is dramatically reduced," Sterling said.

As an attorney and a veteran of national legislation writing and advocacy, Sterling said the effect the drug war has had on the way America enforces its laws has been dramatic.

"At another level, in the criminal justice system itself, the drug laws are enforced through lies and perjury," Sterling said.

The dishonesty underlying the prosecution of the drug war, Sterling said, has influenced the rest of our legal system.

"In courts, judges and prosecutors blind themselves to the lies that are routinely told in support of drug cases. When cases go to trial and drug suspects testify against friends and partners to get reduced sentences, lying again is frequent," Sterling said. "Witnesses know that unless their performance is adequate, they're not going to get the plea bargain deal they're hoping for. This is routine. The habit of perjury has become ingrained and routine in the criminal justice system. Judges and attorneys have become inured to fraud in the courts."

One prominent local law enforcement official indicated that while the war on drugs may be flawed, legalization and regulation of drugs is a long way off.

"There may be a need for some changes [in the drug war]. But I am not advocating the legalization of drugs," newly appointed Hartford police chief Daryl K. Roberts said.

A former vice cop, Roberts has seen the effects of drug addiction firsthand. He said that while gun-related violence would be his highest concern as chief, he would also have the Hartford force concentrate on enforcing drug laws.

"I was in vice narcotics for 10 years, four and a half as a detective and five as a sergeant. It's a high priority because I do think it's a catalyst for a lot of our crimes. A lot of our crime comes back to our drug dealing. When you use drugs you're not just destroying yourself, you're destroying your neighborhoods and families."

Roberts said that because of the nature of drugs and addiction, he believes they should remain illegal.

"Whether drugs are legal or not, they still have the same harmful effects on the body," Roberts said. Read more!

Kiss Convention

On Kondoms and Kaskets
The Kiss nostalgia machine will eat you alive.
By Adam Bulger
New York Press, 2003

Marketing professionals must look at Kiss with abject envy. Every American under the age of 70 has at least passing knowledge of the Kabuki-theater rock quartet. Kiss is the most recognizable high-concept act in rock: They’re the band that wears make-up and breathes fire, a combination hard-rock band and pyrotechnic circus. They’ve got a hipster-friendly 70s kitsch, comic book/action figure tweeker appeal and a metal/classic rock crossover combo rivaled only by AC/DC and Led Zeppelin.

But the ultimate testament to the breadth of their appeal may have been their appearance at the 1996 Grammys. They were joined onstage by Tupac Shukar, and the patron saint of gangsta rap was uncharacteristically giddy standing alongside the costumed avengers of rock.

The mass awareness of Kiss coexists with a rabid fan base that matches the Shatner cult of Trekkies in its consumption of merchandise and detailed knowledge of the source material. The thousands of conscripts in the Kiss Army act as a built-in sales base for Kiss products, like the recently launched Kiss Kondoms (advertised as "tongue lubricated") and 2001’s infamous Kiss Kasket, an airbrushed coffin embossed with the words "Kiss Forever."

The Army’s devotion to its leaders, however, is far from absolute, and coexists with a pronounced contempt. According to a Gene Simmons-authored press release on Kissonline.com, the original official Kiss website was shut down due to a flood of negative comments on the message boards. Kiss fans compartmentalize their enjoyment of the band, isolating the aspects of the band they like (Ace Frehley, the comic books, the live shows) and enthusiastically trashing everything else. One of them joked that Kiss is an anagram for "we Know It Sucks So what."
For almost two decades, the faithful followers of the schlock rockers have congregated in New York at annual events called Kiss Expos. Kiss Expos are a combination rock ’n’ roll flea market, celebrity meet-and-greet, and performance showcase. There you can buy action figures, matchbox cars, plush cushion slippers shaped after Gene Simmons’ onstage platforms, bobble heads and LEGO toys, comic books, dolls, lunchboxes, garbage cans, teddy bears and even a board game.

The 2003 New York Kiss Expo took place May 3rd and 4th in New Jersey. It was held three months before Kiss is set to embark on a national tour with fellow 70s icons Aerosmith.
The Expo took place at the Meadowlands Sheraton, a 21-story glass monolith that towers over the surrounding wetlands and professional sports facilities. The festivities were spread across three beige banquet halls, spaces usually reserved for corporate events and civic awards ceremonies. Sheraton banquet staff wore black tuxedos and served fried food, hot dogs and $7 dollar mix drinks to the 1200 fans in attendance. The crowd ranged in age from high-schoolers to AARP members.

The Kiss Expo is a family-friendly event, crowded with baby strollers and small children. One infant wore a "Kiss baby" bib, and a married couple in full stage outfits chaperoned their 10-year-old nephew, also in make-up. For civilians: straight-leg jeans and sneakers, rock t-shirts and denim jackets. There was a lot of long hair, but few mullets, suggesting that the old-school rockers have finally wised up. Youngsters leaned toward goth, but were soundly outnumbered by the over-30s, who were too old to rock but hadn’t yet figured out what else to do.

At a typical Expo, the vendors rent table space and provide their own inventory. Some are hardcore Kiss fans unloading their collections, others hawk homemade Kiss goods like mouse pads, blankets and Cub Scout soap-box derby cars. Some are speculators who buy Kiss stuff on eBay with hopes of turning a profit.

The Kiss collectible market is similar to the late-80s baseball card and comic book scene. One older gentleman criticized another fan’s purchase by saying, "I can’t believe that guy paid 40 for that beat-up tour book. Did you see it? I got it from a guy over there for 10 bucks and it was in perfect condition."

Others are regulars on the metal scene. The Grimoire of Exalted Deeds publisher Bill Zebub was on hand behind an assembly of death metal CDs, DVDs and his magazine. Long, straw-like blond hair and White-out skin give the impression that he’s been living on a diet of Twinkies and Pabst for years, but he’s a glowingly nice guy and gave me an issue of his magazine and a documentary about the history of death metal.

Zebub was having a rough time of it, however. "I think death metal fans listen to Kiss," he told me, "but Kiss fans don’t really listen to death metal." He seemed to regret renting the table, as he’d only sold one CD so far.
The man behind him had better luck selling 80s merchandise from the Christian glam-rock group Stryper. His table was covered in black and yellow t-shirts and stacks of the 2001 Stryper Expo videos. When asked how his Stryper-exclusive angle was working, he revealed a billfold packed fat with 100s and 50s. He’d arrived with ten dollars in his pocket.

Away from the center of the merchandise tables, the featured guests earn their fees. Bruce Kulick, Kiss lead guitar player from 1984 to 1995, was on hand to sign autographs and promote his solo album and current gig as the axe-man for the reconstituted Grand Funk Railroad. Kulick is tall, thin and played the role of rock star in his leather jacket and rock boots. A tightly compacted, Jeri Curlish hairstyle failed to fully hide his bald spot.

Michael Kelly Smith, the lead guitar player for 80s hair-metal band Britny Fox was seated next to Kulick’s autograph station. His locks still flow down to his shoulders, but they lack the spiky afro from the days when his band enjoyed one-hitter success with "Girlschool." Britny Fox recently released its first studio album in 12 years, but Kelly wasn’t sure if the band would tour, as his full-time guitar-teaching gig would be jeopardized.

And in the back corner of the larger banquet room: adult film starlet Jasmine St. Claire, signing autographed pictures and talking to fans. St. Claire–most famous for having sex with 300 men in World’s Biggest Gang Bang 2–looked haggard and acted unfocused and flighty. Her skin was taut and leathery; her hair was tangled, almost in dreadlocks. When asked why she was at the Expo, she rattled off six favorite songs. She also had every Iron Maiden album on vinyl, and remains a huge fan of Dio and Dokken. She also told several fans that she was keen on offering her professional expertise to Kulick. When informed of Jasmine’s intentions, Kulick was flattered but terrified.

The Expo’s organizer is Richie Ranno. He’s a thin guy with curly gray hair who on the day of the event was eager to blow me off. The next day, on the phone, he was gracious and polite.
Ranno’s been organizing the New York Kiss fan events for 17 years, a gig that grew from his relationship with Kiss in the 70s when he played guitar for the forgotten pop-metal band Starz that shared management with Kiss. They put out four records on Capitol before breaking up in the early eighties.

He says his transition from rock star to convention organizer was an accident.

"I did it with a partner. We had some Kiss stuff that people seemed to want, and we thought, ‘How are we going to sell it?’ The idea was that the stuff we had was 70s stuff, and Kiss with make-up was [then] a nostalgia thing because Kiss was running around with no make-up."
Their first convention, held in Cranford, NJ, was a success. Ranno soon formed Starz Productions and became the Johnny Appleseed of Kiss conventions–Cleveland, Chicago, Boston and Poughkeepsie soon followed. Ranno also plays with his "all-star" band every Sunday night at the Orange Lantern bar in Paramus, NJ, and hopes for a Starz reunion and tour this summer.
Depending on which original members come on board, this summer’s manifestation of Kiss will either headline or support Aerosmith. Word at the Expo was that original guitarist and fan favorite Ace Frehley was unlikely to join. He is, however, slated to appear at Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy camp on June 18 in New York City. (The five-day camp gives fans the chance to fulfill lifelong dreams of playing alongside members of Kiss, the Who, Mountain and the Hall & Oates’ back-up band.)

For those not inclined or employed enough to attend Fantasy camp, the band is offering backstage passes for their upcoming shows for $1000. Through the official website, Kissonline.com, fans can purchase a Platinum Ticket that guarantees a seat in the first five rows of the show and backstage access. Once backstage, these superfans can have their pictures taken with the band by the tour photographer. But buyer beware: Fan cameras are prohibited and autographs, though possible, are not guaranteed. Read more!

Salvia

Meet the New Drug
Controversial yet legal, the herbal psychedelic salvia is readily available in Connecticut. But does it work?
By Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate, August 2, 2007

The cluster of kids gathered by the counter mentioned salvia when I walked into the head shop. The four college-age rocker-looking kids and the store's owner were discussing legal highs, like herbal ecstasy and various smokable herbs. Those were good, they said, but none of them produced as intense an experience as salvia.

By a strange coincidence, I was there to buy salvia divinorum, a legal herbal drug with alleged hallucinogenic properties. A member of the sage family of plants and native to Mexico, salvia is sold as a leaf or an extract that can be smoked or chewed. The potency of extracts increase as the cost goes up. Salvia graded as 10X contains 10 times more Salvinorum A, the active ingredient of salvia, then the same amount of salvia leaves, is generally the cheapest. Salvia graded as 50x is more expensive. Salvia experts told me that the labelling system is misleading, as the potency of salvia varies widely.

Once I said I was a reporter and interested in buying salvia, advice was dispensed rapidly and haphazardly, from both the customers and the store's owner. I was handed a pamphlet about the herbal drug that included a short history and a long list of instructions, which emphasized in all capital letters that I should not drive or operate any type of machinery while under the influence of salvia.

I was told I shouldn't take it alone. I was warned that I would most certainly drool while I was on the drug. The smoke from the cured leaves was harsh, they said, and I couldn't just roll it up and smoke it; a water pipe was needed to cool the smoke. The high lasts about 20 minutes, but would seem like an hour.

Cautionary stories about friends and peers were shared. This one guy who smoked salvia thought a glass coffee table was a well and tried to swim in it. A girl took the drug and believed her body was made out of Lego pieces.

According to Bryan Roth, a director for the National Institute of Mental Health, those experiences illustrate the dissociative experiences salvia users typically have.
"For most people it's pretty overwhelming because they're more or less instantaneously transported to an alternative universe," Roth said.

I walked out of the store with a plastic lid filled with 20X grade salvia (the highest grade available at the store) and a small red water pipe. I felt pretty spooked. I had assumed salvia's effects were going to be as negligible as smoking banana peels. As anxious as I was, I decided not to enlist the aid of a sitter. I was first of all a grown man who hasn't required tending by a babysitter in the last quarter century or so, and secondly averse to having people watch me drool. Thirdly, my girlfriend was out of town, and she is the only person I think I'd really trust in such a situation.

I went home and struggled to remember how to load screens into a bong (it's been a while) and spilled the contents of the salvia container onto my coffee table. I made a Rhapsody play list, including "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd, a song I planned on using as a ripcord I could pull if I started freaking out, and poured myself a glass of water and opened a can of beer and put them on the kitchen counter.

I pulled two hits from the bong and, as instructed, held the smoke in as long as I could. The effects of the salvia kicked in almost immediately. The music I was playing — Spiritualized's Live at Royal Albert Hall album — suddenly seemed extremely intense. My computer was nearby, and I typed out the sentence "If I knew it was going to do this to the music, I would have done it to the whole apartment."

When I looked up from the typo-ridden sentence, the air seemed like it was streaked with waves, and the walls seemed to pulsate. I stood up to get closer to the music, which seemed to be capable of taking me on an intense journey.

I was both elated because the drug worked and panicked because the drug worked. I was down the rabbit hole, and wondered if I should have heeded the warnings of the head-shop kids.
Then, two songs into the play list, the rush subsided, leaving behind an unpleasant lightheadedness. I felt over-heated and ripped off. For the next couple of hours I was tired, mellow and stupid. I felt hung over the following day.

Judging from the dozens of videos of salvia trips uploaded to the video-sharing website YouTube, my mild experience with salvia was not the norm (or maybe I can just handle my shit better than most, or my self-administered dosage was too low). The salvia users on the internet videos freak out like crazy in trips that last nearly a half an hour.

The videos straddle the line between hilarity and deeply disturbing — a mix the Internet was made for. Reactions range from giddiness to seeming regressions into atavistic states. The salvia-takers, who are mostly white males who appear to be in their early 20s, remove their pants, babble like idiots and, yes, drool.

Thanks to media reports, governmental action and maybe even those YouTube videos, salvia divinorum has snowballed into a topic of concern nationwide. It's illegal in Delaware, Missouri and Louisiana. Other states, including New Jersey and Louisiana, have proposed banning it, and two proposals have been forwarded to prohibit it at the national level. Currently, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency classifies salvia as a drug of concern, but has not yet defined it as a scheduled narcotic.

Salvia isn't some recently-created designer drug. Native to the Oaxaca region of Mexico, salvia has been used in shamanistic rituals and as a healing agent for centuries. It's been known to the industrialized world since the 1930s and sold commercially since the mid 1990s.

Interest in salvia seems to have spiked in the last two years. In the past two months alone, newspapers across the United States and Canada have run editorials and articles with headlines like "Hallucinogenic Salvia a Growing Threat" (San Bernardino County Sun), "Salvia: Harmless Recreation or a Dangerous Drug?" (Wisconsin State Journal) and "Herb Poses Dangers to Users" (The Calgary Herald).

The headlines imply salvia is causing some sort of an international drug apocalypse. A reader could easily infer that the streets of San Bernardino, Wisconsin and Calgary are piled high with strung-out salvia heads, and the city emergency rooms and morgues are clogged by the shattered bodies and tattered corpses of salvia users. Evidently, that inference would be incorrect.

"There's not a single documented case of overdose. There's not a single documented case of an emergency room visit. There's not a single documented case of addiction," salvia researcher John Mendelson said.

Why all the fuss and why now, then? Jag Davies, the director of communications for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, an organization that studies the possible medicinal and therapeutic benefits of drugs like MDMA and LSD, said salvia is following a familiar trajectory for naturally-occurring controlled substances.

"It's a very similar pattern, and we've seen it happen over and over again throughout history. Salvia, for example, is a plant that's been used for thousands of years in Mexico by indigenous people with relatively little side effects when used in a safe context that's part of the social order of the society," Davies said. "Then it starts getting spread in underground circles. Once it gets to a critical mass, the media goes into hysteria mode."

The arguable critical mass event for salvia was the 2006 suicide of Delaware teenager Brett Chidester. Sometime before taking his own life, the 17-year-old honors student told his mother he had experimented with salvia. Reportedly, in his conversations with his mother, Chidester said he didn't like the drug. In his suicide note, Chidester reportedly wrote that he couldn't go on living after he "learned the secrets of life." The rest of the note hasn't been made public. Pro-salvia websites and sources have contended that the line wasn't in reference to Chidester's salvia use, and speculated that other factors — divorced parents, acne medication, drinking, etc, — led to his decision to take his own life. Chidester's mother has maintained that salvia, along with depression, were the major contributing factors in her son's suicide.

The Delaware state legislature, led by Democratic state senator Karen E. Peterson, passed Senate Bill # 259, nicknamed "Brett's Law" in the spring of 2006. The bill made salvia divinorum a schedule-one controlled substance in the state, which prohibited its sale and use.

The precise way salvia divinorum acts in the human mind isn't yet known. Articles about how the drug affects mice, chimpanzees and other animals have appeared in scientific and medical journals for years. The first human study with controlled conditions is only now currently underway. John Mendelson, senior scientist at the Research Institute at California Pacific Medical Center, is operating the study, and he told me that the neurochemical makeup of salvia is unique.

"It really represents something completely new in medicine. Basically, salvinorum A [salvia divinorum's active ingredient], what kids are using now and is available on the net, activates a unique set of receptors," Mendelson said.

Mendelson and others believe the potential medical applications for such a substance are great.
"They appear to mediate some effects of bipolar disease, some forms of mania and possibly HIV," Mendelson said. "There's a lot of excitement around something that specifically and potently activates kappa receptors."

Mendelson said he's worried that the pressure in many quarters to make salvia illegal would have a negative impact on the scientific study of the plant. If the drug were classed as a controlled narcotic, obtaining salvia would become exponentially more difficult for researchers.
"I think the politicians who are pushing control here are just idiots. They're ignorant. They hear that some kids have gotten high and they want to make it illegal. They don't consider the consequences of that," Mendelson said.

The possible consequences extend beyond the scientific community. The most dramatic consequence, Mendelson feared, would be on the drug's recreational users.

"Some people will go to jail for it and have their lives completely ruined. And right now there's no underground commerce in this drug, and there will be," Mendelson said. "How stupid can you get — to actually ask for a new drug abuse problem? With scheduling, it'll actually make kids say 'This stuff is good and it really gets you loaded.' It's like the government seal of approval."

Salvia is available in several stores in the Hartford area that sell paraphernalia — an employee at one store told me it was popular. According to state police public information officer Trooper William Tate, Connecticut hasn't encountered problems relating to salvia.

"If there's no law that's applicable to the substance, there's no action that can be taken," Tate said.

A search of the Connecticut Legislature's website for salvia didn't return anything.
However, some local merchants are hesitant to sell salvia. The Trading Post in Canton, which sells water pipes and legal purported psychoactive substances, for example, does not sell it. Trading Post owner Bill Buell said that while he recognized salvia would sell, he didn't want to be responsible for its possible consequences.

"I just, I don't know. I don't see how any good can come out of it. I'm not comfortable with it. I'm just not comfortable with what it can do and the potential problems it can cause," Buell said.
A store owner who does sell salvia said he had his reservations about the drug.

"It really shouldn't be legal," the store owner, who asked not to be identified, said. He worried that someone would take salvia and drive a car or otherwise cause an accident. Read more!