Marty Friedman liebt Kiss
Ziemlich begeistert von Kiss' Party war offenbar Marty Friedman. Der ehemalige Megadeth-Gitarrist postete zu Neujahr eine ausführliche Konzertreview zum Dubaier Pyromassaker. Darin bemäkelte er zwar ein, zwei Kleinigkeiten, verlieh aber auch mehrfach das Prädikat 'gottgleich'. Lest selbst:
I have a bit of insight to what goes into putting on a show of ths tyoe, so I thought I'd share my thoughts with you. Although my streaming show, as extremely cool as I think it is, is in no way, shape or form comparable production-wise with the KISS 2000 Goodbye spectacular. In my show, there was no audience and there were less than 30 people on the entire staff. All but one came from Tokyo, where the show took place.
Even in my comparatively small production, the Covid issue was a major pain in the ass affecting every step of the production, from meetings, to rehearsals, to promotion, everything including the actual performance.
When you are playing your heart out to no one but a bunch of masked dudes who are not there to be entertained, but are in deep concentration at their job, makes you realize just how much the crowd`s energy propels a great show out of you.
With all that and more against you, and then magnifying it drastically in Kiss` case, it would just be so much easier to say, "Screw it, putting on a show in this situation is just too much work" and be done with it. So to see Kiss doing that kind of uber-ambitious show was incredibly inspiring and they continue to have my respect for their unwavering work ethic.
As with every KISS event that I can remember, there are Godlike moments and Cringe moments. Here`s this one dirtbag`s list of those for you.
GODLIKE
Doing this show at all. Doing it very well, I might add. Of course it was nowhere near the energy level of the Alive 2 era, but expecting that is probably unrealistic. They more than make up for that with innovative and exciting over the top light shows, video effects and record breaking amounts of pyro. Even under normal circumstances, this is a huge undertaking by any standards, but being done now, and by guys who could have retired extremely comfortably decades ago makes it all the more rad. I love my grandfather very much but let's face it, when he was Kiss` age, a big day out was going to the corner fruit stand. Mad props.
CRINGE
The pre show video provided more cringe moments than the actual show which had very few. Showing yourself being guided into a first class airplane seat, during a global pandemic, probably did not endear them to many people who can't travel anywhere to see family members, or the stressed-out masses who would love, and certainly deserve a vacation anywhere. A huge cringe occurred when Paul was talking about the importance of wearing a mask for the sake of others-while not wearing a mask himself. Ouch! That`s the core reason why many folks dislike celebrities lately. Now the staff was probably at a safe distance from him while filming, he was probably just tested, and it was probably a completely safe situation, but that doesn`t reduce the irony of such a scenario. Many of the staff were interviewed without masks as well as fans that must come to Dubai from the US for the show. Gene and Paul are extremely smart guys, so there must be a reason they ignored the irony of a bunch of people, including their manager pontificating on all the safety measures they were strictly adhering to--without wearing masks. One might say that footage casts a bit of suspicion with regards to any other safety measures being taken.
GODLIKE
The setlist. The setlist had something for everyone, a great pace as well as a few semi-deep cuts in it. For me personally, an ideal setlist would have absolutely nothing after ALIVE 2 in it, but I'm just one dirtbag, and you have to think of the big picture. When you have that kind of a long career, there is no way to please everyone, so I believe Kiss has the setlist algorithm down to a science. It was also a classy move to respect the host country`s wishes and take out the blood scene and change a few lyrics. If concedance so small makes your host happy and the work environment more harmonious and productive, why not do it? That`s what I call "small compromise=big reward".
Overview:
I haven't got a solid, educated opinion of whether doing this kind of travel intensive show during a global pandemic is right or wrong, but either way thank God for Kiss. They were the most exciting band of my childhood, wrote the book on how to put on a rock show and are still not afraid to do extremely ambitious and even controversial projects, which involve loud guitars and blowing stuff up.
Sollte jemand Lust bekommen haben: Die Sause steht nach wie vor auf Kiss' Website zum Streaming bereit.
Noch keine Kommentare