Thursday, February 16, 2017

KISS DOWNUNDER 1980

I always love seeing candid photos of KISS taken during their huge Australian tour of November 1980. Probably because it was the first concert I ever attended (at VFL Park in Melbourne) then the nostalgia and interest will always be there.

I've never seen these three great pics from that period before. After the band filmed their two shows at the Sydney Show Grounds, they went into a local studio to record some overdubs to fix up some of the mistakes made during the live performances. These photos show the band (Paul Stanley in the solo shots) recording the overdubs at the (unknown) Sydney studio. The two concerts and the overdubs were eventually edited into a single concert film, that was first shown as part of the KISS: The Inner Sanctum Australian TV special from 1981, and was later included on the KISSology 2 DVD set. Along with the Tokyo 1977 TV special, the Sydney 1980 concert film is one of the best visual records of the band's live performances during their peak years (though in the US the band had already peaked by 1980, but their fame was Beatles-like in Australia that year).