The first piece of music I ever bought was Gene Simmons's solo album when I was 9. All my neighbors thought I was the devil, I think my neighbors mother disallowed her son to play with me when she found out I had the LP in my possession. He did sneak over, with his mothers disapproval to listen to it on more than 1 occasion. At the same time I bought the AC/DC Highway to Hell, which didn't make things more appealing to non rock-n-rollers. But anyway, the chance to go see KISS live was a must do.

Living here in Munich, not knowing all the German, I bought a ticket that I thought was the floor standing seats, but it turned out the ticket was standing, but outside of the arena sitting arena, you could only see the stage by looking over the heads of the people in the last row. Once I found this out, I quickly sold my ticket on eBay and bought another one from eBay for floor seats. No way I was going to see them from so far back.

I remember when I was in college I used to run a lot on the streets. Once I was playing basketball with a football player who said that running on pavement was an unnecessary strain on my joints. The opening band for KISS was an unnecessary strain on my ear drums. I don't know their name, but there was no connection with their music with me, other than the connection of the sound to my ear drums.

KISS made us wait about 40 minutes between the sets. Once they came out though, it was awesome. They dropped a big flag with KISS on it about 10 minutes before they started and came out of the ceiling playing Black Diamond. I had seen them in many magazines and television but they looked so cool live. Almost like robots or alien creatures from space, Gene was scary.

The highlight of the show for me was when they played 'Rock and Roll all Night'.  First they shot out at least a billion pieces of confetti and then we sang the song for at least 10-15 minutes extra, just singing the chorus over and over again.  'I.....wanna rock and roll all night......and party every day.'  I was standing there hands raised, back arched looking upwards into the confetti just singing at the top of my lungs, along with KISS and the other +20,000 people in attendance.

The combination of really cool music, unique band characters and really cool effects are the foundation of great musical entertainment.  I have seen super bands who play super music, but not many who have the unique individuals combined with a show.  KISS has it all and it was a super experience.

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