Issue #9: "Observations From The Indy Show"

Well, Kiss has finally starting touring again, and every fan out there is weighing the options on whether to see them this time around. Now I know some fans are amazed (perhaps horrified) when they hear that some fans are considering NOT going this time around, but it understandable. It is a lot of money to spend for a show that is really not that much different from the Reunion tour before it (even with the addition of getting paper glasses and the KISS logo on them). Gene still spits blood and flies through the air, Paul goes out to a platform in the middle of the auditorium, Peter still sings "Beth" to the crowd during the encore, Ace still shoots a phony light out of the sky during his solo. Besides the 3-D effects (which I go into more details about later on in this article) and the addition of some songs from PC, it is the same show. So the decision to go has to be based on two things for the fans to consider -- that prices are too high for the same show, or that this really FINALLY might be the last chance to see the original foursome together on stage in makeup.

As to me, I had originally planned not to go to the shows this time around, mostly due to ticket prices. $75 to $85 a ticket is just too high for a concert, even in today's market. Especially when I can think back to just a few years ago (okay, 15 years ago) and remember paying $80 for six tickets in the front row for the CREATURES tour. Also, while I enjoy a big show, I've become less and less enchanted by big arena. Nothing like sitting a mile away from the stage and getting bad acoustics. Ever since I emptied my wallet a few years ago to see the wax-figures called Pink Floyd, I've limited my concerts to small halls and nightclubs. In fact, the last arena show I've seen was, well, it was KISS in Dayton in 1996. So, I had no intention of going, but I wasn't completely set in my ways either. More like an "ah, I've got things to do" feeling than anything else.

As luck would have it, Steve from KISS Freaks had gotten some good seats for the December 13th show in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena. Calling me up one night last week, he asked if I and my wife would join him and his wife for the show. Couldn't really pass that up, now could we?

I couldn't, at least. My wife, although wanting to spend time with our friends, was less than thrilled with the idea of seeing KISS once again. So telling her about the tickets was a kind of "good news, bad news" type of arrangement. ("Honey, we're going to see Steve and Michelle next weekend! Oh, and we're going to see KISS while we at it! Honey? Honey, put down the knife. . . .") Still, that's what you get with a marriage, and she puts up with me rather well on the KISS stuff.

As I mentioned, I hadn't seen the band since that early Reunion show in Dayton, and I had not missed a tour since CREATURES (even seeing the band during the short-lived REVENGE tour and Paul's 1989 solo tour), so continuing the streak of shows was another reason for going. It had also been ten years or so since I had seen the band at Market Square Arena and I remembered the hall for being a good one to see the band in (my memory turned out to be on-the-money on that one).

I had also found out that some fellow fans I hadn't seen in years were going to be in Indy for the show, and decided to make a day of the whole event. Contacting my friends, I arranged our meeting for lunch at Planet Hollywood in Indy and then going to the show. Thus, everything was set in place for a good time with good friends.

That is, until Friday.

During the week I had been experiencing a sore throat. Nothing major, really, but on Thursday night it got increasingly worse. So bad, in fact, that I had to cut my workday short on Friday and go to the doctor. Turned out that I had Bronchitis and that it was going to get worse before it got better. Still, I had planned too much for the weekend and really wanted to see the band, so I decided to gear myself up for the show on Sunday.

Holding on to my medication on Sunday and trying not to shiver too much, my wife drove us into Indy to meet Steve at his place. From there we were to Planet Hollywood and met up with our fellow KISS fans who all had stories to tell and everyone was talking about KISS and the show to come or the show before it and having a good time.

Me? I spent the entire afternoon not able to hear a thing.

The Bronchitis had worked up through my body and had now affected my hearing so badly that, especially in the sonic dim of a packed restaurant, I had a hard time even hearing the person next to me, nonetheless someone down at the other end of a table. Still, everyone seemed to have a good time, which is what really mattered. On the bright side, the medication did seem to help and I was at least able to sit at the table without falling over in my cheeseburger and fries. By the time we were done, I felt I had licked the day and would be able to go through the show with little worry.

Again, little did I know.

We arrived at MSA around six that night for a show that was to begin at 7:30. Getting out of the car, we began walking from the parking-lot to the arena. Most of the people in the group were a few feet ahead, but my wife and I lagged behind a bit as I was still feeling the effects of the illness and the medication. Still, I felt good about being with everyone and going to the show.

That's when the Pepsi bottle slammed me in the face.

I felt a dull thud against the right side of my face just as I turned my head to say something to my wife. At first I thought I had somehow ran into a pole or a sign without looking but nothing was within proximity to me. I then saw a car driving away at a fast rate of speed and a 20-ounce Pepsi bottle spinning away from me from the impact.

Everyone ran back to see if I was okay. Either I'm just naturally hardheaded, or the medication had diluted the pain, but I felt fine; although a welt soon appeared on my neck where the bottle had hit me. Still, the closeness of friends made me feel better, especially when Steve and his friend Tony started chasing after the car that was long gone by that point.

It did make me feel that God did not intend for me to see the show, however. At that point, I figured that if one more thing went wrong, I was heading back to the car and going home. No point pushing fate that much.

Fortunately, it was the last bad incident of the night, and we managed to get good seats up on Gene's side of the stage and eight rows up.

But enough about the preliminaries. I'm sure you want to hear more about the show, which was even better than some of the Reunion shows I saw in '96. Still, you know that. More importantly, there are a lot of people that have written good reviews of the show, so let me just cut to the observations I witnessed while there. It's been a long time since I've been to an arena show, but I saw that things never changed:

1) There were the obligatory "professional" groupies off to stage-right, who wore tight clothes, had big breast implants and danced to the music for both the opening band and KISS in the same swaying, "hey, I don't know what the song is, but it's music" kind of way.

2) As a "yin" to their "yang," there were the obligatory girls in the front row who were obviously fans of the opening band. This usually amounts to (as in this case) two girls about 17 years old who know every word to every song by the opening band. They normally leave after the opening act as well. These girls also probably had a better chance of being with the band than the "professionals" off to stage-right.

3) Also there, was the obligatory guy in the second row that is already on his third beer by the time most people are just starting to look for their seats. This guy also seems to know everyone in the arena and will wave to each and everyone as he points out that HE got seats in the second row and THEY are so far back that they have to use the Hubble telescope in order to see the stage. How they can see him then, is a mystery that will never be resolved.

Normally, this guy also disappears after the opening act (typically to pass out from all of the beer), but you had to give this particular guy credit -- he made it through the KISS show as well.

4) The radio people with their contest winners. These people can be a bit of a crap shoot. In the past they used to be people that just wanted to hang out at a show and have a good time. In the recent past, however, they seem to increasingly become a bit paranoid about the fans around them and treat everything as a business and THEIR property. Perhaps it's understandable that the radio people do want to feel a bit more privileged than the common fan. After all, you promote the concert on the station, you should get something out of it. Still, it seems a bit strange to see so many people in casual business clothes studying the fans around them and making sure that people are not sitting in seats that BELONG to the contest winners (even dragging arena workers down to ask people to leave). Very odd. And speaking of which . . .

5) The people who sit anywhere they can at a reserve-seating show. This is true normally around the area along the far sides of the stage. Ended up with about four different individuals sitting next to me during the show as each was asked to leave by someone else who supposedly had a ticket for the same location.

Some other observations:

1) A very rare thing happened at this show -- it started ON TIME! I've never been to a show where it did not start at least 20 minutes late. Astounding. The opening band also finished on time and KISS came on stage promptly as well. Incredible.

2) Opening band -- Econline Crush. After seeing this band perform live on stage I can say without any hesitation that they are a band.

3) I have to say that the crowd treated the opening act very nicely. I didn't see anyone giving the band a hard time, which was a nice change of pace.

4) Does that 3-D effect stink, or what? It turned out to be exactly as I figured it would be, a standard 3-D effect that only really works if a person is directly in front of the screen image. Once you're at an angle, you might as well forget about seeing the image properly.

However, I have to point out, it IS an illusion. I've found that when one goes to a 3-D movie (and I have been to several over the years), if one is not willing to accept the deception to the eyes, one usually ends up not being able to see the 3-D effect. So, that might have played a part as well. A lot of people put those glasses on when asked to do so at the show, so maybe there was something more to it than what I saw. I spent more time staring at the 3-D camera used for the live footage than the 3-D effect, however.

Glad to see that they finally got a system worked out so that fans receive their glasses in a proper manner. At the Indy show, ushers handed out the glasses to each person as they showed their ticket stub. At least this avoided earlier reports of fans grabbing handfuls at a time.

One last thought about the 3-D effect, but isn't this a great way to screw up the video bootlegger trying to tape the show from the large screens? It probably unintentional, but who would want to buy a bootleg video of a double image that cannot be viewed properly with the glasses? Great anti-bootleg device.

5) Peter's drums have changed a bit for this tour, which was a nice change of pace. I won't give the effect away, but I think it worked well.

6) Gene seemed to be in very good spirit during the show, although he went out of his way to beat up the microphones as much as possible. As I stated before, my hearing was partially shot so I don't know if his mike was cutting out on him, but he's the first performer I've ever seen take a bite out of the microphone (he did it twice, come to think about it).

Paul also seemed to be in good spirit, actually going so far as to jump into the crowd during his bit on the small stage for "Love Gun."

Ace seemed, well, a bit upset during the show. I'll just leave it at that.

7) As to Peter, I do wonder what he thought about the large group of guys who stood at the front of the stage and sang "Beth" along with him while looking lovingly into his eyes. Very odd sight to see.

8) I can understand going retro with the costumes, but Gene's costume really does not look good on him. I think it is mainly the plating of the costume is just too big and makes Gene look twice as big than he really is. Same with Ace and his costume.

Now, Gene is a naturally large guy. Any fan that has followed the band over the years can tell that Gene goes through the same phases during a tour that ol' Bill Shatner used to on STAR TREK -- start off the season looking great, then start gaining a bit of weight and then slim down again at the end of the season. That's just the way some people are (heck, that's the way I am also). And for a guy who is almost 50, I think he's in great shape. Still, it looks like the armor Gene wears was enlarged in order to make him look slimmer. Instead, it really seems to actually make him look bigger. I think a great help would be to at least tone down the shoulder-pads as they are just WAY too big. Can't do the same for Ace, though, as the shoulder-pads are supposed to be that way.

9) The question everyone seems to be asking is why wasn't "Detroit Rock City" played? Who knows? Myself, I have to admit that I really didn't miss it. Wish they would have played a song in replacement of it, but it didn't break my heart not to hear it again on this tour.

But a better question is, why didn't they play something different for most of the show? While certain standards are expected (I think they have to play "Rock and Roll All Night" or else instantly destroy the Dorian Gray portraits they have hanging in their homes), and it was nice to hear some of the tracks from PSYCHO CIRCUS, it would have been great to hear some other songs from the band. After all, KISS did have some hits in the 1980s that could be done in concert effectively by the original foursome. Just imagine "War Machine" or "I Love It Loud" with these guys. Wouldn't that just whip up the fans into a happy frenzy? Or how about Ace and Paul trading off lyrics on "Hide Your Heart" (both Ace and KISS recorded the song, after all)? Or how about a couple more songs for Ace and Peter to sing? I would personally love to hear Peter doing "Hooligan" live, or maybe "Insane" or "Rock Soldiers" from Ace with KISS back him up.

After all, the fans who are coming to the show this tour are the diehards. There really just no way around it. And all the die-hard KISS fans want is a party with KISS as the focal-point. They're happy with the shows they are getting -- and the show was great, no doubt about it -- but it would be even more memorable if the entire band did what Paul did during the show in a figurative way.

Jump off that stage, boys. Do something unexpected. The fans won't hate you for it. In fact, they'll probably be like the fans around Paul that night who just watched in stunned, grinning amazement.

More of that kind of stuff, and no one would even question the idea of $85 a ticket.

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