Wembley Show Reports Thread (Thu 13th)

[The Hendon Kiss Army]

mark made me laugh on the phone. he said he enjoyed the Meet and Greet best. I said you didn't do that to which he said the real meet and Greet was in The Sports Bar on Thursday with the Kissinuk Army and loads more beside. how Spot on

[markunderwood]

Heartily concur with that. Great to catch up with HKA and the Real Hendon Kiss Army. The former was on great form wielding his pink inflatable strat, whilst the latter worked himself up into such a frenzy that he was topless fairly early on. Just another excuse to flash his tats in my opinion. Great to meet up with all the KIUK'ers in the Sports Bar beforehand - Mr Majester, Skinny Martin etc - and let's hope we won't have to wait too long to do it all again. Heading off to Wembley Stadium shortly, but I doubt it'll be a patch on my Thursday night experience at the Arena. It's only been my 5th gig in 30 years, but easily my favourite.

[RippingFleshFromBone]

A journalist had abviously wound Paul up as he made a comment about there being no extra 'hidden musicians' or 'tapes' under the stage..I'm amazed that a shitty review can still get under his skin..

Nah, he said that at almost all the shows...unless it was an early review that bugged him! Couldn't say that in 88 tho could he...

[ACE4EVER]

Hi all,

first post (obviously ), I tend to check this site out most days, but never feel the need to post

anyway.....


Just got back from the wembley show, and wanted to share my comments about a great night,
it's been 30 yeaars since i first saw KISS, and it was a slightly surreal feeling, taking along my 8 year old daughter, she's been talking about this day since we got the tickets and needless to say was unbelievably excited, she'd previously been to only one show before and that was Jonas Bros (cue booing, but, honestly they weren't that bad.......cough, cough) nah for what it's worth they where pretty good with the young crowd

So, we booked into the Wembley plaza and she was shuffling all the songs on my phone and was getting more and more excited as the time to go to the arena drew closer,asking me questions about previous shows, will they have the tank, will the Demon spit blood ?, I'd purposely kept her away from the show details, as i wanted it to be fesh and exciting for her, like it was for me all those years ago.

When we got into the arena she loved all the people in make up and kept pointing them out, especially one dressed as Ace in the pit with the Destroyer costume on, very cool

once the lights dimmed and the famous hum and "YOU WANTED THE BEST....." came over the PA she literally threw her fist in the air and shrieked, it was fantastic, throughout the whole show she stood up, punched the air, screamed, shouted and sang the entire set, never once taking the smile off her face, it was better than her christmas morning reaction, I was literlly moved I couldn't believe that after all these years KISS where here playng in front of my lil girl, a truely magical night, I have a lovely, if poorly shot vid of the blood routine and once finished, you can hear an almight shriek to my left, i turn the camera round and there she is smiling and clapping....brilliant

as for me, I honestly don't think i've seen a better KISS show, probably made all the better due to her being there with me

anyway the reason for me posting is this

I don't know if it was one of you posters on here,( he'd previously seen 3 shows on the tour) but when we got back to our hotel, a guy gave her a plectrum he'd caught at the show, and she was gobsmacked when we got back to her room, she couldn't believe she had an actual plectrum they'd used and has now convinced herself he was probably playing Rock nRoll all nite when he threw it, so, even though I thanked you there and then i'd like to once again thank you for making her night even more memorable

Thank you

Hi mate , that was me, glad she liked it , it's good to see all the young kiss fans of the future, lets hope that was not her last kiss show and they come back to the uk soon .
Keep Rocking mate . STE.

[Father Jack]

What a very thoughtful generous gesture. Well done sir.

[Arisia]

Hi mate , that was me, glad she liked it , it's good to see all the young kiss fans of the future, lets hope that was not her last kiss show and they come back to the uk soon .
Keep Rocking mate . STE.

Again thank you

It really made everything that much more special for her, she now wants to put the ticket and plectrum into a frame and hang it in her bedroom,I might try and grab a Paul n Gene one of ebay so she can have the set.
I can pretty much guarantee it won't be her last show, Jonas and Hannah have taken a back seat and her school satchel is now full of KISS badges, which completley bemuses her friends, though she's now talking em round



here's a few terrible photos of her at the begining of the show (I guess iphones aint that great at everything!!)

before the show with her homemade tshirt


and just before the lights went out


here's a bigger pic of her tshirt, came out kinda cool, i grabbed a Gene pic i found on the net and adapted it by painting over it in photoshop, the Paul was some random picture of a girl which i painted over


I would post the link to the youtube blood routine for you to see/hear her reaction but it's probably only special to me, and you'd just think bloody hell, that's a crap vid

LOL

[IcemanKeith]

Excellent T-Shirt design mate!!!

[Ben Hartmann]

The former was on great form wielding his pink inflatable strat, whilst the latter worked himself up into such a frenzy that he was topless fairly early on

I managed to get a good shot of the strat in mid air



Rgds

Ben

[PhoeniX PhiL]

Apologies for the delay in getting this up... work abnned access to the site for a while but it's finally back up and running during the 9 - 5....

"13th of May was fantastic! I went along with my wife (who is largely indifferent to their music) and we were standing sort of near Paul's second stage. The new Google Earth intro was excellent... really cheesy and OTT but very exciting.

Early on I was worried as the people standing near us were largely static during MDD and Cold Gin (I think i had been spoiled by being at the rapturous Islington gig) and didn't really wake up until the jam outro of LMGRnR.

Bizarrely it was Say Yeah that really got the crowd around us up and going - it was really treated like a new hit, then when they showed the first album's cover on screen I felt a ripple of excitement pass over the crowd which turned in fist pumping mania as Deuce kicked in.

Crazy Crazy Nights really got the whole of the audience on side though - putting this song back in the set list for the UK fans is one of the smartest moves the band has made in terms of cementing their reputation in the UK. It was slightly spoiled by some Shoreditch type stumbling all over the place with his camera phone filming himself singing along to it (I don't mean bouncing which is fine I mean drunkenly stumbling into people with his elbow out)... he left straight after the song had finished so I'm guessing it was the only song he knew.

The momentum from CCN continued through Calling Dr. Love and also Shock Me (which went down a storm around us with people singing along word for word). The guitar / drum solo reboot was AWESOME... Tommy and Eric have really found a way to re-invent that part of the show for modern audiences plus it also increases their profile as equal members.

I thought I'm An Animal was a great addition and held up surprisingly well against the classics plus I loved Paul's campy intro of "We're going to slow things down.. but it's still gonna be tough!" Pure Starchild! The new slim lined 100,000 Years sounds a lot fresher without the drum solo and the (possibly Islington influenced) "whoah-oh oh oh" audience participation bit over the solo has breathed new life into Detroit Rock City. I wasn't expecting to hear an arena of people sing a guitar solo and it still makes my spine tingle when I think back to it. Whole Lotta Love / Black Diamond was similarly inspired and hungry... I cant believe I wrote this band off back in 2000. I love Ace and Peter but I mean, this gig was a galaxy away compared to the tired old band who recorded things like the Millennium concert.

The encores were surreally good.. I can barely remember them. The crowd were truly rev'd up by this point... Lick It Up got one of the biggest reactions of the night which surprised me. Paul flying over my head and prancing around on a podium singing I Was Made For Lovin' You was truly a fantastic moment in my Kiss-fandom... it was so mind-meltingly fantastic that after that, GGrnRTY & RnRAN were just one big fuzzy grinning from ear to ear singalong.

A fantastic night and although my wife still isnt a fan of their music she said it was a lot better than she expected and admitted on the way that they made a lot of bands look extremely boring."

[RippingFleshFromBone]

...her homemade tshirt

That's home made?

Holy crap! That's better than the official shirts...love it!

[MrBlackwell]

The one thing I was disgusted about with the Wembley gig was the amounts of plastic containers of beer/pee that were constantly thrown. I was at B/Ham and Manc too and neither were this bad for things being thrown