Hosted the kickoff of the Ace Frehley Space Invader tour in NJ last night. If you followed on Twitter I did song for song coverage and posted a ton of photos. Also posted a few on my FB. Like most tour kickoffs there were a few technical issues during the show but it wasn’t really a huge deal and Ace had fun with it. He is also working in a new band and I think after a couple shows under their belt things should be very tight. This band really is great! Richie Scarlett back in the fold is a huge addition. I always loved Richie’s playing, performance, voice and attitude on stage and he is a perfect wing man for Ace. Their two Les Paul’s sounded amazing all night and there was some cool dual guitar stuff as well. Scot Coogan also is a great re-addition to the band. He is a killer drummer and has a phenomenal voice which enables Ace to play many Kiss/Paul Stanley vocal era songs that he was a part of like “Love Gun”, “King Of The Nightime World” and others. Hearing Scot belt these out was really pretty awesome, especially when you consider how well he plays at the same time! Ace is only doing Kiss material he played on and was a part of and it sounded great with Scot singing. New bassist Chris Wyse sang lead on Strange Ways and he is a great player and rounds out what is a killer band with all able to sing lead. Because of the technical issues the nearly 2 hour set was trimmed and Deuce and Detroit Rock City were not played, but Ace told me he will toy with the set as he goes. 3 songs from Trouble Walkin were in the set including opener Lost In Limbo and two from the post Kiss debut (Rock Soldiers and Breakout which was dedicated to Eric Carr who co-wrote it). Nothing from Second Sighting or Anomaly. Cold Gin was the set closer. I posted a photo of the set list on my FB. I know there has been an outcry from some fans for deeper obscure Ace / Kiss tunes liked Dark Light, etc. He may very well work some of that up as he goes. But the simple truth is with any band playing deep tracks live it makes about 10% of the crowd happy and loses everyone else, so there must be balance. Trust me, I LOVE deep tracks from bands and I’m burned on the usual hits. But the huge majority are not. One example is when Ace played Too Young To Die, a great track I love from Trouble Walkin. About 80% of the crowd had no clue. It is a balance every band has to deal with. The major amount of people buying tickets just don’t know the deep stuff. So that’s why you get Kiss hits scattered in with the solo hits and deep tracks. Four songs from the new album were in the set, the title track, Toys, Gimme A Feelin and Change, although Change was scrapped due to a tuning issue (like I said, first night mess ups). As I walked with Ace to the stage to intro him he said “oh shit, I forgot to put Rip It Out in”! So no doubt that will be added very soon. The plan is for Ace to do the announced dates, then break for the holidays, then do more US shows and European festivals next year. I hope this band sticks together and enough people come out to support this tour and have it make sense and grow. It really was a fun, raw, loud rock show that was loud and punchy and loaded with a great variety of Ace/Kiss classics. All confirmed dates at www.acefrehley.com I’ll be at the second night at BB Kings in NYC. Win tickets to those shows in ET’s Box Office on this site.
Menu
153 Responses
The show was Phenomenal as i was thinking about all day today. One of the best shows I have ever seen-the set couldnt really get any better. Highly reccomend you see this. Im going to go to the Borgota show in AC on 11/22
Ace Frehley lead guitar……I said ACE FREHLEY LEAD GUITAR, VOCALS, WOWOOOOHHHHOOOWWWLLLLWOOOOO!!!! You know my pistol, my uzi of oooze, my pocket rocket, you people know what I’m talking about, my LLOOOOOOVVVVVEEEE GUN, seems to be a pretty popular subject on eddietrunk.com lemme hear ya!!!!!!!!! I gotta TIP my tube steak to Ace and his band for pulling that one off last night. That obviously was the serenade of the evening make some noise!!!! It was a very nice touch to see Ace and his band thinking of Eric Carr on Breakout whoooo!!!! You know, I said you know back when Eric was in KISS, he was a ladies man…That’s right people!!!!! He may have looked like a little boy, but lemme tell ya, I said lemme tell ya he was a man!!!! I can’t tell ya how many ladies took him home to mother him lemme hear ya!!!!!! Awww hey!! You know I still think Ace is a drunk and it was obvious last night that the alleged technical difficulties were actually from the ill effects of….ALCOHOL!!!! Woooo! Obviously after all these years Ace Frehley still can’t get away from the COLD GIN! All right!!! You know Ace recently released an album called Space Invader!!! It seems a lot of you were fooled once again by Gene and I as we had our henchman Tommy Thayer actually playing guitar on Space Invader lemme hear ya!!!! Once we’re done with our residency in Las Veg-KISS, Tommy will begin working on a solo project called Thayer’s Comet lemme hear ya!!!! It will feature brand new original tracks such as “Rock N Roll Army,” “Insanity,” “I Am The Spaceman (with my Les Paul),” ” Ace Is A Stranger In Tommyland,” & “That Feelin’ You Give Me!” Tommy’s gonna sing this next ones for ya! This one comes off the 78′ solo album that Tommy played on with Bob Kulick! This one’s called Rip It Out!!!
the real paul Stanley should have made an acceptance speech at kiss’ rarhof induction. I have a request for real paul Stanley: a stage rap while placing his order at starbucks.
Las Veg-kiss?! LMAO!! Great, great stuff about a band that really has become a parody of itself. If u can’t laugh at this stuff or KISS you are just not very fun.
Keep posting !
I’m LMAO…just amazing funny stuff. Eddie I say bring on “The Real Paul Stanley” on TMS for the fun of it. He actually sounds better than Paul. At least we won’t get THE REAL bullshit from The Real Paul Stanley like we get from Paul Stanley…
Hey Joe, Ace vocals are really bad, always gave been. Get off his back.
Hey Tom….FYI, Ace isn’t known and hasn’t been for his vocals, welcome to 2014. And I’m not any1’s back…..just call it as I have seen and heard it since 1983….sorry but that is a YOU problem, not a ME problem if u take that personal in regards to my PS comment.
Total D -Bag post.
Take away the Kiss costumes, fire breathing, fake blood, bombs and all the other toys and gadgets, when you strip it all down to its core – song for song, player for player, it isn’t hard to figure out which rock show is more real, raw and enjoyable – especially in 2014. Ace’s spin on Kiss classics is probably way more interesting than the other group.
Totally agree Rich
He has to do “Rip It Out” and 2,000 Man…
2000 Man is one I forgot, good point
2,000 man is one of my favorite Ace songs. I actually played this song on guitar and sang it for a school project in High School. I did the acoustic MTV Unplugged version. Thats one of my favorite tracks from the MTV Unplugged show! Not a lot of people remember that song. It’s more of a deeper track but one of the best Ace tracks! I wish he would add it into his live shows, along with Into the Night, Hide Your Heart (another semi deep track), Cold Gin, Foxy & Free (from Anomaly), Sister (from Anomaly), Pain in the Neck (from Anomaly). I was surprised he didn’t do anything from Anomaly. I actually liked some of the songs on the record. I agree a lot of the music on Anomaly is different than normal Ace music and a little hard to swallow at first listen but he does have some killer tracks on it. I hope in the future he can add in at least 1 track from Anomaly.
I forgot to add Flaming Youth to the list of songs. Flaming Youth is THE song that got me hooked to Kiss and kept me on the Kiss train when I was so disappointed in the destroyer album the first time I heard it. The first time I had ever heard of Kiss was I had seen them on these Proset Super Star music trading cards back in the early 90’s when I was 13 or 14 and the picture was of them in makeup and their Dynasty costumes and I loved it so much and had this notion that they were like some super heavy satanic Slayer type of music. Of course that was waaay before I heard their music. However, it was at that point when I first saw the card, I loved the look so much I declared them my favorite band in the whole world even tho I had not heard any of their music before. Well needless to say, my expectations for their music was shattered when I heard Destroyer, my very first Kiss album. All of the songs except Flaming Youth were not heavy enough for me. See at that point I was l just discovering rock n roll and hard rock and heavy metal and I wanted to listen to the heaviest music I could find. Wish I had of found Slayer back then, that would of literally knocked my socks off and been the most perfect band for me. But Flaming Youth really caught my attention and it kept me listening to Destroyer hoping to finally see what was so great about Kiss that I originally saw from the card I got. I eventually came around and grew to love Kiss and Destroyer is my favorite Kiss album today and Kiss remains my all time favorite band! So I think above all the songs he plays, Flaming Youth is one I would most love to hear! Sadly I won’t be able to see him on this run as I just don’t have the money, but it would be killer to see a youtube video of him playing Flaming Youth on this tour! That is the one request I have for Ace!
I was at the show. Crowd was into it. Ace and the band sounded great despite the tech issues. The set list strong. I think the version of Love Gun was a highlight for me. I did miss Rip It out. For a deep cut, I would suggest Ace version of 2000 man.
2000 Man a good idea and I will tell him. Rip It Out will show up soon. So many songs, hard to do them all. As it was it was an almost 2 hour set
Hard Times, Save Your Love???? Go deep Ace….
If u take out Ace whining and BS ing about “technical issues” which really means inept help, there was less than 90min of music. Lame set, smallest crowd of all time.
This was a great opening act for what is sure to be a successful tour. Ace did a fabulous job putting it all together. Excellent choice bringing in bassist Chris Wyse. Thanks much Eddie for the blow by blow on twitter. Hopefully these guys stay the course and have a great run.