You wanted the best? Well, you’d need a time machine for that. But at Little Caesars Arena Wednesday, you got as good as Kiss can deliver in 2019.

In a fine-tuned, pull-out-the-stops production, the retiring rock band played its latest — if not last — sold-out show in its long-loved Detroit. For all the newly integrated high-tech spectacle, it was a night big on nostalgia, time-tested stage shtick and old-fashioned rock excess.

The LCA show was a stop on Kiss’s End of the Road World Tour, which kicked off six weeks ago and may run for up to three years.

There’s no guarantee this was Kiss’s final Detroit show — Paul Stanley has left the door cracked open on that prospect — but amid the bombast and rock decibels, it was hard not to feel wistful as things roll to an end. And it was easy to feel a twinge of sympathy for the excited preteens, many in makeup, who were scattered among the middle-aged LCA crowd: Through no choice of their own, these youngest troopers in the Kiss Army may have already wrapped up their service Wednesday night.

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For band founders Gene Simmons (age 69) and Stanley (67), the stage moves are less emphatic now, the voices sometimes strained. Still, there was a kind of agelessness to Kiss onstage Wednesday — the benefit of sticking with signature makeup and costumes, indulging in blithely mindless fun and surrounding yourself with all manner of onstage bells and whistles.

In an era when the big pop and hip-hop productions have grabbed the mantle for over-the-top concert entertainment, Kiss pushed its case for rock as escapism. During a two-hour, 20-minute set well stocked with hits, the band's trademarks were intact: Simmons spit fire (“War Machine”) and drooled blood (“God of Thunder”). There was pyro by the truckloads — flame towers and booms and pinwheels of sparks. Wednesday even saw the return of ‘70s stage prop Sam T. Serpent, who at one point enveloped Simmons in something amounting to dragon breath.

There were new trappings too, including crystalline digital-video screens, the most confetti LCA has witnessed in its 1½-year life, and an array of overhead pods that alternated as lighting elements, animated graphics displays (like the vibrating speaker cone of “I Love it Loud”) and targets for the “rockets” launched by lead guitarist Tommy Thayer’s instrument.

The pods also delivered the band to the stage to kick off the show with “Detroit Rock City,” the go-to Kiss opener of recent years.

“We’ve been coming to Detroit since 1974 at the Michigan Palace,” Stanley said, rattling off local venues Kiss has played through the years, including — most notably — Cobo Arena. “Tonight is special for us.”

On a night when Thayer’s solos provided the most adroit musical fireworks, there were the big hooks (“I Was Made for Loving You,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” a surprisingly effective “Lick It Up”), the party anthems (“Shout it Out Loud”) and the celebrations of rock ‘n’ roll itself (“I Love it Loud”). Stanley’s voice, famously fickle in recent years, was serviceable enough, and drummer Eric Singer stepped to the piano solo for a passable take on Peter Criss’s “Beth.”

As Simmons, Stanley and Thayer locked into the vintage synchronized choreography of “Deuce,” the decades flew past onscreen behind them, with video of past Kiss incarnations pulling the same moves.

Watching on enthusiastically from a spot right in front of the stage was L.A. resident Kenneth Davis, who’d won this Detroit trip on a January episode of “The Price is Right.” He’d flown in with the band Wednesday afternoon on the Kiss jet, having attended the previous night’s show in Louisville as part of the prize package.

“I knew the Kiss connection to Detroit,” said Davis. “Louisville, I couldn’t figure out.”

These were the first-ever rock concerts for the lifelong R&B and jazz fan, but he was instantly sold: “I could get into this. If they ever come back to California, I’ll be there.”

As for his personal time with Kiss? Simmons was “a riot,” he said, and unlike the aloof entertainers and athletes he’s encountered in L.A., the band was “down-to-earth and accessible.”

His “Price is Right” prize isn’t over: He’s got accommodations in a downtown Detroit hotel for the rest of the week.

Davis and the 13,000-plus at LCA also got to witness an unorthodox rock-show opener: Self-described performance painter David Garibaldi took the stage to whip up three mural pieces. Starting with a Bruce Springsteen portrait, he then paid tribute to Detroit with an Aretha Franklin painting — craftily created upside down — and finally threw together a Detroit Rock City piece featuring “The Spirit of Detroit” statue accompanied by Kiss faces.

That last work will be up for auction Thursday through April 5 at the WCSX-FM website.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.