From: Robert A. Pitts
Whew! What a great way to start the New Years. My wife and I flew from Albuquerque, NM to Vancouver to see the Greatest Band in the world. Going through customs the girl told me Gene Simmons had gone through only a few minutes before. Looking around baggage claim we found Paul Stanley standing there. After a few nervous minutes I walked over to him and asked to shake his hand. He was very friendly and seemed tired. We told him we were there to see the show, and he said he hoped that we wouldn't be disappointed. After wishing him a Happy New Year we proceeded to walk out and found none other than Ace & Gene (with Shannon Tweed and daughter) heading for the door. They stood around for 5 or so minutes waiting to get in 2 vans that pulled up. What a dream it was to finally meet them. Ace looked as though he had lost weight. I didn't see Peter anywhere.

After watching 3 opening bands Kiss finally came on about 11:20. The show was great but did have it's share of glitches. At one point Gene's microphone came loose and was hanging down. A roadie came over and tried to fix it and was softly kicked by Gene who tried to hurry him up. He had to go over to a side microphone to finish singing. Ace made a small joke during his solo while playing 2001 a Space Odessey. He told the audience laughingly that he hopes he doesn't put them to sleep after he seemed to forget how to play the song. It was really funny. I think the best song of the night was Heavens on Fire. Every time they sang Heavens on Fire, the flames would shoot up. Lots of fireworks and pyro.

The stage was awesome. The actual stage where they performed seemed smaller than the Psycho Circus stage, but overall size was huge. Lots of Marshall amps. The Kiss inflatiables were on each side of the stage. The TV screen on the left side of the stage kept going off occasionally. Some idiot in the top section kept shooting off bottle rockets, much to the annoyance of the people down below. While playing R&RAN, the confetti was so thick, you could hardly see the stage from where we we sitting.My only wish was that they would change the set list a little. However it was a great show despite the problems. We met many fans from the US who flew in, kinda wonder how many Canadians were there.

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