From: Jesse Ball
What a draining night. First of all, I parked my car at the college I gog to to saveo nparking but it was still about a fifteen minute walk. I get there and they don't open the doors until sometime around 6:35 PM. The show still started at 7 with Skid Row opening (they kind of sucked). I buy a program for $30 and find that all there is as far as content is the same damn rehashed photos from KISSTORY and a running list of every show KISS has ever played from the beginning. That's great, but I really don't care where KISS played on August 21st of 1976. So anyways, I get raped on the program. Ted Nugent hits the stage. ROCK ON! The Madman still has it. Great choice in getting the crowdpumped for the main event. KISS finally hits the stage after it takes the road crew fifteen minutes to get the big monitor between the twin KISS logos to work (sad harbinger of things to come). KISS hits the stage. Crowd is pumped. They sound great (a hell of a lot better than the footage VH1 aired last weekend from Phoenix). They sound great up through Heaven's on Fire (all non-original line-up songs bring very unhappy faces from Ace and Peter. Peter seems to be the best sport about it chiming in with background vocals, but Ace looks like he wants to puke during Lick it Up and Heaven's on Fire). So they get to Psycho Circus. Ugh. Everytime I've heard them do this song live it has just never been a good idea. It's not KISS' fault, but in my opinion Psycho Circus is not a good song to play live. Personally I'm all over Raise Your Glasses, but that's for personal reasons. So they get through the excrutiating pain of PC. Time for Gene's big solo for God of Thunder spitting the blood and being elevated over ther stage onto the lights' structure. He gets up there okay, but on the way back down he stops five feet above the ground and is STUCK! They finish out the song as two roadies run with a box for Gene to stand on while they unhook him.

Great professionalism on the band's part to just get through the damn song. Gene doesn't look too pissed, Paul thought it was funny, but about fifteen minutes later he got his. Paul does his usual thing before Love Gun asking if he can go out to the crowd and sing it out there. The crowd goes wild, Paul commences on getting rigged to be carried out to the little stage in the middle of the arena. He gets about fifteen feet away from the stage in mid-air when the cable STOPS and now Paul is a victim of power failure. This got scary though. Paul could have fallen and gotten hurt the way the cable kept jerking forward as it tried to move. They finally pulled him back to the stage, but while that was going on Gene tried singing Love Gun but completely blew the lyrics and they had to try the song again. Paul was clearly livid but plugged away. And then to cap everything off, when they went to do Black Diamond the disco ball suspended in the air didn't even rotate when they hit it with the light. Oh my God! What a disaster! The guys really just wanted to get the hell out of there near the end. I know Ace has been wanting to get the hell out of the band since the whole screwing he got during the recording of Psycho Circus, but man, what a mess tonight was. Peter was the most fun of the night. He is really soaking in every moment of this final and I just feel so happy for the guy. Not too many of us get second chances. Paul actually kept his annoying emcee'ing to a minimum ("Here's a song... this is a song... we wrote this years ago... it's from the album (insert singing of an album title)..." You all know what I mean!).

I could see the wheels turning in Gene's head as he counted the dollars he would be getting from the crowd. Thirty fucking dollars for a T-shirt?!?!?!?!?! I freaking spent $100 on a ticket, $30 on a damn tour program that gave me a bunch of tour dates that give me no insight into the band whatsoever (the Revenge tour book has been by far the best KISS tourbook ever), and some tired-ass legs from walking all night. Can't wait to buy a FOURTH live album which contains about ten songs that I have previously owned eight different copies of already. I never thought I'd ever say this, but Gene, Paul, you may have kept KISS going all these years, but you have personally fucked everything we ever though the band stood for. I guess we now know the truth, but you guys could have at least kept the charade going to make us feel better. And has anyone every noticed that 1/3 of all KISS albums are either live rehashes of songs or greatest hits packages? Thanks, guys. Just let me know when I can stop bending over and taking it in the ass.

But on the whole, what a fun night!

KISS ASYLUM -- KISS Museum News Archive Features Tour Dates Photos