KISS at United Center review: Zip lines, cranes, heavy grooves celebrate its legacy
By Bob Gendron / Chicago Tribune
Forget about going out with a bang. Kiss ended its allegedly final Chicago show Saturday at a packed United Center with a barrage of pyrotechnics and a storm of confetti so thick it obscured the band. For a group legendary for extravagance, the blowout proved a fitting farewell—and put an exclamation point on a 125-minute performance awash in waves of similarly captivating visuals.
More than 18 years after playing its first farewell tour, Kiss is saying goodbye. Again. Ultimately, the group claims the taxing weight of wearing its lavish outfits, as well as the desire for closure, factored into the decision. Whether or not the quartet stays off the road remains to be seen. But the timing appears prescient in terms of providing framework for evaluating the band’s career, particularly in light of current entertainment trends.
Maligned by many critics even in its heyday for gimmickry, Kiss now seems to have been far ahead of its time. At least in terms of strategies. The band helped establish the idea of the artist as a marketable brand, the notion of the concert as spectacle and the dissolution of boundaries between rock and pop-culture—all practices adopted by the modern music industry—in the 1970s. In addition, the members’ individual makeup-and-costume-aided character identities long preceded comic books’ ascension to serious art and superheroes serving as subjects of blockbuster film franchises.
Possibly aware of such parallels, Kiss celebrated its legacy of fantasy, imagination and fun in a manner that made even its past circus-like exhibitions feel modest. All the familiar stunts—tongue-wiggling bassist Gene Simmons’ fire-breathing and blood-spitting sequences, the rocket-launching guitar solos, the levitating drum kits and elevating surfaces, the exaggerated poses for the cameras—occurred on a stage devoid of excess save for a small dragon prop. The minimalist setting actually heightened the scale of the theatrics and magnitude of the video-screen backdrop.
Other effects shouted their grandiosity. The group entered on platforms that descended from near the ceiling. At one point, a pair of cranes swung Simmons and guitarist Tommy Thayer over the crowd. During another, front man Paul Stanley, affixed to a zip line, sailed over fans en route to a second stage. Repeat torrents of flames, fireballs, sparks, smoke and concussion bombs put most cities’ Independence Day festivities to shame. It all amounted to Kiss giving a giant bear-hug to arena rock—and its devoted followers.
