KISS @ Acer Arena, Sydney (20/3/08)

Ever so slightly creeping in, is the law of diminishing returns on seeing KISS twice in a week. This show at Acer Arena, was word for word and play for play the exact same show they put on in Melbourne. Only Paul Stanley crowns the harbour city the rock and roll capital of the country (touché!), and sadly, was without a wire to fly on.

But who’s going to complain, really? Most people aren’t the kind of retards who follow a band around the country. For most people here, it’s all fresh and – oh, who fucking cares? IT IS FUN. It’s the epitome of fun. It’s catching the Zombie Ghost Train to Cirque du Soleil. On steroids. With more explosions.

What else is fun, is timing your arrival at about one minute before the lights go out and being wholesale consumed by the insanely excitable, revving of the crowd. To the point where it’s possible that you maybe, at a pinch, screamed with sheer abandon at the top of your lungs while flipping the international hand signal for ROCK, and right then and there became one with the KISS Army. Maybe*.

‘Deuce’ has been a killer opening KISS track for nearly 35 years, and they aren’t messing with a winning formula now. A KISS show is such an elaborate production, with so many cues on which things explode, it has to follow a formula. It’s equal parts theatre and rock and roll. Any band who brings out a tour that big (U2, the Rolling Stones) falls back on the same setpieces and setlist – and maybe KISS, with their excessive pyrotechnics and scripted banter (“SYD-NEEEEEEY! YOU ARE OUR SECOND HOME!!” Paul Stanley squeals, breaking the hearts of every other city on Earth), are somehow more authentic – because they aren’t striving to recreate a heartfelt emotional connection night after night; it’s all about recreating the spectacle.

‘Detroit Rock City’ ‘Shout It Out Loud’, ‘Love Gun’, ‘Lick It Up’, ‘Dr Love’, ‘God Of Thunder’, ‘Firehouse’. Breathing fire, vomiting blood, the call and response, the EXPLOSIONS, it’s all dialed in on cue. And the people, are going nuts. Paul Stanley informing the crowd that the show is being filmed is all the incentive enough for women to graphically flash the cameramen and for dudes to show off their Ace Frehley tattoos on the big screens. Draw the line people, I draw the line at KISS tattoos.

Clearly, this band really means something to all the people here, and if you aren’t a part of it, you will never understand – though I would challenge anyone in attendance with a beating heart not to be swept up in it. It’s all Nuremburg, baby. If they come back someday and you’ve never seen them, see KISS next time. It’s truly one of the greatest shows on earth. It is the very definition of “value for money”. And I though won’t ever get it quite like the KISS Army do, I walk out of there two hours later, completely elated, totally converted.

But not before I can resist the 7 foot lure of the God of Thunder himself. Our seats are on the floor, a few rows back from the stage. I take the between songs opportunity to sidle up the aisle and plant myself in the front row, at Gene Simmons’ feet while he sticks his tongue out at me during ‘Dr Love’. It’s so creepishly awesome I don’t mind at all being ordered back to my seat almost immediately. My work here is done.

Finally the encore is drawing to a close, and though it has been done countless times since, there’s really noone who does a falling confetti curtain quite like KISS. It seems to never end. It’s like being inside a giant, Satan-themed snowglobe. We’re up on our chairs, screaming the words to ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ until our throats are bleeding, while tens of thousands of white shards of paper fall around us, and over everyone in the place streaming down from the ceiling.

There’s the flashing lights, the flaming stage, the 60 year old men in warpaint you can just about make out in between the fireworks, lapping it all up with the crowd. Paul Stanley has nary a coiffed hair out of place; the Demon, however, looks like he’s been dragged face first through a sandpit by the end of the night. But they’re equally giving it hell.

You would have to be so far beyond cynical to look around the arena and see all the people up on their friend’s shoulders, all the little kids going apeshit and all the hardcore dudes with their arms around eachother, singing along drunkenly out of tune, and think that this was anything other than the pinnacle of “who gives a shit” party anthems to be rocked along to with utter abandon. Forget the world outside, for two hours in this place, there is nothing else to worry about. “It’s a KISS world,” as Gene Simmons has said with trademark humility, “you all just live in it.”

*Alright, I totally did that.