Pop Music : Kiss Cavorts in Fire and Smoke

A low organ note shook the hall, the mouth of a 40-foot sphinx opened, and the four members of Kiss strode from it onto the stage of the Long Beach Arena on Friday as laser beams inscribed the sky.

America loves nothing better these days than rock ‘n’ roll survivors, and conventional wisdom has it that Kiss’ many, many years in the business have earned them a place as elder statesmen of rock, dean to the generations of lipsticked rockers who followed their lead.

It takes a certain amount of courage to cavort among the fire fountains and smoke bombs the way that Kiss does, and to maintain a breathtakingly cruddy guitar sound in the face of decades of technological improvement. But despite the years, Kiss sounded like a straight-out bubble-gum band, 1910 Fruitgum Company stuff writ louder--much louder--peppered with a guitar squeal here and a four-letter word there.

Second-billed Winger, whose lead singer, Kip Winger, is hard rock’s answer to the Chippendales dancers, ran through a slick set of radio-friendly hits, highlighted by the singer’s actually asking the crowd to hold up their lighters. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” he said. The audience loved him, though not as much as they loved Kiss. They also liked opening band Slaughter, this year’s most successful new mainstream hard rockers.