Kiss concerts in Duluth

Kiss, fall 1974, clockwise from top, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. (Casablanca Records promotional photo)

Following up on a post from earlier this month, I tracked down the "Kiss" folder from the archives, and here are the dates I could find listed for their Duluth Arena / DECC concerts:

Kiss w/additional acts Doctor John and the Raspberries, November 3, 1974

Kiss w/opening act Uriah Heep, January 18, 1977

**** Addition: According to commenters, there was a Kiss show in 1979 w/opening act John Cougar.

Kiss w/opening act Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics, February 17, 1983

Kiss w/opening act Dokken, March 13, 1985 (estimated 5,000 attendance)

Kiss w/opening act King Kobra, March 13, 1986 (fewer than 3,700 attendance; snowstorm that day)

Kiss w/opening act Faster Pussycat, May 27, 1990 (estimated 8,000 attendance)

I can't find any mention of more recent appearances, so feel free to add comments if you know of others.

A few notes on the listings above:

- I triple checked, and Kiss did in fact appear exactly one year apart, on the same date in 1985 and 1986. Does anyone know if that was more than a coincidence?

- The 1974 appearance was an early stop for the band, which had formed less than two years before. Here is the snippet of pre-concert text that ran beneath the promotional photo at the top of this post:

A rock group called "Kiss" and other rock performers will appear in concert at 7:30 p.m. next Sunday in the Duluth Arena. Appearing with Kiss, which goes in for wild makeup and bizarre props a la Alice Cooper, will be Doctor John and also Raspberries, another rock group which recently was reorganized. Tickets are available at the usual area outlets.

- The Raspberries, which broke up in the mid-1970s, included Eric Carmen. Carmen went on to a solo career that included, among a few other hits, "All By Myself," "Hungry Eyes" from the movie "Dirty Dancing," and "Make Me Lose Control." For more on the Raspberries, check out their Wikipedia entry.

- Here is an item that ran in the News-Tribune after the 1977 concert:

A cameraman for a local television station claims members of the Kiss rock group party pushed and threatened to hit him if he shot film of their arrival in Duluth

Mark Ginsberg of KDAL-TV said as he attempted to shoot film one man shoved an attache case at the lens of his camera and demanded the film.

"He told Duke Skorich (who had been covering the arrival) that the Supreme Court ruled that no one could take pictures of the group without their makeup," Ginsberg said. The group wears heavy stage makeup at all appearances.

Another man grabbed the brace to Ginsberg's camera, he said.

Members of the party offered to buy the film, Ginsberg said, but "I told them I wasn't at liberty to sell it."

- The newspaper clippings indicate that there were News Tribune staff photos of the mid-1980s concerts, but unfortunately there are no prints in the files.

Here's one more promo photo (from the non-makeup era):

Kiss, circa 1984. From left, Gene Simmons, Eric Carr, Paul Stanley and Mark St. John. (PolyGram Records promotional photo)

Posted by: Andrew on 2/23/2009 at 7:30 PM | Comments (15) | Permalink