News Archive June 2011

KISS Rules Kamloops
From: bclocalnews.com
by Dale Bass
Posted: June 30, 2011

For some old-timers, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley know how to rock.

More importantly, they know how to work a crowd, capturing the sold-out audience at Interior Savings Centre immediately with something as simple as a Google Earth view of North America on one of the overhead screens.

The view started to zoom in - and in and in - until it settled on the roof of the downtown site, then switched to show KISS walking through the halls of ISC toward the black curtain.

Yes, the same one that was flanking the screen.

And, then, they were onstage for more than two hours of the kind of show Kamloops hasn't experienced in a long time.

I'll confess, I didn't know any of the songs until they got toward the end, but my son and his girlfriend knew every single one of them.

Such is the timelessness of the band that started in New York in 1973.

There's no point trying to identify a highlight; it could be the amazing drummer, Eric Singer, or the finale, with ISC littered with what had to be tons of confetti that streamed out from canons throughout the hall for the entire long version of Rock and Roll All Night.

It could be the pyrotechnics that no doubt gave the city's fire department some nervous moments.

It could be how true Stanley's voice remains all these decades later or how amazing it is none of them fall off those platform shoes they wear.

In the end, the high point had to be the simple fact KISS was in Kamloops, ISC was finally filled to the rafters with virtually every generation represented - and they were all rocking and rolling all night long.