Rock And Roll Over KISS tribute band without the makeup
By Alex Lloyd Gross
There are many KISS tribute bands playing the club circuit and some of them are quite good. Most of them wear make up and have a stage show reminiscent from an era that the band played. Locally there are several. One such band that does things differently is Rock and Roll Over.First, they do not wear makeup . The stage show is original, just like four grown men who can play get together and jam . Only they take that jam session public and play shows.
One such show was at Havana New Hope May 6, 2016. The band does not pretend to be KISS, in fact there is hardly and talk between songs. For about two hours they are on stage playing KISS songs. All of the songs are from the golden era of KISS with the exception of a few gems from Creatures of the Night, like “Danger’. Without all of solos there is more time for music and that means some lesser known songs. Nobody wants to see a greatest hits collection again. This is different.
Of course “Love Gun” and “Detroit Rock City” are played but so is “Larger than Life” The band did nothing from the Elder and nothing from the mid 1980’s and beyond. So songs like “Good Girl Gone Bad” and “Say Yeah” were not played, no matter how good the would have sounded. Behind the band, there was a screen that played videos to accompany the songs. Some of that was good and some should go. Vintage videos of Marilyn Monroe really don’t work as well as a photo collage of KISS or KISS fans that turned out for shows. The CGI graphic of the Rock and Roll Over logo on fire and spinning around was in a word awesome.
There were tickets available at the door. About 100 people showed up to rock and were not dissapointed. Bottom line, the next time this band makes an appearance in your area, go. According to their web page they will be playing at Havana two more times this year and a show in Cleveland Ohio.