The End Of The Road

I know, I know. I didn’t post anything on Tuesday for y’all to read and I’m really sorry.

If it makes you feel any better, it was for a good cause. We took a road trip to Oklahoma City to see KISS on their “End of the Road” Tour. 

Yes, that KISS with the blood and pyro and makeup. Yes, they claim they are retiring again (for like twenty years now). But more on that later.

We debated a little about whether to go. The Husband Dude and I are big KISS fans. In fact, it was through the band that we ended up meeting each other. The last few years, though, the band had gone stale. Same show, same songs, same order of everything. It got to where if you had seen one KISS show, you had really seen them all.  Between the two of us, we’ve seen them almost twenty times and it was getting pretty predictable.

My love of the band started pretty early. They were at their peak of 70’s popularity just as I was becoming aware of music at all. I’ll never forget my brother’s ninth birthday and watching him unwrap a gift from my aunt. As the cover of the album became visible, Mom rolled her eyes.

“Ugh. Not them.”

My aunt said, “All the kids love them.”

This, of course, solidified two things in my mind: 

1. My aunt was “cooler” than my Mom.
2. I HAD to check out this group of weirdos wearing makeup, because anything that elicited that reaction from my mother HAD to be awesome!

My brother and I both became avid KISS fans, collecting all of their albums and listening to them on the matching portable orange record players my parents bought us for Christmas one year. A couple of years later when my brother got an actual stereo with a turntable and 8 track player, we thought we had died and gone to heaven, hearing those scratchy albums in the way in which they were intended. 

I finally saw the band for the first time in 1985 when I was thirteen years old. I paid $14.95 for a general admission ticket that allowed me to stand up front by the stage while my brother stood in the back thinking he was hiding from me the fact that he was smoking pot with his friends. This, of course, solidified two things in my mind:

1. My brother was terrible at hiding the fact that he was high.
2. Seeing my idols in person was awesome!

My love for the band never waned. Through makeup, no makeup, then makeup again. Changing members. Changing musical directions. Unplugged. Reunions tours.

I even took my Mom to see them in 1997 when she was 56 years old. It was her first ever rock concert.

Then, this little thing called The Internet happened and I joined a chat room on a fan website called KISS Asylum. I met some awesome people there, some of whom I’m still friends with.

One of whom I’m still married to. I sort of quit my job, packed up my three cats and moved 900 miles for him. You know. The usual.

But back to the End of The Road Tour. KISS announced that this would be their final tour ever.

Again.

The first time they announced a “Farewell Tour” was in 2000. I’ve seen them at least five times since then. It has been a long farewell!

So that’s why The Husband Dude and I debated about going. They weren’t coming to Tulsa, which would’ve been a no-brainer. They went to Oklahoma City, which is only an hour and a half away, but it was also the middle of the week and in February, which in Oklahoma means it could be 70 degrees or it can be 20 and snowing.

We finally decided to go and make a night of it. I ordered the tickets online and we made reservations at the hotel right across the street from the arena. We both took off work and pulled Shane out of school. 

Don’t judge. He wouldn’t even be alive if it weren’t for KISS, so is it really wrong to let him skip school to see the band that made him? My mother is rolling over in her grave right now. We didn’t get to skip school for something like a rock concert. If you weren’t bleeding, vomiting or had a high fever, you went to school. 

You may recall my blog post about how ridiculous ticket prices are now. Remember that $14.95 I paid for my very first KISS ticket? Well…add about $125 to that, then multiply it by three and you’ll get the cost of three KISS tickets on the first level above the floor at the Chesapeake Energy Arena. It’s ridiculous, but what are you going to do when you love a band?

You may also recall that previous road trips with THD and I have ended with Google searches trying to find out where one could get a divorce in Van Horn, Texas. This time I made a demand we had a nice, civil discussion about not tailgating people while simultaneously screaming “ass-sucking bastard” at anybody who dared to tap their brakes for any reason whatsoever, including the miles of construction going on along I-44.

On a side note, I know many of y’all are on fire about building a wall, but I’d just be happy if they finished the fucking road already.

Those of you who hate crowds and people in general as much as I do will appreciate how the three hours leading up to the show were an effing nightmare for me.

I’ve never liked crowds. I truly think I’m hypersensitive to other people’s energy and I absorb that energy and internalize it. When you’re in a crowd, there are so many different kinds of energy that it’s chaotic. It makes my brain feel chaotic. So you can imagine how claustrophobic it felt in the tiny restaurant/bar of the hotel when we tried to grab a bite to eat before the show…and so did a thousand other people.

We walked over to the arena right when the doors were to open and stood in a line halfway down the street. Once we got inside and went through Homeland Security, gave our DNA and had a chip implanted in our heads, and after they were quite certain my lipstick was not an incendiary device, we walked over to the merch table and stood in line for another thirty minutes for the privilege of buying shirts for $30-$75 apiece. I guess it was too much for one fan who passed out before she could make it to the front of the line and they had to get a medic for her.

I think she was ok. I’m not sure. I’m a bad person because about the time the medic got there, we moved up to the front of the line and after standing calmly while a thousand people invaded my personal space, I was not going to miss out on the mission of buying an overpriced t-shirt with “End of The Road” printed on it. 

Don’t judge me. I already know I’m going to Hell. Look for me. I’ll be wearing the “End of The Road” shirt.

Luckily, they seemed to realize that opening the doors only an hour before show time probably isn’t a good idea when people are also trying to buy $50 beanies that say “KISS” on them and they are trying to get some cocktails to take to their seats. They delayed the opening act by about twenty minutes, which meant we didn’t miss anything.

I usually hate opening bands, so it would not have been a great tragedy to miss that, but they didn’t have an opening band. Apparently, the new thing is to have an opening act rather than a band. When we went to Metallica in January, they had a comedian warm up the crowd for about forty-five minutes, and he was HILARIOUS. His whole act was about Metallica and heavy metal and related subjects. Probably one of the best opening acts I’ve ever seen.

KISS had a performance artist. This guy painted these huge pictures on a ginormous canvas while music played. He even painted a picture of Jimi Hendrix but painted it upside down. Not him. The painting. It looked like all this paint just splayed out on the canvas but when he flipped it around, it was Jimi Hendrix! Very cool. I was impressed.

I’m not going to lie. When KISS finally came on, I got a little sentimental. For just a moment, I felt like that thirteen year old girl watching the band for the first time, singing along to all the songs. How could I have known then that thirty-four years later I’d be watching them one last time (maybe) and my son would be standing next to me singing the words right along with me?

Yes, he knew the words. I raised him right.

The show was great. Even better than the last few we’ve been to see. They’ve changed it up, added more pyro and effects, added songs to the playlist. If this is the end of the road for them, they’re doing it right.

Of course, after standing there screaming and singing for two hours, I didn’t feel like that thirteen year old anymore. I felt every one of my forty-seven years. I was thankful that it was literally about ten steps from the side door of the arena to the side door of the hotel. We went up to our sixth floor room and I sat on the bed and watched the throngs of people below, making their way down the street and to the parking lots and I felt grateful to be part of this community known as the “KISS Army”. We’ve all had some good times together and I’m blessed to call so many of them good friends.

I’m also blessed to be married to my fellow KISS Army member and best friend. Who knew that watching my brother open that birthday gift when I was only five years old would one day lead to saying hello in a chat room and that would lead to all of this? Life is crazy that way.

We drove home the next day in freezing rain, on slick roads.

“You need a new windshield wiper,” The Husband Dude told me as he maneuvered my car down the highway.

“Feels like deja vu,” I laughed. 

I reminded him that nineteen years ago, we were travelling this same road in a snow storm in my Saturn Sport Coupe with a bad windshield wiper. He had flown to El Paso to help me load the moving truck and then drive my cats and me to Tulsa to move in with him. 

He just shook his head and rolled his eyes and clasped my hand.

Then he yelled at the guy in front of us who tapped his brakes.

I didn’t even get mad.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring!