From: John H
Let me just say that for a show that I didn't even plan to attend until 12 hrs before KISS took the stage, that it is one that I will always remember. The plan was to fly to Ottawa from Toronto to meet a friend the day before the Ottawa show. Wednesday morning we half joked about going to Quebec City if there were still tickets. Well, after I landed in Ottawa, we were on our way for the four hour drive to to Quebec City. Just the fact that we made it to the venue on time for KISS was a feat in itself. We'd be happy just to catch the show from some nosebleed seats.
This is where luck kicks in (especially after the disappointing seats we got for Toronto last June when it sold out in an hour). As we were getting in line for at the ticket window a few minutes before KISS, a scalper offered us floor seats for face value ($60). My friend drives a hard bargain and told him we were willing to pay $40. At first the scalper said no, and we got back in line. Sure enough he came back and took the offer. With our limited french, we really werent sure where the seats exactly were. When we got on the floor, we asked for directions. To our complete disbelief, we were shown to our 10TH ROW CENTER SEATS!!!
Now I'm a guy who's best floor seats for a KISS concert was 20th - 30th row seats for the Asylum and Lost Cities tours out of my fourteen shows. I've always bought tickets on the first day of sale, and never had any luck, so 10th row seats just blew me away! I really got to see some things that I had heard, but not had the chance to notice. The main thing that I noticed was how much the band does interact with the fans through facial expressions and eye contact. This is one thing that cant be seen unless up close (I payed attention to this in Ottawa the following night from our fairly decent 100 level seats, and it just wasn't the same in that regard...) Now onto the show (which was a great one!)
The show started with a humorous flaw, when DRC started, the curtain didn't fall in time. Paul, Gene, and Ace were almost all the way to the ground on their platform before it finally dropped. The band took it in stride (Paul rolled his eyes and smiled), but this was really the only big flaw I noticed in the show. One other thing I noticed for the Quebec show (and Ottawa) was a slight alteration to Peter's makeup. It appears to be a small tear under his right eye (I'm not sure what it is, or when he started doing this but it caught my attention).
The rest of the show was awesome, and my highlight was the addition of IWMFLY to the encore. It started out like the jams I had heard about in previous shows, but I wasn't expectiong the whole song with the band playing! Paul said the band hadn't played it live in over a year but would give it a try. He also stated that the French love the song, but my guess is that they are working it into the show for when they go overseas (the next night in Ottawa they played IWMFLY, with no jam, or mention that it was a big deal). It was really cool to hear this again!
The Quebec City crowd was just awesome! They really are a wild bunch. The show is one that will really stand out to me!