From: Ryan Christopher

Wow!!! What an amazing night! I think the consensus opinion around the whole stadium was that we would never again see a show like this, for the rest of our lives. It was a special treat to be at Dodger Stadium on Halloween night. Let me describe what happened, from beginning to end.

When we got to our seats at around 6:30, the Circus was already in full effect, there were several acts set up on the infield at Dodger Stadium, where there were obviously no seats. The highlight of this was the motorcycle act, where there were three motorcycle dare devils that rode around inside a steel cage. It was really cool. Later on, at around 7:15, the Smashing Pumpkins took the stage……or so we thought. The announcer exclaimed, "Ladies and Gentlemen, ……..the Beatles!" Everyone was shaking their heads when they saw four individuals dressed in dark suits and dark wigs. As the camera zoomed in closer, everyone realized that it was the pumpkins!! Even the drums had the Beatles logo on them. They started their set with an old Beatles song "Money, that's what I want." Then they proceeded to play the rest of their set very unimpressively. There was a lot of noise between the songs, and it seemed like they were just trying to make noise to kill time. They had about three songs that were ok, but other than that, they didn't really seem very enjoyable. They also had to stop one of the songs because the base was out of tune. They finally finished to the delight of most people. There were some little gothic teenyboppers that actually came to see the Pumpkins, but other than that nobody really cared.

After the pumpkins left the stage, the Circus acts started up again. There was a motorcycle highwire act between the left field foul pole and the stage. There were also some assorted grotesque acts such as the typical bed of nails, nail up the nose and so on. The ringmaster seemed to continually plug the kiss car and the 1 900 kiss phone number. He also made some bad jokes, that were semi funny. There was also an interesting act in which one of the circus freaks threw up some substance, and another guy drank it.

Ok, now to the good stuff, first let me describe the stage. It was huge!!!!!! The stage basically took up most of center field. There were huge banners on each side that had the kiss army logo on them. There were also two huge screens on each side of the stage as well as one huge screen in the middle of the stage. There were huge Kiss logos on each side of the middle screen. There seemed to be hundreds of lights on the stage as it was extremely wide. The Psycho Circus curtains with the moons and stars were hanging over the stage while Kiss's equipment was being set up.

At about 9:00pm, the voice came over the system with the "you wanted the best" rap, the lights went out, and everyone stood on their feet. Kiss opened with "Psycho Circus" and the crowd was really into it. Most of the seats in the stadium were filled with a few exceptions in the seats straight on from the front of the stage. The floor seats were all filled up with people as well as most of the seats in the stands, probably about 40 or 50 thousand people. The band looked really great!!! Especially Gene and Ace, Gene's look reminded me of the "I love it loud" music video. Peter was looking a little old, but hey what do you want, the guy is over 50, he was keeping great time , and even had some great fills! The band then went into "Shout It Out Loud" which was kind of surprising for everyone. Ace's solo sounded great. This song was followed by "Let Me Go, Rock N' Roll" which included the choreographed guitar swinging between Gene, Paul, and Ace. The crowd was really into it!!! They were singing along almost word for word on Shout It Out Loud especially.

Next, Ace was introduced by Paul in typical fashion as he proceeded to sing "Shock Me", this was definitely a crowd favorite as well. Let me mention the 3D effects here. Every time there was going to be something in 3D on the screen, they would flash a sign that said KISS 3D on the big screens. The 3D effects were extremely impressive!!!! However, they became kind of tired toward the end of the show, as they kept showing the same stuff. They showed some stuff in the vein of the Psycho Circus video, with the swirling background, as well as some 3D stuff of actual live footage from the stage. Paul did some funny stuff like sticking his crotch out toward the 3D camera and exclaiming, "It looks even bigger doesn't it!!?"

The band went on to do the always great "Do You Love Me?" (A big crowd favorite), "Calling Dr. Love", and "Firehouse" (with Gene breathing fire at the end of course). It should also be noted that there was some incredible use of heavy, heavy pyrotechnics (several different variations) throughout the entire show and some great use of lasers, especially some dark green lasers that literally shot out all the way to the other side of the stadium.

Next came a couple of real surprises, "Nothin To Lose" and "She"!!!!!! Nobody could believe that they actually played "She", this was especially cool. Paul seemed to have a reoccurring theme with his song introductions thoughout the night, continually referring to "getting back to their roots."

After "She", Peter went into his drum solo, he performed with a lot of heart and had everyone cheering for him. The drums rose up and out over the crowd to the delight of everyone!!!!! The drum riser was similar to a spaceship and it looked great. Peter had a lot of energy and he was really fun to watch.

"I Was Made For Lovin' You" was played next. This was another huge surprise to the crowd on hand. Paul stated that this was a song that "some people didn't want them to play", but that "when it's played live, it sounds how it was meant to sound". Gene was doing a little disco dancing moves during this one too. It was hilarious!!!! Next, Ace belted out a really rockin' version of "Into the Void" (this is a great live song). After the song, Ace started his guitar solo. This was unfortunately, the low point of the show, not really because of Ace himself, but because of the guitars he was using. It was probably first show kinks that had to be worked out, but Ace muffed up on the solo in a few places and you could see the frustration in his face, he screamed out a few expletives at one point. He also shook his head at the techs one time because they had shut off his delay too early. You could tell that Ace was disappointed but he kept his sense of humor stating "That guitar was too young to smoke!!" after he had trouble getting the guitar to smoke. Everyone loved it, and Ace was still cheered wildly!!!

After this, Paul flew swung on a line across the top of the crowd over to a platform in the infield to sing "Love Gun". The crowd really got up for that one. "Within" was the next song that was performed by Gene, he looked a little miffed at the crowd for not cheering as loud as he had hoped. I think that "Raise Your Glasses" or "You Wanted The Best" would have been a better choice at this point in the show, "Within" really didn't have too much energy when it was performed live. The band then rolled through "100,00 Years" and an absolutely amazing version of "King of the Nighttime World" in which the crowd sang along with almost every word, Ace also had a great solo and the twin leads were awesome!

Next was Gene's bass solo, this went off great, as Gene spit up blood and then flew up to the top platform high above the stage. He looked miffed again at the crowd and just waited putting his hand to his ear, this was probably the loudest point in the show as the crowd screamed at an ungodly level making Gene very very happy as he smiled and gave the crowd a thumbs up. The band rolled through a crushing version of "God of Thunder". Also notable was the fact that Gene sang another verse similar to the Alive II version of the song that included a scary voice effect during the last verse.

Winding down, Paul stated that since they were "getting toward the end of the show…they wanted to go back to the beginning", when they broke out with "Deuce" the crowd went nuts, singing along with every word. This song was a real crowd favorite and everyone was rocking along. Next they finished up their set for the night with "Detroit Rock City" which was a great end to the set. After the crowd cheered for about two minutes, Peter came out to sing "Beth" to the delight of everyone, throwing out roses to the audience. Peter was really the sentimental favorite of the crowd as everyone sang along and Peter said "God Bless each and every one of you, I love you" at the end of the song. Next, Paul came out and did his little guitar intro as the band broke out into "Black Diamond" and everyone was going wild. At this point in the show it was just like nirvana for a Kiss fan, it was pure euphoria as the band went out on their "Alive II" risers over the crowd and Peter's riser went extremely high up almost touching the top of the stage!!!

Finally, after a rap from Paul about how "this was the band's home and how they would never have started the tour anywhere else" they went into an absolutely legendary version of "Rock and Roll all Nite" with the confetti flying all over and the pyro going nuts. After the band left the stage with a resounding cheer from the crowd, there was a fireworks show that was the best thing I've ever seen!! It lasted about three or four minutes concluding an a huge extravaganza in which it seemed like there was about a hundred fireworks being shot off at the same time!!!!!

It was an amazing night and I was the luckiest Kiss fan in the world, I had my one night only tour book, and my one night only shirt (which had Kiss on the front in Dodger Uniforms), and I was in heaven. I can't wait to find a bootleg of the show so I can have it forever. The vibe was great, Kiss was really energetic and fun, and the guys were really having a great time on stage. If you can see them on this tour really try to go because I don't think there's going to be many more chances after this. Thank you Kiss for making this the most memorable Halloween of our lives.

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