VWMusic

All images courtesy of Sam Loomis/YouTube

By Dylan Peggin
recordspinner97@gmail.com

Just when fans were going nuts over the Passaic ‘75 footage, Sam Loomis wasn’t done dropping magic on July 9th. The next bit of footage they uploaded breaks the cycle a bit in terms of the type of content and the timeline in which they’ve been covering but was surely a surprise to many.

In the late evening of July 9th, footage from a Gene Simmons in-store appearance at Tape City in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 18, 1978, in support of his solo album was uploaded to YouTube. Local television network WDSU Channel 6 was on hand to cover the appearance as flocks of kids crowded the store and awaited the Demon to sign their album covers. Gene has a few words with the news reporter and also shares a moment with a female attendant. Footage of this sort is good fun to view, especially to experience the excitement of the fans and to wrap one’s head around the concept of a KISS member doing an in-store appearance. It is intimate settings like this that proved to be such solid vehicles of promotion at the time.

Pace yourselves for the next upload Sam dropped that evening and it is something that fans have been demanding and wanting: a pro-shot of the Asylum tour.

That same evening, footage from the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee on November 30, 1985, during the Asylum tour was uploaded to YouTube. A slew of footage exists for this show. Local television network WSOC Channel 9 was on hand to cover the start of the tour. Most notably, Howard Marks Advertising filmed a majority of the show for advertising purposes. The footage is silent and for a while, five minutes worth of footage with audio synched from the soundboard recording at the Charlotte Coliseum

in Charlotte, North Carolina on December 28, 1985 (a fantastic bootleg recording!) circulated. Now, forty-six minutes worth of footage with audio synched from the audience recording at the tour’s opening night at the T.H. Barton Coliseum in Little Rock, Arkansas coincidently the day before on November 29, 1985, is now in our hands. While a few bits of amateur footage from this tour, this is as good as it gets.

What makes this footage particularly special is that it features tracks like “King of the Mountain” and “Any Way You Slice It,” which would be dropped by the end of the tour. The stage production is featured here in all its glory with the giant oversized KISS logo, the album cover stage floor, the giant stairs on the side of the stage and the monstrous lighting rig. The wide-angle shots taken from the soundboard do serious justice to the grand spectacle of this particular production. Let’s not even talk about the band’s outfits… Technically, I would note that the setlist is “partial” because the closing number of the tour was “Lick It Up” but it is the one song that wasn’t committed to videotape but it can be safely assumed that it was performed this evening.

Setlist: Detroit Rock City/Fits Like a Glove/King of the Mountain/Cold Gin/Paul Stanley Guitar Solo/Uh! All Night/Any Way You Slice It/Eric Carr Drum Solo/War Machine/I Still Love You/Under The Gun/Bruce Kulick Guitar Solo/Tears are Falling/Gene Simmons Bass Solo/I Love It Loud/Love Gun/Rock and Roll All Nite/Heaven’s on Fire/Lick It Up

Did Howard Marks Advertising give any other show during this period the same treatment as filming for promotional purposes? Sam Loomis, unlock Pandora’s Box and show us what you got!

– Dylan Peggin (@Record_Spinner) is a columnist for www.vwmusicrocks.com and may be reached at recordspinner97@gmail.com