Dec 19, 1977 (46 years ago) Capital Centre Landover, Maryland, United States
Uploaded by Jeffrey Lee
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Question! I am looking for a present for a mentor who mentioned this as the best show he’s ever attended. Where did you get the images? I was even going to just make a print from the poster (or newspaper clipping?) but was hoping to find slightly better quality image. Any advice? Thanks!
One Not-So-Good Night Kiss By Jenefer Hirshberg — The Washington Post Tuesday, December 20, 1977
Mass hysteria, usually reserved for the last few songs that climax a rock concert, raged among last night's Capital Centre crush and greeted Kiss as they appeared on stage. And appear they did, amidst flashing colored lights and minor explosives.
The fusion of music and theater on stage is nothing new - remember Little Richard; and if there is a forum for outlandish overstatement, it is in the rock arena. But this is ridiculous.
Kiss's two-to-three chord melodyless, lyricless music is so loudly repetitious as to be almost characterless. The character (if you'll pardon the expression) comes from their stage show, which by now is legendary with its blood-spitting, tongue-flicking and fire-spewing - yes, literal pyrotechnics.
Throughout the show Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons gratuitously tossed guitar picks into the audience, and during the last number (prior to their two encores) Stanley smashed his guitar, à la Jimi Hendrix and The Who, and threw that into the audience as well, as it rained confetti over the stage.
Kiss plays rock and roll with a heavy handedness that is supposed to be mistaken for energy but which has all the subtlety of a lead pipe. This perhaps accounts for the average age of their adorers. The accumulative age of the capacity crowd had to be one of the lowest ever.
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