From: drsvt87@tidalwave.net
Well after a 13 hour roundtrip from Northern, VA to Roanoke to see the masked wonders, here is my review. It is long, so skip it if you want to.

I am organizing this review around the following areas: 1) Skid Row (short); 2) Uncle Ted (short) 3) KISS, which will encompass the following areas-overall group, production, individual performances; 4) Lastly, audience issues. Criticisms will be in each. All were minor.

Skid Row: Played a short set. Very loud, very distorted, very shitty. The new singer is not that bad but the mix sucked.

Uncle Ted: Entertaining. I do not agree with his mouth, though. By and large his set was very clean and tight. The mix started to improve. The bass player must be related to Spruce Kulick-did not move. Also, speaking of moving Ted was all over the stage but I expected him to be a bid more animated. He was fun until he started to mouth off. It is his right to do so, so I will respect it. He said "we are here to celebrate 110 years of KISS. I love this KISS shit." Tommy Alridge was phenominal on the drums. Really fun to watch.

KISS:

1) Overall: Decent performance. Not much band interaction. I would say on a scale of 1-10 it would have been an 8. Out of all of the recent shows that I have seen (2 in the 70's, 3 reunion shows, 1 PC), I would say that they were a bit flat. Do not get me wrong: KISS a bit flat still blows everyone else away. It was a fun show and I am looking forward to the Nissan gig in July.

2) Production: Very well done. The stage is excellent, even though only one member uses the stairs a lot-guess who this is (see below)??. The lighting is well done. The video screen and images are excellent. The introduction is truly phenominal. I love the stairs and the stacks of Marshall and Randall amps. Very polished.

Some criticisms: They shot their wad of flame throwers with "Heaven's on Fire" and did not evenly distribute. There must have been 8 blasts during that song and maybe 5 total on the other songs. The sound was a little loud and muddy and the mix on Ace's guitar was not great. There were some glitches (see below) which did detract from the show but they were minor (hey, we are KISS fans, right-we nit pick). More explosions would be nice too.

3) Individual performances:

Ace: Well, we have the good and the bad. With Ace, you can either get a good show or good music-sometimes both, as has been my experience. Tonight was an off night musically for the Spaceman. It could be that he could not hear the guitar through the monitor (the mix was bad). I dunno. Several songs, PC in particular had Paul laughing very hard trying to save the dual solo. His showmanship was superb. Lots of jumping, knock need playing. He was very cool. He was the only one (besides Gene, once) that uses the stairs. Imagine that our out of balance space dude risking life and limb. The solo was a tad disjointed: he did his snippets solo, which did not flow. The second part, 2001 was better. Good smoke effect. One thing: he looks great, very thin and not puffy. I think he changed his makeup a tad and eliminated the blue powder over his eyes. He was fun to watch and had a NASA sticker on the back of his guitar. Also, his guitar effect during RARAN, the pinwheel stops rotating and lights up again in the opposite direction.

Paul: Vocally very good. Did not sing the intros much. Played the intro to BD the way it is on the record. Not very animated, not much dancing. He did give the crowd a ration of crap for not standing up, saying: "If you want to sit down, you can go home and watch TV. This is a rock and roll show. Get up!!!" He worked the crowd fairly well, considering they were not that loud. His little contraption thing during Love Gun led to a spinal tap moment: He rose up about 4 feet and stopped. You could see the disappointment in his face. It finally lurched forward 5 or six times and finally made it over.

Gene: Vocally very good, as well. He was kind of lethargic. Not the same slinking, high stepping demon I have seen in the past. He really does need to lose some weight. I think this does hamper his mobility. His blood spitting was the best I have seen at any show. The bass was very spooky and he smiles and you can see his bloody teeth and he lets it fly. Very cool the way he looks around, jerks his head. I loved it. A word of caution if you are on the floor-he did spit off the platform and landed about 12 feet out in the crowd. Yuck!!! He did not drool through the hole in the platform like I have seen before.

Peter: Of all the shows I have seen, Peter was always on. Tonight, he played some songs very slow. He looked very focused and concentrated-serious. He started to warm up and smile later on. His little drum solo was quite good. The drum riser still has those cheesy cats but this time smoke is coming out of their mouths (kinda cool). Vocally he was very good.

4) Audience: Not very enthusiastic. The people on the floor (it was GA) and the first sections stood the whole time and generated most of the noise but the entire upper half stayed seated most of the time.

I am getting on my soapbox for two issues. The first is for the amatuers that drink (I can pound it with the best of them…), this was a "dry" show. I saw more messed up people 2-3 hours into the show than I have seen at a concert serving beer. One woman (at least 45) came up to our seats-we were in the box seats, she was two feet below us on the floor) and put her head down right in front of me and looked like she was ready to blow. We asked her if she was alright, but she did not reply. I got an usher and got her out of there. The last thing I needed to worry about was this idiot barfing on or near my space-we had a great couple of seats-about 30 or so yards from the stage. If you can't handle it, don't drink and screw up my experience. Secondly, to all the parents that take your kids, cool! I am a parent as well. However, be more responsible. I was saddened to see several kids without hearing protection, holding their ears in pain with the parents oblivious to what was happening. Sad, very sad. On the bright side, one parent had a great way to protect his three year olds ears: Shooters ear muffs. Cool.

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