Kiss sells out an arena in their hometown, New York, for the first time

On 31. December, 1975, Kiss sold out an arena in their hometown, New York, for the first time, playing for 13,000 fans at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum with opening acts Blue Öyster Cult and The Leslie West Band. Backstage before the show Kiss were presented the Gold certificate for selling 500,000 of “Alive!”.

Jeff Suhs and Curt Gooch:
“This was a huge event for Kiss, and the first time the band sold out an arena in its hometown. Casablanca had given the band money to improve the production for the show, which Kiss spent touching-up the speaker cabinets on the stage backline and on hundreds of balloons for the show’s finale.
The guest list for the show was a mile long and included Detroit promoter Steve Glantz, rock journalist Lester Bangs, Steve Coronel, Billy Squier, and others. The band spared no expense and even made arrangements for Bill Starkey and Cadillac High coach Jim Neff to be flown in for the event.
A claim is occasionally made that precisely a year before this show, Kiss had been fourth on a bill with BÖC headlining at the Academy of Music. In fact, that concert had taken place two years prior. Kiss had risen to astonishing popularity quickly, but not that quickly. Another erroneous claim is that an audiotape of this show exists, when in fact the audiotape in question was recorded at Kiss’s August 23 concert in Hempstead, New York.
Beginning at 2 A.M., an after-show pool party was held at the Excelsior Club on Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan.”
– “Kiss Alive Forever” by Jeff Suhs and Curt Gooch.