From: Shawn Poindexter

The Indianapolis Show was the first Kiss concert I've ever been too. And I wasn't dissapointed a bit!! :) I've been a Kiss fan for about 9 years now. I bought my first Kiss CD back when I was in high school. Once I heard tunes like Detroit Rock City, Calling Dr. Love, and Deuce I was hooked. I've now got all their albums from the 70's and a couple from the years without make-up. I also have just about every video ever produced about them. They did have some great hits with the other line-ups, but nothing can compare to the specticle and sound of Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter!

Myself and a friend of mine got to Market Square Arena pretty early, around 5:30. So we kinda wandered around the outside of the parking garage. Two radio stations were outside on the corner block of Alabama and Market Streets seeming to compete for fans. There was also some guy out there protesting against Kiss with somekind of banner hanging up. My friend and I walked by him and he was mumbling somekind of gibberish.

He looked like he was the real wierdo! We finally went inside about 6:00 and started up the stairs to the 6th floor entrance where are seats were. They didn't open the doors until around 6:30. We found our seats which were a little past half-way back on the right of the stage. We waited as the opening act finally appeared, Econoline Crush. I didn't think they were all that great and paled in comparison to who they were opening for. It wasn't until they started wrapping up that the arena really started filling up with people. All the cheaper equipment was finally moved out of the way and the big Kiss curtain came out. You could tell that everyone was getting more and more excited at this point. A deep rumble began to grow and the guy came on the mike, "ARE YOU READY INDIANAPOLIS, YOU WANTED THE BEST YOU GOT THE BEST! THE HOTTEST BAND IN THE WORLD, KISS!!" The curtain dropped, pyro went off, and it was awesome!! I have to say the 3-d effects were really cool, but it did draw your eyes away from the band. I didn't like that aspect of it. I often found myself going cross-eyed trying to watch both. The stage seemed smaller than I expected. Maybe because it was such a small venue. When Gene got up and did his bass solo, he didn't seem like he was pleased with the amount of noise the fans were making. He kept crossing his arms and waving his arms trying get everyone into it. I was really into it and so were others, but a lot of people were just standing there bug-eyed. Gene flew up into the air and landed on the platform above and sang God of Thunder spitting blood everywhere.... people finally started getting into it a little more. I thought it was hilarious when Gene kept biting the fuzzy thing off the microphones and spitting them out!

Later on, I think they were in the middle of "Here we Go, Rock and Roll, there was a beach ball bouncing around on the center floor. Someone knocked it up on stage and Paul batted it back out. Then later during a part of the song where he wasn't playing he waved to somebody to bounce it back to him again. But I think someone on security got it because I saw the beachball come down and someone took off with it. :( The best part of the show was when Paul was getting ready to get on his harness and fly over the crowd. He said, "Do you want me to come out there?" "I was thinkin', what if you don't want me to come out there?" They put a camera-view of some sound meters up on the screen in the background. Paul said, " If you guys can make those dials up there go all the way in the red, then I'll come out there!" The place went wild!! I screamed until my voice hurt!! I don't know if they do the sound meter thing at every show or not. I thought that maybe they did it because they felt the crowd wasn't being loud enough for them. Love Gun kicked off and Paul flew out to the platform out in the middle of the floor. He couldn't have been more than a hundred feet from me. It was awesome!! Then he said, "I think I'm gonna come down there!" To my amazement he got down off the platform and went a little ways into the people. I thought he was going to get raped for sure!! I saw a big, chunky, woman in from of him going wild and rubbing all over his chest and arms. He had about 3 bodyguards around him the whole time. By the time he got back to the stage I think he had about 5 bras and two pair of panties hanging from his guitar, it was hilarious! Later on I saw Gene patting his brow with a pair. :)

Ace's solo was the greatest! I especially liked when he shot missles out his guitar and part of the lighting fell down! I didn't know if it was part of the act for the lights to break away like that or not!! For a second, I thought the lights were going to fall on somebody, but they just kinda fell to the side of the stage. So my guess is that it was rigged that way.

Peter's drum solo was awesome! He didn't miss a lick! The floating drum kit was neat also. Towards the end of the show Kiss performed Rock and Roll All Nite and at one point there was so much confetti that I could barely make them out behind it all! Ace's spinning firework on the end of his guitar was wicked! I thought the show was over after the song because they all came out and gave bows... But it wasn't. After a period of silence and some more 3-d stuff, Peter came out and sang Beth. His voice was perfect!

It was good to get to see him out from behind his drum kit. Then they did Black Diamond, blasted off just about every pyro they had left, and it was over. I thought they seemed to leave in a hurry. Maybe to get out before the crowd or something, I don't know. They didn't sing Detroit Rock City, which I would have really liked to have heard. But the new material was good to hear. It's great to know that Kiss can still produce killer music with the original line-up!! It was a very memorable experience for me, a dream come true to finally get to see them in real life. And I can't wait to see them again. Paul did mention something about adding another appearance in Indy to the end of the tour. I can't wait!!

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