In this installment of Rock Memoir Book Club, we discuss Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss, by ex-Kiss drummer Peter Criss with Larry “Ratso” Sloman.

Discussion question no. 1: How does this book compare with Peter Criss’s drumming on the first six Kiss albums and that one song on Dynasty?

This is a loaded question, since Eric Carr is my favorite Kiss drummer of all time. (This is based mainly on Creatures of the Night and its ridiculously huge, fake John Bonham drum sound.) But if the question is really “Did you enjoy this book?” then the answer is “Absolutely.” In the previous Rock Memoir Book Club installment, I said that the “obvious truism” of these books is “the more respected a rock star is, the less readable his or her book will be.” The inverse can be applied to Peter Criss: Yes, he’s an original member of Kiss, but outside of getting name-checked in prime-era Weezer songs, he hasn’t exactly been inundated with superlatives in the past 40 years. He’s got, he’s got, he’s got nothin’ to lose by spilling as much dirt as possible in Makeup to Breakup.