News Archive October 2009
From: BostonHerald.com
Posted: October 8, 2009
You wanted the best, you got the best! The hottest band in the land, one half of KISS!
There was neither Ace Frehley nor Peter Criss at the two-thirds-full TD Garden last night, but there were two guys in their makeup on stage (Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer, respectively) and a few dozen more in the audience. But the sober half of KISS — Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons — did a damn good job of pretending the band was unchanged.
Before the show, Simmons boasted to the Herald that this was the largest tour they'd ever done. He was probably lying, but it was hard to tell.
The hits were the backbone of the show. "Deuce," "Hotter Than Hell" and "Black Diamond" — with its hook that could snag Moby Dick — were wicked nice. "Cmon and Love Me" and a sleazy, slutty "She" were brilliant. Even spotlight solos by Thayer and Singer were pretty damn cool (sorry Ace and Peter).
But KISS is still a band of 70's shtick, and the old gimmicks were in full effect. Gene breathed fire and barfed blood. Paul fired the right and left sides of the stage up into shout-offs. There was plenty of strutting and swaying in unison to go with guitars that bazooka-ed sparks and a drum riser on a rotating, fog-spewing hydraulic lift.
As the epic encore — "Shout It Out Loud" into "Lick It Up" into "Let Me Go" into "Love Gun" (where Paul flew through the audience on a wire) into "Detroit Rock City" — blasted on and the canon booms and flame bursts continued, it seemed clear Gene was right. Not that this was the largest KISS tour ever, but that — as he also told the Herald — KISS will live on long past Ace and Peter.
They've done it before and did it again last night with a legendary show.
Buckcherry opened the show with its throughly rocking brand of party metal, including a decent take on Deep Purple's "Highway Star." After some lame ballads, the band closed with its one KISS-level raunch hit, "Crazy Bitch."
