Kiss - Rock the Nation Live
The rock band Kiss--four guys in full face makeup, black spandex, and six-inch platform shoes--achieve a kind of sublime ridiculousness that other rock bands can only dream of.Kiss--Rock the Nation Live!mixes lavish concert footage with brief but entertaining backstage clips of the band members putting on their makeup, cavorting with their fans, and going bowling. Though only two of the founding members remain--Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons--Kiss is exactly the same as ever: The most shamelessly pandering band in the history of rock, a heavy metal/pop confection marketed as ruthlessly as any boy-band. All the trademarks--fire-breathing, blood-spitting, pyrotechnics, etc.--are presented with impressive zest, particularly since Stanley and Simmons are in their fifties (one of the advantages of full face makeup is that your audience can't see how old you are). The topics of their lyrics are sex, partying, and sex--which, nowadays, is kind of refreshing. Kiss eschews the narcissistic morbidity that marks so much contemporary hard rock; this band will never whine about how hard life is or how depressed they are. The way they aggressively woo their fans has contributed to their success at least as much as their music. By the end of the show, the riffs and exhortations to "Let me hear you!" start to blur, but the audience enthusiasm never wanes--and the camera spends a lot of time ogling big-breasted young women in "Kiss Army" t-shirts (and thongs). The dvd features several songs in "Kiss Powervision", which allows you to focus on your favorite band member (a bit of technology developed, appropriately enough, for porn dvds).--Bret Fetzer