KISS at Riverfront Coliseum Cincinnati, Ohio - September 14, 1979

I was 12 years old when my Dad took me and two friends to see KISS on September 14, 1979 at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was my first KISS concert and this was just 3 months before The Who concert tragedy where 11 people were killed at the same venue. We were briefly trapped in a similar crush of humanity when they opened the doors. Concerts were almost always general admission back then. I can still recall the look of terror on my Dad's face as he tried to corral three youngsters safely through the turnstiles. It was pretty scary.

Judas Priest opened the show and I remember thinking they were terrible. It all sounded like one grinding E-chord for 45 minutes. I had already been playing guitar for over a year at this point and my ears told me that there just wasn't enough going on with Judas Priest to hold my interest. Of course in retrospect we now know that 1979 was a great time to catch Priest in concert. But I was just a kid and I was there to see KISS, not this bullshit! Other than a handful of tunes, I've never really gotten into Priest and I'm sure it's because of this formative experience. If 12-year old me said, "Meh", that's a Forever Meh.

As I recall, our seats were about 2/3rds of the way back, on the lower level, stage right, maybe halfway up. Not great seats, but not bad. I brought along a little instamatic camera but we were much too far from the stage to get decent photos. I caught one grainy pic of their iconic logo all lit up way in the distance. Smaller than a pinky fingernail on a now faded grey snapshot.

When the house lights dimmed and the band was introduced, I smelled marijuana smoke for the first time in my life. Cigarette smoking was much more common back then. My Dad smoked Kents. So I was familiar with the smell of cigarette smoke. But this was something different and somehow I just instinctively knew what it was. After the show when the house lights came back on, a huge blue cloud lingered in the rafters of the coliseum and a haze hung over the entire arena.

What I remember about the performance itself was a lot of flash, smoke and fire, great light show, but the music sounded a little sluggish. Like they were not quite bringing their A game and even as a kid I recognized this. The concert was not a let down by any means. At that time in my life they could do no wrong. But I do remember thinking they didn't sound as good as their records. They rose as if like magic up out of the smoke filled stage at the beginning of the show, standing totally still on four separate platforms like visiting royalty basking in a storm of screaming fans who were applauding and shouting wildly like eighteen thousand rabid animals. It was quite a moment for this particular young fan. In those days, it was rare to see any of your musical heroes in action, walking, talking, singing, playing their instruments. This was before MTV, decades before downloads and streaming, before music became ubiquitous and disposable. There still was a great deal of mystique and sorcery behind it all, especially with this particular band. By design, it was as if superheroes had descended upon my boring little Midwestern town. It beggared belief and tested the limits of credulity.

Gene Simmons spat a shower of blood, breathed a pillar of fire, and even flew 30 feet up in the air to an elevated riser where he sang "God of Thunder". Ace Frehley had his smoking guitar and shot what looked like glorified bottle rockets out of it during his guitar solo. Like Gene, his guitar also flew to the ceiling of the arena. It hung there as sustaining feedback rang out through the coliseum. Emerging from the smoke with another Les Paul, Ace shot a few more rockets out of it and blew up the guitar suspended high above the audience. Pretty neat stuff, really. Even when you already know they're going to do these things, based on stuff you've read in Hit Parader magazine, it's still an incredible spectacle.

From their 1978 solo albums, only two songs were included in the set: "Move On" from Paul Stanley's record, and of course Ace's hit single "New York Groove". At the time I remember thinking it was weird that Gene and Peter didn't get to sing a song from their solo records. Come to find out that earlier in the tour they were playing one song from each of the guys' solo efforts. But Gene's song and Peter's too were both dropped from the set for some reason. I can definitely see where the band decided they had songs in their repertoire that got a better audience response and those 10 minutes on stage were wasted if they represented a surefire lull in an otherwise unrelenting and supercharged performance. Peter Criss sitting behind the drums singing a cover of "Tossin' And Turnin'" is just dumb, when you think about it. These guys are supposed to be mythical creatures from another plane and here they are playing a song that a third rate Holiday Inn hotel bar band would shelve in favor of a second bass solo. With "King of the Night Time World'', "2000 Man", and "New York Groove" in the set, they were already performing three songs in the show that they didn't write. And Gene's solo album doesn't have a single track on it that would really translate well in the Arena Rock setting anyway.

The show's big finale was literally explosive as a blizzard of confetti caused white out conditions for several minutes. It was disorienting to be showered with confetti on top of the all-out assault on your senses with smoke and fire and blinding lights for two straight hours. They were riding high in the late '70s but the band would lose Peter and then Ace soon after this. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley stumbled and struggled to make sense of anything through the '80s and well into the '90s before finally regrouping with the original line up for the 1996 reunion tour. More bad records and line up changes came and went. I'm a bit of a stickler for the original foursome. But whoever is wearing the make up, whether it's 1976 or 1996, all the way up to now with the band continuing their End of the Road tour, KISS still puts on the greatest show on earth. No one even comes close.

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I ganked these photos from The God of Thunder Facebook page. They were all taken at Riverfront Coliseum on 9/14/79.