NASHVILLE – Rock City A pair of legendary superbands unite
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Opening with “Detroit Rock City,” KISS, with three of its original four members (minus Ace Frehley), descended from the rafters, clad in their famous make-up and outfits, to open the show as the audience came out of its seats.
Since I have never seen KISS before, I was pleasantly surprised by their show. Given the fact they are getting up there in years, I wasn’t sure what to expect. However, they put on a great show, sounding just like the KISS I remember from the early ’80s as vocalist Gene Simmons still had that old KISS sound. And, given they again wear full make-up, they even looked like they did 20 years ago.
The stage show itself was quite impressive with the pyrotechnic effects along with the rising stage which whisked Simmons into the rafters for “God of Thunder.”
One of the best parts about the KISS set was that they played their old stuff exclusively and almost everyone in the audience knew all the words to their songs. Concert-goers will tell you they come to hear the established songs, not the new stuff. And, given the fact KISS has done like 100 farewell tours, they really don’t have new stuff.
After doing all of their old standards, KISS re-appeared for their encore, starting it out with “Beth,” which is a song they got away from doing over the years. However, its popularity forced them to bring it back to their shows. They then finished with “Love Gun” and finally, the rock-and-roll anthem, “Rock and Roll All Night.”
Following the great show put on by KISS, I was somewhat disappointed by the Aerosmith show, since they are one of my favorite bands.
Their set started strong with some classics like “Love in an Elevator” and “Same Old Song and Dance.” And, as Aerosmith fans have become accustomed to, Steven Tyler was wired on stage, running back and forth, doing monkey flips and just being his outrageous self.
However, things bogged down in the middle as they broke out the new stuff which will be on next year’s album. The move turned off a lot of concert-goers as I saw people begin walking around the concourse and wandering around during their three-song sweep of new material. The new stuff, by the way, has a blues-type sound, a little bit more honkey tonk than we are accustomed to hearing from Aerosmith.
Aerosmith did make a bit of a recovery when they got back to their basics with “Dream On” and “Walk This Way,” the latter of which had that hip-hop feel of the version they did with Run DMC many years ago.
However, their recovery was short lived as their show was seemingly cut short after they performed “Toys in the Attic” and promptly left the stage without an encore, leaving people standing there wondering what happened. Come to find out, a curfew for outside concerts exists at AmSouth and the groups had already gone overtime so they had no option but to close it down early.
All in all, it was a good concert, a bit pricey on the tickets really, but we did have two headline groups playing, plus the opening act “Saliva” was surprisingly good despite their continued reminders they are “Tennessee boys” from Memphis to get the cheap hometown pops from the crowd.