Kiss Melts Hershey Crowd

By Manuel Gamiz Jr.
The Morning Call
Apparently rock music and face paint have no age restrictions.
KISS, the aging rock group with cartoonish face paint, explosive pyrotechnic shows and hard-hitting, feel-good classics, melted another crowd Saturday night in the latest installment of The Hottest Show on Earth Tour at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, next to the chocolatiest place on Earth.
KISS might be growing older, but its fans are only getting younger.
After 35 years together, KISS is offering a little something for everybody, from kids and parents wearing matching caked-on face paint to long-time fans wanting to rock and roll all night and party every day to women in revealing outfits looking to get noticed by one of rock’s all-time memorable legends.
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, along with Eric Singer on drums and Tommy Thayer on guitar, played only a few of their newer hits in Saturday’s two-hour-plus show, which heavily featured timeless classics, ending with everyone’s favorite “Rock and Roll All Night .”
Fathers raised their kids onto their shoulders and teenagers danced along with their parents and, in some cases, grandparents, for the ending number, as a confetti snowstorm blew into the crowd. If the ear-splitting explosions during the show weren’t enough, the concert ended with one more fireworks display to light up the night.
But the show started as if the crowd was ready for nap time.
The crowd sat through three opening acts - Chicago rockers The Academy Is …, a noticeable performance by The Envy and Hamburg’s own The Feens, which won a Guitar Center contest to open for KISS.
As the opening acts played, children, many wearing earplugs, ran around the stadium with their friends, posing for pictures with Gene Simmons look-alikes and sticking out their tongues to mimic him. Many of the children say they were drawn to KISS, either by their parents or by playing video games "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero," which featur some of the band’s music.
Possibly adding to the laid-back start was KISS’s opening number, a relatively new hit “Modern Day Delilah,” from the band’s latest album, "Sonic Boom."
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