There are single artists that I dislike a great deal — sampling-crazed hacks like Jason Derulo, or politically abhorrent creeps like Toby Keith — but most of the bands that irritate me just irritate me. Nickelback’s almost creepily catchy milquetoast really grates on me, and the Black Eyes Peas have create some of the most cynical, over-sampled and misguided pop songs of the last 10 years. (“I Gotta Feeling“? “The Time (Dirty Bit)“? “Don’t Phunk With My Heart“? Horrid.) But the former band is just boring, and the latter created “The Boogie That Be” and “My Humps,” a song so awesome that they get a Get Out Of Jail Free card for a long time. I think when it comes to crimes against music, KISS is the most villainous to me. What Bing Crosby did to jazz and Pat Boone to early rock and roll, KISS did to 70s hard rock. They took everything that was edgy, interesting, and subversive about Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones and packaged it for the teen-aged masses with about as much authenticity as a Backstreet Boys reunion tour. I went to a KISS concert in the late 90s, and it was fun in the way that Michael Bay movies can be fun. Pretty lights! Loud music! Screaming fans! Here’s a video of one of their wretched double entendre anthems, “Lovegun.”