Kiss
MEN Arena
Monday 10 May 2010

"The hottest band in the world" - yes indeed!

The perfect antidote to the recent excruciating Bad Company experience - here was a group who were undeniably "doing it for the money" but who knew exactly what their audience wanted and gave it to them in oodles. Bazookas, rockets fired from guitars, Paul Stanley flying across the audience to sing a song at the back of the hall, full make up, fire eating, fake blood sprayed all over, guitars shaped like axes, more pyrotechnics than the army, Gene Simmons acting out a grisly graveyard scene as a vampire, - this was most definitely not "progressive rock", but in it's own totally bombastic way it was just as typical an evocation of the glories of the seventies. What I liked best was Paul Stanley's riposte to the strictures of the Guardianistas: "if you want to see a band that will tell you how to save the world, then you've come to the wrong place. You can do that tomorrow - for now, enjoy yourselves!!" - what fantastic sentiments - the lifeblood of the rock 'n' roll ethic - the sanctimonious likes of U2 soon begin to seem pretty inconsequential in this light.

Kiss have never been up there with my all time favourite bands – the likes of Pink Floyd and Rush – and probably never will be, but they fill a very comfortable niche of good quality, melodic rock played for the fun of it. Yes, they might eat fire and fly around the concert hall, but they are not pretentious about the music. Originally, they were America’s answer to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in the early to mid seventies, and that is the reason why they can’t really be classed alongside the all time greats, its simply that they aren’t THAT good. Rather than play vastly amplified and speeded up “blues” tracks with attitude, Kiss always seemed to play amplified “pop” music whilst wearing make up, and whilst that might not seem a great deal, it means that they are not, and never were as hard and heavy as the classic English groups. Basically they gave the quasi seventies “prog”/ heavy rock sound a more commercialised and Americanised twist, which greatly added to the variety and enjoyment in the long run.

The song selection, with one exception, was just about as good as I could have hoped for. Over the years Kiss have released many albums, which contain many good tracks, and tonight they performed a good selection from all of them and from all eras. The best album to my mind is the first album, “Kiss” from 1973, and most of the best tracks of the evening were from that – although it has to be said that it was criminal to leave off the classic “Strutter”, presumably because in this day and age its lyrics leave a little bit to be desired in the politically correct context – indeed, whilst it does sort of objectify women and may thus upset politically correct activists who are not at the gig, I cant imagine any proper Kiss fan being upset at all, as it is all totally tongue in cheek. Shame on them – I’m more upset that they didn’t have the courage to play it. Another nice touch was that they rewarded the fans who had bought the new album by playing a few of the best tracks from it – all too often bands play to the lowest common denominator and only perform their classics, Deep Purple being the worst offenders.

The playing was as good as you could expect, but Kiss have never pushed the “virtuoso” side of things and whilst there was room for solos, they were short and snappy and didn’t take over the show. The sound quality wasn’t the best, the mix could have been better as there was some white noise, but on the whole it was loud and fulsome enough!

I might moan a bit about the line-up, but that would be churlish. Kiss has always been about Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, so to have half the original line-up together after 37 years should be considered an achievement. The train spotter inside of me though says that it wasn’t quite right for the guitarist and the drummer to be using the face make up styles originally used by Ace Frehley and Peter Criss – but hey, everyone knew that they were different people, so I’ll let that one pass.

My last concert (Bad Company) was one of the worst of all time – thankfully just over a month later I get to see one of the best. The music and the playing may not have been the world’s best, but it would be very hard indeed to imagine a rock concert that could be a more enjoyable spectacle than this. It was out and out fun, and there’s nothing much wrong with that!