Nashville, TN - Media Reviews
KISS, Def Leppard rock Nashville all night By Dave Paulson
If you go see a major music artist in concert at an arena these days, there's a good chance you'll also see some fireworks. Plenty of acts have at least a few of them shoot off at the end of their show, to give their fans one last spectacle before they head home.
And then there's KISS.
KISS opens their show with fireworks. Tons of them. Flames and fog, too – they spew out from all sides of the stage as the band descends from the ceiling, riding a massive, spider-shaped lighting rig.
The antics only got more over-the-top from there during KISS' concert at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, and that's exactly what their longtime fans in Music City expected.
"We've been coming to Nashville longer than some of you have been alive," guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley told them, after recalling past gigs at Municipal Auditorium and the long-gone Muther's Music Emporium.
It's a momentous year in the costumed rock band's history. Their current co-headlining tour with Def Leppard is marking their 40th anniversary, and in April, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — after fans spent more than a decade campaigning on their behalf.
"You made it happen," Stanley told his Nashville audience on Wednesday. He also noted that the city had come a long way since their first visits, too. Nashville may be famed for its country music, he said, but "this may well be the capital of rock and roll music in the United States of America."
For all the worry that KISS generated among concerned parents in the '70s, members of the "KISS Army" apparently grew up to be well-adjusted adults – some with young recruits of their own. According to recent headlines, you'd find a rowdier crowd at a Luke Bryan show than the group assembled at Bridgestone on Wednesday.
Before the show, several generations of fans waited patiently in the lobby to get their faces painted in the style of their favorite KISS members, and when charitable partners Wounded Warrior Project presented a mortgage free-home to a retired sergeant, a spontaneous chant of "U.S.A.!" broke out in the audience. Halfway through KISS' set, Stanley even polled the crowd about their faith: "How many of you like to pray to God? I pray."
Of course, that came after his bandmate Gene Simmons spat fake blood all over his leather outfit and "flew" to the ceiling while spreading his demon wings. It's a move he pulled at the band's last stop at the arena in 2009, as was Stanley's wire ride over the audience to perform on a small stage on the other side of the arena.
But on the other hand, their lifelong fans wouldn't expect anything different. In the words of the band's trademark stage introduction – they wanted "the best," and they got "the best." And as Stanley, Simmons and company said goodnight with the band's signature tune, "Rock and Roll All Nite," those fans also got one last deafening blast of fireworks, fog and confetti.
Sharing a stage with KISS meant there wasn't room for frills or filler when Def Leppard took the stage earlier that evening. The British band plowed through the hits in their 75-minute set, happy to relieve their '80s heyday with a crowd that stayed firmly on its feet. Singer Joe Elliott gave a special dedication to the fans who went all the way back to 1983 with their breakout album "Pyromania," and vintage band photos flashed on the video screens as they played "Hysteria."
The room went wild for a drum solo by Rick Allen, who's still keeping the beat for the band despite having his left arm amputated after a car accident nearly 30 years ago. Guitarist Vivian Campbell also got a deserved turn in the spotlight — he's continued to tour with the group despite an ongoing battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma.
"I think you're ready for this," Elliott hollered right before the band launched into their definitive smash, "Pour Some Sugar On Me." They waved goodnight after that one, but they couldn't leave for good without coming back for "Photograph," the song that made them rock giants in 1983.
"We'll see you next time," Elliott told them afterwards. "And there will be a next time!"
By The Tennessean 2014.
KISS and Def Leppard at Bridgestone Arena, 7/16/14 By The Spin
The second best song in the KISS katalog, “Deuce” — which the decidedly depth-bereft band (or what’s left of them) played second in a 15-song set at Bridgestone Arena Wednesday night — boasts perhaps the funniest head-scratcher of an opening line in klassic rock: “Get up! And get your grandma outta here!” If the thousands of KISS Army soldiers packing the arena to the rafters took those lyrics to heart, the band would have been playing to a sea of empty seats by song’s end, leaving a meager crowd of tuckered-out tikes and paint-faced tweens to take in the show — a co-headlining affair with vaunted, MTV Era-defining, age-defying pop-metal uber-Brits Def Leppard.
KISS concerts have become a wholesome family affair, with fans in their 60s bringing sons and daughters in their 40s, who bring elementary and high-school-age sons and daughters to see a fiery, Ringling Bros.-worthy spectacle steeped in ’70s arena-rock pastiche. In that sense, seeing KISS is the concert equivalent of a repertory Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing, with veteran fans cheering along to a predictable ritual of explosive, high-flying shenaniganry that needs to be there to satisfy a fresher-faced crowd of KISS virgins. The highlights Wednesday were pretty much the same as the last two times we caught KISS at the ‘Stone (in 2009, when it was still the Sommet Center, and again in 2012). Paul sailed across the arena and over the crowd to a B stage to sing “Love Gun.” Gene breathed fire during “Hotter Than Hell,” spit blood during his bass solo and barked out “God of Thunder" from a stage atop the lighting trusses. A blizzard of confetti covered the crowd during obligatory closer “Rock and Roll All Nite.” And heart-stopping, shock-and-awe-inducing bursts of pyro punctuated key downbeats in nearly every number.
With astoundingly ridiculous banter like a cross between a rodeo clown and a rival preacher, flamboyant stage struts, knee-drops and acrobatic guitar slings, 62-year-old “Starchild” Paul Stanley is still an animal onstage. "Nashville used to be capital of country music [cue boos] ... Now it's cool,” Stanley said at one point. Validation! Finally! Gene Simmons, meanwhile, is still an ogre. Eric Singer is still not Peter Criss, and Tommy Thayer is still not Ace Frehley.
For a band with such legendarily dedicated fans — proto-Juggalos with comic-book-collector dorky devotion — KISS does little to entice the die-hards, turning many of them off by dressing up Singer and Thayer in Catman and Spaceman make-up and ignoring the bulk of their now partially Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-recognized catalog in favor of a nightly greatest-hits rehash. But last night the band did offer up a couple curveballs.
To our surprise, they opened with the not-all-too-classic title track to their 1998 comeback attempt Psycho Circus. After opening with “Deuce” in 2009 and “Detroit Rock City” in 2012 at Bridgestone, this, dear readers, is an unacceptable trajectory. The song choice was slightly redeemed, however, by a massive, bulbous spider-shaped rig the band levitated to the stage upon. The deepest cut and obvious piss-break-cuer of the set was the 1989, non-make-up-era single “Hide Your Heart,” which actually included a pretty fun, spirited mid-song call-and-response breakdown that people (or as Stanley would say, “PEOPLE!”) did participate in, even if they were sitting down by that point.
Speaking of the non-make-up-era, KISS kicked out of version of “Lick It Up” complete with a mid-song snippet cover of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It was the second appearance The Who classic made last night. In pro form, Def Leppard kind of opened with it. The song played as house music before the co-headliners took the stage, with the lights dimming during the organ solo. Then, with the iconic “YEAAAAH!” that brings the rock back in, the big curtain dropped, reveling Def Lep, who finished the song on their own. Now that’s how you open a fuckin’ show!
As expected, Def Lep turned in an arena-rattling note-perfect set of expertly crafted hits that was pretty much an abridged version of the last time we caught ‘em. Sure, we could split hairs over the band slotting “Let’s Get Rocked” — the “Hokey Pokey” of hair-metal shuffles — BEFORE the mid-show acoustic set, or in-fine-form frontman Joe Elliott doing the Axl Rose “Patience” sway during power ballads like “Love Bites,” but otherwise the performance was a testament to slick, finely tuned rock perfection worthy of Mutt Lange. Despite going on before KISS, Def Lep delivered the fever-pitch moment of the show with the timelessly great “Photograph.” With a catalog rife with jams like that, “Foolin’,” “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” “Rock of Ages” and “Animal,” Def Leppard slayed KISS in a bout the likes of Mike Tyson vs. Peter McNeeley, despite being at an obvious disadvantage in the stage production department.
By Nashville Scene 2014.
A final farewell kiss Kiss, Def Leppard - Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, TN 7/16/2014 By
Resound at eight points by way of intro band The Who Will not Get Fooled Again song, which is a stand with a huge scream, but by the time it went down, he had lightning villanyleó, Def Leppard on stage and continued his labor of the Who's legendary. I can not say surprised, but it was effective beginning, in fact. But it is just as good and effective resume also have their own track, 'Let It Go bouncy beats. This song is always out of place, and dates from 1981. Filled the arena in no time and has developed into a real koncerthelyszínné. Despite the huge Def Leppardnak the nimbus and success in the States, so it's no wonder the party just started, but not low fares to full houses we passed on.
By Hard Rock Magazine 2014 - (Yes, the translation is not good-see link).
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