From: Michel van Tongeren of KISS Tribute band Sweet Pain
June 26th me and my buddy Bart Pellinkhof took our fight to Newark, New Jersey. This was the start of our trip to see KISS play live at the two sold out East Rutherford, New Jersey shows! Arriving noon at our sleeping place in New York City, the home of rockartist and friend Adam Bomb from Get Animal, we just hung around in the city today and bought some KISS merchandise! Later that night, with 25 hours of no sleep, Get Animal with Bart on bass was playing some songs at the famous NY Decade club!

Next day, June 27th. Yes, tonight we see KISS live in action on their Farewell tour! This was our first time to see a KISS show here in the States and we expected a lot of this! Again, sight seeing in the morning and around 6pm leaving to New Jersey. What wild traffic! As usual, we left much, much too late so we missed Skid Row and half of the set from Ted Nugent! Ok, don't worry next day we have another chance! Meeting our big Dutch friends Marco, Sandra, Arjen, Chantal, Ed & Daisy at the ticketbox! They already had seen a couple of shows and this night was their final night of two weeks of KISS pleasure.

After getting our tickets at the ticketbox, we hurried to get inside the Arena of pleasure. The Continential Airlines Arena is located in Meadowlands, New Jersey! Crazy as usual at the merchandise stands so we decided to watch what was left from the Ted Nugent show! Finally after months of waiting, hoping and being very nervous, lights go out at 9.15 pm and we are about to see our first KISS Farewell experience. The 19,000 people in the Continential Arena go wild while hearing: ALRIGHT EAST RUTHERFORD...KISS!!!! WHAAAOW, SHIT! ALL HELL'S BREAKING LOOSE!!

Starting with Detroit Rock City, while playing KISS comes down with a platform from the lighting roof just like Peter Criss's drumkit. Yeah! This is absolutely amazing, you have to see this because you really can not describe what all is happening at this point of time. Forgetting all you troubles and having the best time of you life! Of course all the famous parts are in the KISS set, like Gene spitting fire, Ace's solo, Gene's bloody solo, Paul's flying act, Peter's drum solo during 100,000 Years and many classic KISS songs like Shout It Out Loud, Deuce, Firehouse, Love Gun, Black Diamond, Let Me GoR & R, Shock Me and so on. Tonight we are treated to not only the best KISS show ever, but also the best show on this earth! There is really no other band in the world that can give a show like this, and to my opinion there never will be. That's why KISS can not think of retirement because we need them here! They will absolutely be missed by millions of fans around the globe!

This Farewell tour of KISS is serious and that's why I decided that I wanted to see as much as possible shows. I never saw KISS live in the States before and now that I have, I'm absolutely glad that I went up there because I really wouldn't wanna miss this in the whole world! Not only songs from the 70's came by, but they also played songs like Psycho Circus, 2,000 Man, I Love It Loud, Heaven's on Fire and Lick It Up! Almost during the whole show fireworks went off and continuous smoke on stage! This show was filmed live for a Japanese TV show. KISS was in top condition and I must say that Paul Stanley's voice is the best I've ever heard. It seems that the Phantom Of The Opera shows really had a good effect on his voice. He reaches much higher levels now easily!

Ace Frehley did not have his good day tonight but who cares, it's rock & roll! Second night Ace's playing was better! One of the highlights of the show was Paul playing and singing I Still Love You during his solo, absolutely wonderful! Great Job! After his solo he starts in Black Diamond and the show has come to an end! Encores were Beth (oops, little microphone break up) and Rock & Roll all Nite. Too bad they did not play I stole Your Love!!! During Rock & Roll all Nite again fireworks all the way through, drum is rising, little platforms with Ace and Gene on it, Paul smashing his guitar! KISS says farewell to New Jersey for the first night and again this is the best show I have ever seen from KISS til now, absolutely no doubt about this! We saw this wonderfull show from the left side of the stage and it was great! Second night we had backstage-passes and tickets first row to Paul Stanley little stage for Love Gun!

Second show on June 28th was another great experience and this time we would see the beautiful light show during the concert! Both nights we were on the band's guest-list but unfortunately we did not meet up with the band backstage. But we have seen the two East Rutherford, New Jersey shows and it was amazing! I took lots of pictures during the show! Still, being in New York for a couple of days and hanging around in the city we visited 23rd street, took pictures at the corner where KISS themselves took a photoshoot for the Dressed To Kill album! Also went to the studio Electric Lady on West 8th street!

Now back in Holland and with a great trip in memory I still hope they will tour Europe! While we were in the States it became clear to us that KISS are busy with preparing a Euopean tour so I think there is a very big chance that they will come over to say goodbye to us over here in Europe too!

My very special thanks to Melissa Madden [of McGhee Entertainment] who made this all possible!

Find out more about Sweet Pain at http://www.pain.demon.nl/

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