Kiss News

KISS rocks, awes tens of thousands of faithful on Commons!

The sea of thousands of fans dressed up in rain ponchos, slickers and heavy weather gear looked more like the Kiss navy than the Kiss army on Halifax's North Common on Saturday.

Yet the fear of smeared face paint didn't deter the faithful from transforming themselves into the Starchild, the Demon, Space Ace and the Cat Man for the occasion. For all anybody knows, the real Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer could have been roaming the crowd and no one would have been the wiser.

I didn't feel compelled to put on the greasepaint, but if I had a time machine and could go back to the mid-70s to ask my 11-year-old self what bands he'd most like to see, the top two choices would be the Beatles and Kiss. The Beatles had been broken up for years at that point, and there was no way in Hades that my parents would let me go near those so-called "Knights in Satan's Service" and their legendary shows at the Halifax Forum.

Cut to three decades later and within the space of a week we've had ex-moptop Paul McCartney and those rock and roll action figures -whose acronym could more properly be Keep It Spectacular, Stupid - making for one giddily ecstatic inner 11-year-old by the time the legendary foursome took the stage on Saturday night to the primal pounding of Deuce.

KISS rocks, awes tens of thousands of faithful on Commons!

The sea of thousands of fans dressed up in rain ponchos, slickers and heavy weather gear looked more like the Kiss navy than the Kiss army on Halifax's North Common on Saturday.

Yet the fear of smeared face paint didn't deter the faithful from transforming themselves into the Starchild, the Demon, Space Ace and the Cat Man for the occasion. For all anybody knows, the real Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer could have been roaming the crowd and no one would have been the wiser.

I didn't feel compelled to put on the greasepaint, but if I had a time machine and could go back to the mid-70s to ask my 11-year-old self what bands he'd most like to see, the top two choices would be the Beatles and Kiss. The Beatles had been broken up for years at that point, and there was no way in Hades that my parents would let me go near those so-called "Knights in Satan's Service" and their legendary shows at the Halifax Forum.

Cut to three decades later and within the space of a week we've had ex-moptop Paul McCartney and those rock and roll action figures -whose acronym could more properly be Keep It Spectacular, Stupid - making for one giddily ecstatic inner 11-year-old by the time the legendary foursome took the stage on Saturday night to the primal pounding of Deuce.

Of course they didn't just walk on stage; the foursome descended from the lighting rig on a platform while a giant banner bearing a band logo as distinctive a trademark as the Nike swoosh dropped to the floor. Immediately they went into character, with Simmons on the prowl like a widow-peaked vampire, Stanley a strutting Mick Jagger cartoon and Thayer approximating former guitarist Ace Frehley's spaced out stage stance, swaying on his massive silver platform boots.

As with other shows on the tour, the early part of the set more or less mirrors the track list on Kiss's landmark live album Alive, which celebrates its 35th anniversary next year, and Stanley promised an evening of "vintage classics" - post-makeup tunes from the '80s like Lick It Up and I Love It Loud wouldn't show up until the encores - with Strutter and Got to Choose eliciting a wave of shouting along to the choruses and fists pumping in all their devil-horned glory.

"Halifax! How we doin' so far?" implored Stanley with that crazed, evangelistic tone so familiar from Kiss live albums of yore.

"I got a feeeeeeeelin'! Whoaaaaaaaaoooh! We're gonna make this place hotter than hell!"

Sure enough, the stage was bathed in smoke as they tore into the title song from the 1974 album, complete with sirens and Simmons doing a bit of fire breathing with a flaming sword. These guys didn't rewrite the rock showmanship rule book for nothing all those years ago.

"Okay Halifax! We played Montreal! We played Ottawa! We played Sarnia! We played Quebec City!" exclaimed Stanley, eliciting a low rumble of boos for each place name, except Sarnia which mostly just got shrugs.

"All you Haligonians, tonight is your night to show us that Halifax is number one! We want to come back, can we come back?"

A loud roar went up as he plugged a forthcoming album hitting stores on Oct. 6. "I promise you it will be as good as anything you will hear tonight! I swear on the Kiss Army!"

That's a tough promise to live up to, considering classic Kiss is built on a foundation of glam guitar, tuneful pop smarts and an oil tankerful of testosterone, like the amped-up garage rock with Beatles harmonies of Nothin' to Lose, unsubtle come on of C'mon and Love Me.

But given the band's dedication to its back catalogue on Saturday night, there's little doubt they know what fans both young and old want to hear.

The junior members of the Kiss crew got their spotlight moments as well, with Thayer taking an extended solo in the middle of the mastodon tempo and brute eroticism of Simmons' She, playing behind his head and setting off explosions across the stage.

Thayer's string-bending eventually morphed into whirring space sounds and a fragment of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, before coming back down to earth.

Singer got his chance to lay waste to the drum kit in 100,000 Years, and while he didn't offer up a flurry of polyrhythms or even a surfeit of cowbell, it cast a strobe lit spell on the crowd, which erupted in cheers as sheets of flame burst forth on the stage and the rest of the band returned with Stanley swinging the mic cord around his neck and Simmons spreading the bat wings of his battle armour.

The best was yet to come, however, when Stanley asked the audience for suggestions for an anthem to bring the world together in these times of trouble, even crooning a bit of O Canada in the process.

The answer he was looking for though was Rock and Roll All Night, whose party hearty lyrics were soon coming out of every mouth in sight, as cannons filled the air with smoke and confetti and fireworks exploded overhead in the greatest musical example of shock and awe since Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

Pancake makeup? Check. Four-inch heels? Check.

By CHRIS LAMBIE

WEARING thigh-high platform boots, Starchild face make-up, a kilt and a Gene Simmons T-shirt over massive arms covered in flame tattoos, Brett Kummer was a one-man Kiss army last night. The Halifax mechanic fashioned his concert footwear by gluing some wood to the bottom of old motorcycle boots.

"They're four-inch heels and I'm normally six-foot-two," said the gentle giant who sported a skull and crossbones necklace to the Kiss concert. "It's so I can see the band. A lot of people want to have their picture taken with me, but I just want to see Kiss, man."

Kummer, 39, wore the MacThomas clan tartan kilt because he's a proud Scot who plays bagpipes. "It's Kiss in Halifax, right? I would have brought the pipes but it's raining," he said. "It probably would have wrecked them."WEARING thigh-high platform boots, Starchild face make-up, a kilt and a Gene Simmons T-shirt over massive arms covered in flame tattoos, Brett Kummer was a one-man Kiss army last night. The Halifax mechanic fashioned his concert footwear by gluing some wood to the bottom of old motorcycle boots.

"They're four-inch heels and I'm normally six-foot-two," said the gentle giant who sported a skull and crossbones necklace to the Kiss concert. "It's so I can see the band. A lot of people want to have their picture taken with me, but I just want to see Kiss, man."

Kummer, 39, wore the MacThomas clan tartan kilt because he's a proud Scot who plays bagpipes. "It's Kiss in Halifax, right? I would have brought the pipes but it's raining," he said. "It probably would have wrecked them."

Like a lot of concert-goers, Kummer and his friends donned their Kiss face paint at a pre-concert party just as the sun was crossing over the yardarm. "We started partying and drinking at noon. We had a band together, we were playing some songs and we had a good time."

Kummer bought his first Kiss Album, Love Gun, in 1977. "Back then it was either you liked the Village People or you liked Kiss, and I liked Kiss," he said.

Dan Sanchez was walking two lovely women in low-cut shirts through the concert crowd on leashes.

"We came for Kiss and to get them out of the house," said the 24-year-old Prince Edward Island man. "I can't let them off the leashes; there's laws against that," he said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. One of the women, Krista MacLeod, 26, said she's too young to remember the band's heyday.

"It pre-dates me, but my mom got me into it, so I had to come and see it," said the mother of two young children.

Mark McGrath saw Kiss recently in Montreal and flew to Halifax to catch them again. The St. John's native was sporting Starchild face makeup and a rain poncho to ward off the drenching downpours.

"You don't want to be wet for the hottest band in the world," McGrath said.

Three of his friends drove across Newfoundland and took the ferry to Nova Scotia to don their face paint and join him for last night's concert.

"Kiss is a quarto, right? You've got to be four people."

His buddy, Gerard Warfield, was wearing the Catman make-up made famous by the original Kiss drummer Peter Criss.

"I'm not going to lie, I bought my ticket last, so I had to be Peter," Warfield said. "It's pouring rain right now, so hopefully it stays on."

The 23-year-old engineer chuckled when asked how long he's been a Kiss fan.

"I'm about six-foot-four. So since I've been a foot tall, probably. My old man was a big Kiss fan, too."

Lots of people were sporting plastic bags over their bodies in an attempt to stay dry for the show. But Mark Hunter, 35, used them over his running shoes, too.

"I looked out the window of the hotel room and saw all the rain. We're going to the casino after the concert and I was like, 'There's no way I'm going with wet feet.' So I pulled the garbage bags out of the trash cans and here we are," said Hunter, who drove from P.E.I. with four friends for the concert.

He wanted to see Kiss before they vanish."I figured they'd be around for a while," said Hunter, who has been a fan since he was a kid. But I never, ever thought that I'd get a chance to see them live."

The rain washed off Zarr Livingstone's Kiss makeup long before the band took to the stage. But that didn't seem to dampen his ardour for the hard-rocking band. "I want to hear Christine Sixteen," the 28-year-old Lower Sackville resident sang out several times, delivering his best impression of the Kiss song about an underage woman.

What about the fake blood and pyrotechnics?

"Yeah, that too," Livingstone said. His friend, Ian Brown, 23, laughed when buddies poured water over his head.

"I�m really looking forward to the fireworks and the blood and the guts. And everything about Gene Simmons and his long tongue."

For some, the Kiss concert was a family affair. Stephen Arnold, 36, brought his three children, Cody, 16; Colby, eight; and Chloe, six, to the Commons all dressed in full Kiss regalia. They built the flashy costumes out of old clothes and shiny insulation.

"We did it for Halloween two years ago and it went over so well, and the kids got so into the Kiss music. .. As soon as we heard they were coming to town, it was a given we were going to do it again."

Are the kids all Kiss fans? "They are now," Arnold said.

And Halifax police reported the concert "was very successful from a policing perspective" as people appeared to be more into the music than getting into trouble.