From: Al
Back, as promised (I was lucky enough to see and review the Phoenix Show) To start, my high school buddy who I saw them with in ’79 and in Phoenix with couldn’t make this show. Which turned out to be the mistake of a lifetime. So I brought my girlfriend instead. Drove from San Jose to Bakersfield. My tickets said section 2 row D. I figured this was on Gene’s side (if they had 3 sections up front, forth row. With section 1 being center stage, section 2 and 3 being on either side.)

Then came the surprise of a lifetime. Section 2 was CENTER STAGE! We were 4th row CENTER. I mean, if we looked straight up, we were directly under Gene’s platform for God of Thunder! I still am high from being in this spot!

On with the show. I thought Phoenix was the better than the reunion shows. This show, blew Phoenix away, and I think it was better than when I saw them in ’79. Lemme say one thing right now for all you blowhards who put this band down and claim to be fans; Get a clue and get out. Being this close I could actually see what these guys go through to put on the show for all of us. It is not easy, and it’s more daring than you might think.

In the midst of all the technical problems we have read about, this show almost had one at the very beginning. When the platform was lowering the band to start the show, it stopped about way down for a second, jerked and started again. Ace almost fell into Paul. Ace then just looked at Paul and started cracking up, Paul had a smile on his face like, holy crap- not this now too! They successfully lowered the rest of the way. When they came to the front of the stage I was less than ten feet away from them (please understand I have been a Kiss fanatic since I was 14, so this was rocking my world)!

They blasted into Detroit Rock City, and then Deuce. When Paul came to the front of the stage and started flirting, I put my girlfriend up on her seat. Paul started eyeballing her and smiling at her, he put his guitar behind his head and started doing his little dance thing (I still can’t believe this was happening!). I pulled her down and yelled in her face, holy shit, he’s freaking flirting with you!!! We were loving it. Then she got back up there and Gene was looking at her, and she started giving him some tongue, which he promptly returned! This obviously, was blowing me away, it went on the whole show.

Gene came down and blew fire right from center stage. I’ve seen this so many times on video and about 5 times in concert, it was still unreal this close

During the next song ( I can’t remember what it was) Gene moved to the side of the stage (but still visible) to get connected to his transmitter for God Of Thunder…I could tell the Roadie was having all kinds of trouble connecting it to the back of Gene’s costume by the stressed out look of frantic concern on his face. Gene was still trying to interact with the crowd (still playing his part of the song),while this was taking way too long. Then, Gene had it. He just ripped away from the Roadie and started being Gene again. He looked back at the Roadie and the Roadie held up the transmitter pack, showing it to Gene as if to say, ‘I almost had it’…Then Gene went back, and in about 10 seconds this thing was secured.

Then he did the Blood vomit which was also F-ing unreal to see that close!! Then they pulled him into the lights. For the record, this is not as easy as it looks! And its a lot higher than we think! When they pulled him up, he just stopped at the top, he was trying to hold his pose, for about 5-10 seconds, when he started motioning with this hand to move forward.Finally they jerked him forward, and it seemed as if he didn’t put his foot down in time, he would have overshot (or swung to far) the platform! The platform is made of plexi glass. It has a hole in it about 6 inches in diameter, for you know what, spewing blood through!! Unfortunately, the blood was only hitting people in the first row.

Then, came Love Gun. I was happy to see that it appeared that they were gonna this stunt (after reading about all the problems in Anaheim)They lowered the trapeze to Paul, It was cool cuz we could seem him getting ready to climb on and he looks back at Peter and goes 1-2-3-4! And the song started. He got up and while he was going back, it seemed kinda weird, very herky jerky.He does the song, and gets back on to come back to the stage, again it seemed really herky-jerky.Then I looked up at the motorized unit that runs on the track for this, and there was a rope tied around it!! They were not using the motors to move him back to the small stage and then back to the stage, but were pulling the whole unit by hand with a rope!!! This is what’s great about Kiss. The unit is broken, or unreliable, and the show still goes on! So all you blowhards who are bitching that the show is the same and they’re old and why aren’t they blowing up the whole town can now have a bit of a clue as to what it actually takes to put on this show. Even though stuff isn’t working right, these guys are still making it happen. Is it to get their own rocks off? I don’t think so, it is for us

Ace’s guitar solo was great. Again, he played the beginning of She’, the Almost Human’ riff, and even the coolest part of his solo off of Alive II’. I could actually see how he turned the smoke on, and how he triggered the rockets to shoot out of his guitar!

The rest of the show was awesome. They really seem to be a lot more comfortable and in more of a groove than in Phoenix. There was a lot more band interaction I know I’ll catch some flack for this, but this show really sounded like Alive’ in the sense that that Paul did a lot of rallying with the crowd between songs. The video from this show is gonna be great.

This show was better than Phoenix, way better that the Reunion shows, and IMO, except for Paul not being able to do those incredible jumps and megga prancing, better than when I saw them in 1979, Dynasty

Again is anyone wants more details or wants to ask me questions, email me at albertm@ynot-us.com

Tonight is Oakland, I’ll try to send a review in by the end of the week

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