THE KISS TOURS - 2000 Farewell Tour

As the fall of 1999 approached, fans were still waiting for the second leg of the Psycho Circus tour. KISS kept pushing the starting date forward and forward.
Ace was interviewed during the summer where he revealed, that the tour would start in the fall, and it would be a Farewell tour... Gene quickly went on the record saying that it was not!
As the fall came there were still no news, but in late October it was finally announced that KISS would play some shows around New Years Eve... the much talked about Millennium show. This was discussed as far back as in the summer of 1996, when KISS had just started the Reunion tour. KISS had big plans for the coming of year 2000... places like the foot of the Fuji mountain in Japan, the Roswell Air Force Base (where the US government allegedly is storing a crashed UFO) , and underneath the Statue of Liberty in New York had been mentioned in passing. So it was a bit of a disappointment when it was announced that the Millennium show would be held at an arena in Vancouver, Canada (though probably not to fans living in Vancouver!).
The show went on, with the Psycho Circus staging (as seen in picture 1), without the 3-D.
Just after midnight Ace led the band into 2.000 Man, and the show ended with the usual fireworks display.
The show was pretty special since it was recorded for the upcoming Alive IV... but the album never emerged. The reason for this was never really clear, but as I'm writing this there seems to be no plans to actually release the album.
Another interesting thing about this show is, that here the band started doing songs they recorded after Peter and Ace had left; Heaven's On Fire, Lick It Up and I Love It Loud!

A few days later KISS played in Alaska, their first show there since 1974.
The stage (seen in picture 2) was specially built for this event (it had to be smaller than usual due to the size of the arena there).
The logo from the 1990 Hot In The Shade tour had been taken out of storage, and aside from this the stage was just had a bunch of amplifiers... very basic!

The proper Farewell Tour started in March 2000. The stage set for this tour was gigantic (as seen in picture 3). The top half looks just like the Psycho Circus stage, with two KISS logos on each side of the giant videoscreen.
But the lower half was entirely new! The staircases from the 1976-78 tours made a welcome return on the scene, having been updated for the new Millennium, with brighter lights and a futuristic chrome look.

The band entry on the stage was also highly unusual. A platform in the middle of the lighting rig would begin to lower as the curtain dropped, and KISS started Detroit Rock City. On the platform there were Paul, Gene and Ace, while Peter was sitting behind his drumkit on another platform, also coming down (as seen here in picture 4).

This had of course been invented for the Animalize tour, but had not been used since. A truely amazing way to start the show (typically over-the-top for KISS).