Musings from the KISS Concert

So we went to see KISS at the California Mid-State Fair last night. Thanks to some good connections, we were invited backstage for a "meet-and-greet" with the band prior to the show [photo to follow]. I had my camera phone and snapped this classic Spinal Tap-esque sign:
We debated moving it somewhere to mess with the band, but Gene Simmons is a scary mother so we decided to stay on our best behavior.

While we were all waiting to meet the band, the Mid-State Fair princesses all showed up. For some reason, they didn't look all that overjoyed to be there...
We finally figured out is was because they were missing their pretty pink jackets! Look how they cheered up once the head of the Fair came over and gave them their coats...

We parked next to UFC legend Chuck Liddell, who was there with some Playmate-of-the-Month. [Adding: Not saying she was actually a Playmate, but she was definitely a blonde hottie.]

Apparently the big new thing for these old time bands is to do straight run-throughs of one of their classic albums. KISS was no exception, in this case they recapped "KISS Alive," the momentous first live album which was the first by KISS I bought with my own money. They played the later classics, "Rock and Roll All Night," "Detroit Rock City," "Shout it Out Loud" etc... for the encore.

I'm betting there is no confetti left in San Luis Obispo county this morning, because KISS used it all during "R-and-R All Night," when they had these huge blowers blasting out tons of the stuff throughout the whole arena. I joked to my brother that I couldn't believe they could find that much confetti around here and he said the Fair had to hire 25 extra people just to make sure it all got cleaned up in time for tonight's Judas Priest concert.

The band was apparently muy disappointed that some of their more theatrical stunts were a no-go because it's a frigging county fair and they don't have the infrastructure to fly Paul Stanley out over the crowd on a wire. By way of compromise, apparently, they provided two simple scissor lifts to raise Gene and "Ace" up about 20 feet or so. It was slow-developing and kinda stupid and the only thing that would've made it better was if they had gotten stuck up there somehow. Ah, if only.

I have it on good authority the band's pre-concert rider called for fifty (50!) blow-dryers. Seeing as how they'd already shorted them on the theatrics (i.e. no flying Paul Stanley) the Fair management did their best to meet this request, cleaning out the local Wal-Mart of every available blow dryer yet still falling short of the necessary fifty. Sheesh.

All in all, an epic, silly, crazy night. Wonder if Judas Priest will be able to top it? We'll know soon enough, as I'm picking Doug and Reek up at the train station in a couple hours and were heading up for tonight's show.