VWMusic

All images courtesy of Sam Loomis/YouTube

By Dylan Peggin
recordspinner97@gmail.com

On July 10th, footage of the encores from Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan on January 25, 1976, during the Alive! Tour was uploaded to YouTube. Footage from this show is familiar to us fans for being released as a Best Buy exclusive bonus disc for KISSOLOGY Vol. 1. What had been released was the show sans the encores. For the first time ever, the encores appear here. During these encores, Paul is sporting a rather intriguing top hat! What makes this footage more special is that Casablanca Records Executive Vice President and co-founder Larry Harris comes out on stage and presents the band with their first RIAA platinum awards in recognition of 1 million copies sold of Alive! This was merely the start of the band’s journey as America’s #1 Gold Record Award Winning Group of All Time. 

Setlist (full show, encores are specified as *): Deuce/Strutter/C’mon and Love Me/Hotter Than Hell/Firehouse/She/Ladies in Waiting/Nothin’ to Lose/100,000 Years/Black Diamond/Cold Gin*/Rock and Roll All Nite*/Let Me Go Rock ‘n’ Roll*

July 11th and 12th were two of the quieter days as of recently for a KISS fan since no uploads were seen on the Sam Loomis YouTube channel. Even on a day with no fresh content, fans were still rejoicing over what has been seen with more speculation on what they are wanting to see. Sure enough, after a small bout of silence, Sam delivered a triple hitter of fantastic footage. 

On July 13th, fifty-six seconds of newsreel footage covering KISS’ show at The Palladium in New York, New York on July 25th, 1980 was uploaded to YouTube. While the footage is brief and grainy in terms of quality,  it is historic in the sense that it is taken from Eric Carr’s first show with KISS and the sole American show of the Unmasked Tour. According to the description of the video, this footage was first shown at the 2018 Atlanta KISS Expo. It is known that other bits of 8mm footage from this show exist and one can hope that Sam has their hands on it. 

Perhaps to coincide with footage of the Unmasked era, nineteen minutes of time-stamped raw footage from the “Shandi” promo film was also uploaded to YouTube. Snippets of this footage had been seen in the A&E documentary KISSTORY. In this raw footage, you see Paul Stanley running through the opening lines of the song, the band taking off their outfits, practicing the end shot of the band in makeup with street clothes, and close-up shots of the actress in the video. The poignancy of this footage lies in the fact that this was Peter Criss’ last appearance with KISS before his exit from the band. I couldn’t help but take in the heaviness of watching Peter take off his outfit and knowing that the next time he’d wear it would be a mere sixteen years later in 1996 when the original lineup reunited for the Reunion tour. 

Last but not least, another big surprise emerged when never before seen partial pro-shot footage taken at the Capitol Center in Largo, Maryland on October 18, 1992, during the Revenge Tour was uploaded to YouTube. The pro-shot most of us fans are acquainted with from the Revenge tour is the one from The Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit, Michigan on November 27th, which was included on KISSOLOGY Vol. 3 and makes up a good portion of the Konfidential home video. The Detroit show, along with Indianapolis and Cleveland, were also recorded for Alive III.

The camera angles give some great close-ups of the band and wide shots of the Statue of Liberty stage production, particularly when the Terminator-esque skull was revealed during “War Machine.” Coupled with soundboard audio and an absolutely stellar setlist, it is a travesty that only the first hour of the show exists. It shouldn’t come across as a surprise that the Largo show of the tour was captured on video given the track record of other KISS shows from Largo that exist and circulate (1975, 1977, 1979). Do pro-shots also exist of the KISS’ Largo shows from May 1975, 1976, and 1988 that we haven’t seen? One can hope!

Setlist (partial): Creatures of the Night/Deuce/I Just Wanna/Unholy/Parasite/Heaven’s on Fire/Domino/Watchin’ You/Hotter Than Hell/Firehouse/I Want You/Forever/War Machine

Let’s hope these dry spells of no content aren’t frequent but it’s also a delight when a triple hitter is delivered. Then again, it draws up demand and leaves the KISS Army wanting more; and believe us, we do!

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