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The combined might of a four-piece band with the collective age of 272 years and an army of tiny pre-teen dancers saw KISS deliver one of the most joyous pieces of pre-game entertainment in AFL grand final history.
Minutes later, though, it was almost topped by a single note, when Kate Miller-Heidke reached for the heavens and touched them on the final word of the national anthem, a “fair” that fairly soared.
Paul Stanley is dwarfed by a wall of flames as KISS perform at the AFL grand final.Credit: Paul Rovere
In a tight three-song set, KISS brought the spectacle in spades. Nearing the end of a four-year-long global farewell tour that will in December bring the curtain down on a 50-year career as one of the most flamboyant, ludicrous and successful acts in rock ′n’ roll, the band opened with I Was Made For Lovin’ You.
The disco-tinged song had many of the hard-rock band’s original fans up in arms when it was released in 1979, but it has stood the test of time as a bona fide crossover hit, and the MCG crowd was generous in its appreciation.
Frontman Paul Stanley seemed to strain at times on the vocals, but handled the falsetto section with aplomb, laying to rest any fears of a second serving of the Meat Loaf debacle of 2011.
Playing on a cross-shaped stage, with jets of flame shooting up around them – it looked a little like the Crown boardwalk had been wheeled up river for the day – they followed with Shout It Out Loud, Stanley urging the crowd to do just that.
Bassist Gene Simmons took lead (and very flat) vocal duties on Rock and Roll All Nite, but any musical blemishes were well and truly masked by the showmanship, and the make-up.
Some junior conscripts in the KISS army. Hundreds of young dancers joined the band on the pitch for the finale of its three-song set. Credit: Jonathan DiMaggio
There were rhinestones, platform boots, balls of flame and billowing clouds of smoke. But what really took the set to the next level was the sight of hundreds of junior dancers in KISS make-up and costumes spread across the turf, spelling out the band’s name, playing air guitar and mugging like their little lives depended on it.
By the time Stanley lifted his guitar aloft, before swinging it like a windmill over and over and finally smashing it in half, no one could be in any doubt that this had been a top-notch piece of rock ′n’ roll theatre, played for drama, laughs and pure delight.
However much the AFL paid for this, it was worth every cent.
Not to be outdone, Kate Miller-Heidke delivered a few minutes later a final note on her rendition of Advance Australia Fair that seemed to defy gravity – or, at any rate, prudence. She risked it all as she went for an impossibly high sustained note, and she nailed it. The look of appreciation on the face of Collingwood’s Darcy Moore said it all: fair play, Kate Miller-Heidke, fair play.
Having hit the impossible heights during her rendition of the national anthem, Kate Miller-Heidke returned to the ground to join Mark Seymour on Throw Your Arms Around Me. Credit: Robert Cianflone
Elsewhere, the entertainment offering leant on tradition in a big way, starting with a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda from Indigenous artists William Barton and Jess Hitchcock before Mike Brady performed – for the 11th time since its debut as a promotional track for Seven’s VFL coverage in 1979 – Up There Cazaly.
At half-time, Mark Seymour and the Undertow played the Hunters and Collectors’ tracks When The River Runs Dry, Throw Your Arms Around Me (with Miller-Heidke joining Seymour on vocals) and, for the sixth time at an AFL grand final, Holy Grail, a song that was written about the medieval crusades but has long since been adopted as an anthem of sorts for Australian rules football.
You could argue with some justification that the AFL could have been a bit braver in its choices and backed a local act for the main stage. An Amyl and the Sniffers, say, whose T-shirt Matthew Richardson pointedly wore in his pre-show interview with KISS’s Stanley and Simmons.
But if you can’t please everyone, this entertainment package – a mix of the spectacular and the familiar, the global and the local, with performers from seven years old to 70-plus – surely came close.
Contact the author at [email protected], follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.
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