Thursday, August 09, 2012

The Hottest Blog Post in the World!


I'm still buzzing over an experience that I had a little over a week ago.  What you see here was my perspective for about ninety minutes, a fifth-row center seat to the Hottest Band in the World, and it's something that I'll never forget.  I felt as though I'd actually spent quality time with the band and was quite sad when they went away.

I've always said that KISS, along with "Star Wars" and "Saturday Night Live," were the three things that I was practically raised on.  All three were there during my developmental years, with "Love Gun" being the first album that I ever owned at the ripe old age of five.  So you can imagine how warped I was back in 1996 when KISS put the makeup back on and went on tour, during the same year that George Lucas re-released "Star Wars" in neighborhood theatres, confusing my subconscious into thinking that it was 1977 all over again like Christopher Reeve in that "Somewhere in Time" movie.

How's that for an obscure film reference, huh?

But now here I was, sixteen years and two more KISS shows later, and I was literally standing about thirty feet away from the band as I watched them do their KISS thing.  I didn't know what to do with myself, and the experience was almost awkward as I stood there, watching a show that in all honesty was designed to be seen from a distance.  Aside from the occasional point to my section and a few guitar picks thrown around me (I was too much in a sentimental daze to even reach for them), the band played to the rest of the amphitheatre, a facility that I turned to notice the immensity of only during breaks in my nostalgia trance.

It was one surreal episode in this life o' mine!

Case in point, I only took one picture the entire night, and it's the one that you see right here.  I take that back.  I took more, but then I realized that this was one part of my day that I didn't want to experience from behind a phone.