Supports: 16 Second Stare; Venue: Tonhalle, Munich, Germany
By: Andreas Klimmt
Ace Frehley, the youngest of a 5 piece family from the Bronx NY, got his first guitar for Christmas 1964 and tought playing himself by listening and imitating ones like Hendrix, Townsend and Jeff Beck. In 1973 he joined Stanley, Simmons and Criss to found the KISS, one of the biggest bands in the world. The band released their first album in 1974 and already 1978 every member released their solo albums, Frehleys was the bestselling of the four and the single ‘New York Groove’ even had a top 20 entry. As he had some serious problems musically and through drug abuse as well, he left the band in 1982 and founded Frehleys Comet his own band. They had not that much success, so Frehley called it quits in 1989. 1995 to 2002 Frehley joined KISS again for some reunion tours, he is now replaced by Tommy Thayer.
Now 20 years after his last solo album he took some serious musicians on his side and released his new solo album ‘Anomaly’ on Sept 15th. So during the European tour to promote this album he reached Munich with his band where i had chance to see him.
| On that tour 16 Second Stare supports ‘Space-Ace’, a Tampa Bay 4 piece who had their first indie release called ‘Red Carpet Material’ in 2008 and just released their first selftitled international longplayer on Fontana/Universal. Earlier this year they already had a tour allover the southwest with Brian “Head” Welch, the former Korn lead-guitarist. They really rocked the house in Munich, but I’m afraid their style may have been a bit too metal for the more ‘rocky’ KISS audience. In that 30 minutes metal blast they had plenty of energy, hard riffing and great soloing and even an hommage to Partera’s ‘Walk’, as well the shouter did his very best to heat up the audience. Sadly the hall that can keep 1000-2000 people was not even near to be sold out, maybe 500-600 people were attending, so that there was not much of the audience who catched that fire. |
| At about 21.30 Ace hit the stage after his mates already did a little jamming. He took one of his guitars and hit the strings, hell that was the loudest show I can remember ever to be seen in that hall, the technician later told me they had 130 db (that’s about what an aeroplane has when starting) on stage coming out of that Marshall and Ampeg walls alone, not even running through the PA. They opened with Rocket Ride and it seemed they would take off the roof immediately. On they went with Parasite, Snowblind, Sister, Outerspace, Speedin Back, Rock Soldiers, Love Her All I Can then: 2000 Man, at this one Ace made joke about Mick Jagger and started to play Satisfaction, just kidding with the audience. Next ones were Fox On The Run then N.Y. Groove, which he dedicated to his own musical roots. At Foxey + Free he almost burnt one of his guitars which had the ‘fire ‘n’ smoke’ effect built in, during a really excessive almost 10 min solo, which Ace is well know for. And of course they played some really classic KISS songs: Shook Me, Shout It Out, Deuce and for encore Rip It Out and Love Gun. The audience had a really great time and as well had the band, they really seemed to love the close distance of that club show feeling without having a security pit. |
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