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	KISS AND AEROSMITH MONEY AND MUSIC

The spectacle at the first of the two shows the Kiss/Aerosmith hard-rock nostalgia tour brought to the Tweeter Center last week began long before Kiss took the stage for the opening set: the parking lot was jammed with enough limos to supply a dozen high-school proms and more Harleys with New Hampshire plates then you’d find at your average weekend motorcycle rally. It was a dichotomy that by evening’s end had been acted out on stage just as vividly, with Kiss providing the flashy bells and whistles of a fully outfitted arena-rock cruising machine and Aerosmith motoring through a grittier set of roaring, guitar-powered rock with the speed and maneuverability of a fine-tuned chopper.

The very fact that this was Kiss’s second farewell tour of the new millennium made it difficult to take them seriously as anything more than a commercial enterprise. It didn’t help that founding members Gene Simmons (bass, vocals, tongue), Paul Stanley (vocal, guitars, leather pants), and Peter Criss (drums, "Beth," stick twirling) were joined not by original guitarist Ace Frehley but by stand-in Tommy Thayer, who went so far as to don Frehley’s signature spaceman make-up and spacesuit. Fortunately, Thayer’s Les Paul workout on the signature Frehley anthem "Love Gun" was up to par.

This being the eve of Simmons’s 54th birthday, the amps were all turned up to "11," and a few extra packets of fake blood may have been thrown in. All the same, when Simmons loaded his cheeks with those packets, it was hard not to think of Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone with a mouth full of orange slices in The Godfather. And as thrilling as it was to watch Gene ascend to the rafters for his signature tune, "God of Thunder," a bass solo is a bass solo regardless of altitude.

Aerosmith, on the other hand, came on like a lean, mean, music machine as the curtains parted and they crashed into the bloozy crowd pleaser "Mama Kin." Rather than relying on fireworks to rile up the crowd, they made use of the walkway that stretched out into the first 25 rows. Steven Tyler strutted and spun his way out among the faithful, and when guitarist Joe Perry joined him for a searing version of "Toys in the Attic," you could see that Aerosmith had generated more rock-and-roll energy with two songs than Kiss had during the whole of their souped-up show.

Not that Aerosmith didn’t bring their own toys to play with. But the revolving stage they used mid set complemented the music rather than overshadowing it, especially since they took the opportunity to strip things down to what Perry introduced as "blues Boston-style." The result was a raucous version of the blues standard "Stop Messing ‘Round," with Perry handling the vocals, and a similarly hard-hitting cover of the Them (featuring Van Morrison) version of "Please Don’t Go," with Brad Whitford ably answering Perry back on his guitar. It was a promising display of what might be in store on Aerosmith’s next album, which is rumored to be a blues-oriented offering.

Aerosmith did have the advantage of performing in front of a home-town crowd. But as they powered back up into arena-rock mode for set-ending salvos of "Sweet Emotion" and "Train Kept a-Rollin,’ " the differences between the Kiss moneymaking machine and Aerosmith’s music-driven approach were all too apparent.