Review: KISS rocked Wisconsin's Northwoods for once-in-a-lifetime Crandon concert
By Kendra Meinert / Green Bay Press-Gazette
If Friday night was indeed the final chapter in KISS history in Wisconsin, it felt a little like a storybook ending.
It seemed both fitting and unbelievable that the End of the Road World Tour that has been zigzagging the planet since 2019 finally found its way down a two-lane road to an open field in the northwoods of Wisconsin as the band counts down the final 25-plus shows of what it has said will be its last go-around.
Eat your heart out, Tokyo, London and Budapest. Only at a gig at Crandon International Raceway, affectionately known by race fans as “The Big House,” could you see see Gene Simmons spew blood, Paul Stanley shake his tush and overhear this on your way to your car at night’s end: “Be careful. There’s some cowpies through here.”
It was an evening that merged thousands of race fans in town for the weekend-long 54th Polaris Crandon World Championships and 8th Red Bull Crandon World Cup with thousands of KISS fans sporting vintage tour T-shirts as far back as 1976’s “Destroyer" for a concert put on by Forest County Potawatomi Community. You could hear the sound of off-road racing next door as Foghat’s “Slow Ride” played on the grounds while long lines of concertgoers waited to get in with their lawn chairs.
For all the spectacle onstage — enough fireworks, flames, pyro and “Rock and Roll All Nite” confetti for half of Forest County — there was a certain rustic charm to the remote setting. The night sky made the lasers and towering video screens of Simmons, Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer really pop, and a cool and breezy first evening of September felt like it could carry old-school rock anthems like “Shout It Out Loud” and “Detroit Rock City” all the way through Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.
