Originally Posted by
Terry
So, I saw KISS last night in Tampa.
It was...basically what I expected.
The opening act was that painter guy. He painted three pictures. One of John Lennon, one of Angus Young and one of KISS. It was sort of an odd choice for an opening act, but it sort of made sense in that it certainly cut down the breakdown time between the opening act and KISS...plus, I can't imagine KISS had to pay the painter nearly what they would have had to have paid a name opening rock band to open for them.
As for KISS...they did about 2 hours.
It was decent. Solid stage show in terms of the lighting, flames, pyro and visual special effects. Most of the setlist was agreeable to me, although frankly you could feel a lull of enthusiasm in the crowd when the band played War Machine, Say Yeah, Tears Are Falling and Psycho Circus: a combination of these tunes being those that casual concertgoers either didn't know or didn't particularly want to hear.
Tommy Thayer was capable enough in terms of playing Ace's licks. As well he should be, since he's been doing it long enough. Eric Singer was also as good as one imagined he would be.
Gene seemed to be enjoying himself. He did his flame-throwing bit, and his spitting-blood bit. Frequently, the video cameras would switch over to him and he appeared to be drooling.
Paul Stanley was having difficulties singing. He was clearly making an effort, and I am pretty sure a substantial portion of his singing vocals WERE live, because he was audibly struggling (and it doesn't make sense to 100% lip synch over a pre-recorded vocal track and have said track demonstrate strained, struggling vocals). He has changed his vocal approach to some of the tunes by singing in lower octaves, and the setlist was such where there was a lot of trading off back and forth between tunes Paul sung lead on and tunes Gene sung lead on. Stanley wasn't playing quite as much guitar-wise as he had in the past, either: he'd sort of stop playing here and there, particularly during verses, and let Thayer take up the slack. Thayer's guitar was noticeably louder in the mix. The inbetween song Paul raps were where Stanley's vocal decline was most noticeable (rather than during the tunes, where the background vocals could sort of paper over it), just in terms of being able to hear how weak and raspy his voice has become. He did mention the word 'Tampa' about 100 times during the show inbetween songs, so at least [Stanley] wasn't suffering from dementia in that he knew where he was playing last night...
The audience appeared to have an average age of about 60 years old. Sadly, not a lot of hot looking cougar milf gilfs, but rather a lot of aged Florida ditch pigs wearing slutty clothes which left their old, saggy flab out on ample display. This one grizzled sow in front of me was wearing something a stripper would and had a stomach that looked like a fucking beach ball...goddamed disgusting oinker.
Anyway, overall it was a slightly better Saturday night than what I usually have, which is falling asleep early on my Laz-y-Boy while listening to Thunderstorm Sounds For Relaxation via youtube on my Amazon tablet with Skullcandy headphones while the missus watches hour after hour of real life spouses killing spouses murder mystery shows.