CoTN 10th Anniversary Tour Documentary

[aeroflott]

This is really well done. Lots of Vinnie live footage and interview clips from the 82/83 Creatures Tour.

This project began as a concert redux where I planned to re-create the live music using better audio sources. The thing is, RIO 83 is only about half an hour of actual concert footage with a couple songs heavily edited for the television special that aired.

Although I had been a die-hard fan since 1977, 1983 was the first time I was able to see KISS live. This made it a very special period in KISStory for me, personally. The tour stopped in St. Louis in February, so by then I knew Ace would not be playing on the tour. I had only seen one photo of Vinnie "Wiz" Vincent in the newspaper but knew nothing about this new member, or the stage aside from the "I Love It Loud" promo video which I thought was made just for that shoot. I showed up at the arena, bought a tour book and flipped through it as I waited for the Plasmatics to take the stage. I was also blown away by the stage, which looked like a gigantic tank rolling right over the crowd. KISS was LOUD and full of energy.

I was a die-hard Ace fan for years and was a little disappointed he wouldn't be there, but Vinnie was fantastic on stage. He had an Ace-like appearance in many ways, kept a low-key stance like Ace, but had a swagger and confidence of a real professional. By now, I was into Priest and Maiden and this new "metal" KISS was amazing to see and hear. Personal issues aside, Vinnie was, IMO, the perfect replacement member to move KISS into the '80s. As much as I loved Ace, I don't think his style would have been a good fit for the band at that point.

The setlist was comprised of the usual concert staples like DRC, Love Gun, Black Diamond along with a few other classic, but a LOT of new songs for a band with such a big back catalog. KISS were clearly re-inventing themselves and I loved this high-octane version and the whole COTN album.

I decided to re-create a portion of each song they were known to have played on this tour and once I began working on that I decided that rather than have Paul's stage raps throughout, I'd leave the crowd noise in the background, but show KISS talking about the current state of the band and their ten year history since this was how the Tour was advertised. Rather than just cutting back and forth, it would be like Having KISS watch the show with you, inserting comment between the songs. I also thought it was important to get into the religious protests and controversy surrounding KISS and other bands at that time since virtually all the press coverage for the tour focused on this topic.

For the audio, I used Eric's drum tracks primarily from the Sioux City soundboard recording except for songs not played at that show. Everything was re-created with custom samples I created from some of his other recordings blended with the original live drum mix. The same goes for Gene with most of the bass taken from that same show with a bit of overdrive added. Paul's guitar was mostly taken from there as well with a few exceptions. Vinnie's rhythm came primarily from the Houston show. This was done in order to create a true stereo mix. Most of the vocals were taken from Sioux City as well, with some coming from other shows from the tour. There isn't room in the comment section to get into the details of how I do all of this, but I wanted to create a COTN Tour overview with decent sound quality.

While much of the footage is taken from the RIO '83 show, it is not intended to be only that show. I also deiced to edit it in more of a "montage" style, combining live footage from Rio, Sao Paulo and Montreal with various news clips, European TV appearances and some fan-shot footage of shows with a bit of an '80s bootleg look and feel. I wanted it to represent this entire tour and period of KISStory in a single film. This also allowed me to creatively sync footage for all of the songs while keeping a consistent look throughout.

I also want to say that I thought it was important to include some humor since we often hear about what a rough time this was for them, personally and financially. In spite of this, we do see the guys having a good time together with plenty of gallows humor throughout the interviews. They also often spoke on the history of the band in interviews. I do want to say that I love the enthusiasm of the South American fans in particular. The fan footage from their SA stadium shows always puts a smile on my face and shows the universal love for KISS through people full of character and charm.

I also wanted to point out that this film is about the tour and not so much the album, so it focuses entirely on Gene, Paul, Eric and Vinnie. Even though Ace did some promotional appearances to promote the album, he is not shown in this footage. His involvement with KISS was a bit confusing during this period and I wanted to focus solely on the 1982-83 lineup and tour.

If it disappears from YouTube for some reason, you can download the video here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... iMF6j57_Vs

[wolfgang161272]

The best footage I've ever had from this time!!! Soooo cool. Erics drumming' and the whole energy of the band. Amazing

[Genebaby]

So very well done, a real credit, what a great video! I'm sure Vinnie loves it!