Last Night in Oberhausen, Germany ...

[uwe]

... with Ms. Witz' son being the subject (again!) in other threads I thought I should not hide this from you ... They were better than two years ago when I last saw them, not as rusty, better selection of songs, Paul's voice fit for the high notes, the Axe bass sounding miraculously better than the Punisher and Thommy not such a musical Ace clone. Real good version of a stripped down Beth unplugged with Eric sing(er)ing ... and even some impromptu jamming in songs ...

[Highlander]

I guess we're not in Kansas anymore...

Nice one Herrr Hornung... just as well they never retired...

[jumbodbassman]

last time i saw them was new years eve at Nassau Coleseum - probably 1980-81.  Entertaining...

once was enough for me.

[leftybass]

once was enough for me.

Me too, saw them in Corpus Christi,TX in 1980(?), I really went for the opening act, The Plasmatics, but stayed for Kiss.

[Highlander]

Saw them in London, Hammersmith, for two nights in '76...

Unlikely to repeat those perfect nights now...

[godofthunder]

I saw them in '75 or was it '74 ? '77 and '81 right before they took off the make up. They are going to be close this summer maybe I can get tickets from my brother in law.

[Hornisse]

Saw them in '84 at Palmer Auditorium (RIP) on the Lick It Up Tour.  Vinnie Vincent had 7 Jackson Randy Rhodes guitars and they kicked ass.  Gene was playing a single pickup Pedulla and Paul had the leopard print BC Rich Eagle.  Eric Carr was a fantastic drummer.  Last time was the 2000 "Farewell" tour when Ace and Peter were still in the band. 

[gearHed289]

Cool man. Thanks for the pics. I've kind of gotten used to the idea of the "scabs" in the band. KISS is kind of like a Vegas act at this point anyway. It is good to know though, that underneath it all, there still is a pretty decent caveman rock band. 

Tours I've seen:
Destroyer
Alive II
Lick it Up
Animalize
Revenge
reunion '96
"farewell" 2000

I think I'm about done!

[uwe]

They sold out a 12,000 seater (or "stander") rapidly in Oberhausen. At ticket prices of 70-110 bucks. That is pretty amazing for a band that never really sold its records well in Germany. Similarly to the Rolling Stones, a lot more people go to a Kiss concert than buy their albums. And they played three titles off Sonic Boom and their Slade pastiche "Crazy, Crazy Nights", an acoustic "Beth" and Argent's "God gave RnR to you". I very much preferred that to the last tour where they dwelled on reproducing their first Alive album completely and slavishly which at least in part hasn't aged very well at all regarding the compositional nutrition value. Never the most credible of heavy metal acts, even when they tried, I prefer poppy Kiss (Dressed to kill, Destroyer, Dynasty, Crazy Nights etc) to the more heavy-handed one.

If only they had done "Anything for my baby" too! That always sounded like an Archies number to me and I love Simmons' old style rock'n'roll bass playing on it.

[Hornisse]

I think Dressed To Kill is among my favorite LP's. 

[Denis]

Those pics bring back fond memories of the show I saw at Cumberland County Arena when my dad took me. What a great time. Many layers of colored smoke, some of which were not caused by the band. Heh.

[Chris P.]

It's always a bit scary. 12.000 Germans together on a zeppelin field or in a great hall, black uniforms on stage, those double-S'es in runen signs, takin about a 'world tour'...

[Highlander]

Sorry... couldn't resist reposting this one... 

[uwe]

This was actually the first time I saw them use their trademark SS runes (once coyly described by Simmons as "just the US sign for high voltage electricity" - I'm not sure whether that is what they were alluding to when they introduced it) in Germany, in the past, all German releases of Kiss product used a reverse double-Z:



not the runes as here:



The German release of the legendary first Alive album had the logo covered by one without the runes and even Peter's bass drum, which featured the name Kiss with runes too, was crudely airbrushed.



The SS runes are outlawed in Germany (just like the swastika or the abbreviation "NS", hence no swastika decals in model kits destined for Germany), using them outside of a historical-documentary context is a crime/felony. Kiss were never treated as an exception though Paul's and Gene's jewish origins probably exonerate them from any Nazi sympathies. How Gene's mom, an Auschwitz survivor, feels when she sees the runes in the logo of her son's band is not known, hopefully she does associate them first and foremost with high voltage electricity.

In the past, Kiss have had skirmishes with German authorities, complaining that "Germany is the one and only country in the world where we are not allowed to use our trademarked logo".  It seems like this time they struck a deal with the authorities/prosecutors. Knowing the Kiss organisation, I'm sure they did not leave it up to chance. But it's still a thorny subject in Germany. While Kiss' jewish origins are hardly known in Germany, the fact that they use the SS runes certainly is and I remember catching some flak at school in the late seventies for "liking a Nazi band". Wearing a Kiss t-shirt with the runes would have very likely seen me kicked from school (not that they were obtainable in Germany in any case).

Uwe

[Freuds_Cat]

Thats amazing Uwe, I had no idea about any of that. I guess we are so far removed from it here that we dont even consider things like that.