I've made lots of comments and shared with you my experiences on concert shows I've attended in the past, and I've obviously in my eyes saved the best for last as I discuss my favorite touring act going, KISS.

 

The first time I saw them was back in 1988, when they'd just released their long-awaited "Crazy Nights" record.  I went with a few friends, Pete Howell, Tim McCleary and some guy named Dave, by train to Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens to see them with Ted Nugent opening.  We were to meet more friends there who had also traveled to see the show, and we were to all share a hotel room for four (there was maybe ten of us).  The hotel was not too bad, and it was very handy to the Gardens.  I remember though, after our long train ride where many comical things happened along the way as well as the ride back, we had this turkey dinner at this hotel and I was revolted enough to be pretty vocal about it.  "This SUCKS!"  The guys were amused at my displeasure but I don't think the waitress was.  "What's this?"  I pointed at my plate, which looked like bleached kidney beans that were cold.  "Lima beans," the waitress replied.  "The chef's into lima beans."  "Well I'm not fuckin' into them!"  I'm sure it was a relief to them when I left.

 

Our tickets wound up being at the opposite end of the arena where the stage was.  The KISS sign was massive, twenty feet high and fourty feet wide, and it basically was the show.  It shown brightly, in different patterns, different colors, twinkled, flashed, you name it.  And it had a pyro waterfall above it which made for a cool effect.  After Ted Nugent was finished, there was a little wait, then the boys came on pounding out "Love Gun".  All of us were tired after the lengthy train ride and not sleeping for about thirty hours, but we were wide awake when the non-makeup version of KISS hit the stage.  There were about 14,000 there, and a very loud bunch they were.  Up to that point, I'd never heard such a loud audience.  Toronto KISS fans have to be among the most dedicated around, with many of them in makeup, and carrying around huge bedsheets with drawings of the four guys on them.  Many were also in costume.  This was more than just a concert, it was a community gathering, where everyone knew each other whether they'd met or not.  Maybe the highlight of the show was Eric Carr's drum solo.  It was similar to drum solos he'd done on previous tours, except midway through, there were these loud bass-chord notes that sounded.  He paused and the crowd went bonkers, and I remember we'd all looked for Gene Simmons, the bass player, on the stage.  Eric's drums were massive, with three double-length bass drums and tom-toms encircling him all around, with hexagonal pads overlooking the entire kit.  These pads were electronically programmed to play particular notes when they were hit, and during the second half of the solo, Eric would hit them while he played the acoustic drums, which made for a drums/bass-synth solo that he conducted himself.  I'd never seen or heard anything like it since, and with Carr having passed away the same day as Freddie Mercury in the early 90's, I guess I won't ever see anything like it anymore.

 

But before Eric Carr passed away, I was able to see him perform with KISS a couple of more times.  They were on the "Hot In the Shade" tour behind said release, and this one promised to be a spectacle hearkening back to the band's over-the-top stage show days.  I remember my friends Wayne, Steve and maybe someone else going with us, and I was accompanied by a pen-pal that I'd been writing to for a while who was from Toronto, a girl named Lani, during a brief time in those days when I was single, although we never became intimate.  This show in question was to take place at Toronto's CNE stadium, on a tour they were co-headlining with Whitesnake, with a band named Slaughter opening the show.  We were at the place Steve was staying at in Brampton on the outskirts of Toronto when Paul Stanley of KISS appeared on TV on MuchMusic for an interview, and informed them and the viewers that the then-famous Sphinx-backdropped stage show would not be there that night due to protests from 'someone else'.  "It's not the promoter, and it's not the opening band," Stanley informed us, "but someone has a problem with us bringing our show to the people."  In other words, Whitesnake was on last and they didn't want to follow the spectacle that is KISS.  I guess they figured that by taking away the much-hyped and raved Sphinx set that they'd be able to reserve much of the crowd life for themselves.  We went to the concert, and unless I'm mistaken, I could have sworn that Honeymoon Suite's singer Johnny Dee was sitting beside me, with a friend, apparently there to see Whitesnake.  There were no bombs, no lights, no special effects, no pyro, just KISS, and they blew everyone away.  The whole show was standing room only, with everyone on their feet, many at times jumping up and down.  Stanley put in that much more effort, doing jumping roundhouse kicks, jumping splits, doing God knows how many miles on the stage, and the whole band just basically kicked serious ass throughout their set.  This crowd was even louder than the one on the "Crazy Nights" tour.  Everyone sang along to several of the songs, most notably "Tears Are Falling", a forgotten favorite today.  When it was time to close off with "Rock and Roll All Nite", I turned to who I thought was Johnny Dee who gave me a nudge and had his arms crossed in a "show me" kind of look at the beginning of KISS's set, and he said to me, "I never knew KISS was this good!"  I think a lot of Whitesnake fans were converted that night.  When Whitesnake hit the stage, probably 25% of the audience had left, and throughout their set people were continuously leaving.  At one point they were even booed, after the singer implied that Paul Stanley's comments were just sour grapes.  What happened later is now legend, with word of Stanley and Whitesnake singer David Coverdale coming to blows backstage over the politics Whitesnake was playing with the promoters.  The co-headlining tour came to an abrupt end that night, and Whitesnake themselves soon fizzled into obscurity while KISS thrived.

 

I managed to see one more "Hot In the Shade" show before the tour had concluded.  This would turn out to be the last time I got to see my favorite drummer Eric Carr perform live.  Pete, Steve, Tony and myself traveled to Portland, Maine to Old Orchard Beach to watch KISS perform outdoors with Slaughter and another band called Little Caesar.  When we arrived there to get our tickets, they'd just added two sections by the stage, and we wound up lucking out on show day by getting third row seats.  I remember Tony was skeptical at exactly how good this show was going to be, figuring it to be just another concert.  Actually, when we approached the venue, we didn't know what to expect.  Over the fence that encircled the park that the show was at, we could see the amphitheatre that the bands would play on, and the KISS sign was visible right above the stage.  What we'd heard about the show was, that the Shpinx backdrop would fall beneath the stage, and the KISS sign would rise in its place near the end.  With the sign already up, we thought that again we were gypped out of seeing the Sphinx show.  What a letdown...but at least we were going to get to see the band again, three rows away at that.  Little Caesar opened up the show, a brand new band that I'd never heard of, and they looked like a bunch of bikers with guitars.  Not the faux bikers that you saw a lot in the old 80's metal bands, but real ones.  They played with tightness and harmonies that set us all aback, and we were completely impressed, enough to go out and buy their CD when we got back home.  Turns out this was a fabulously honed act that just never got the big break they needed to go over the top.  And what a shame.  Another diamond in the rough.  After a forgettable Slaughter set had finished, it was time to see the boys again.  Still with no makeup, and no Sphinx backdrop in sight, we knew we were going to have a blast anyway.  The lights dimmed....and fanfare music began playing to a crescendo with an orchestra on tape and roadies curiously at the back on each side of the stage mock-conducting the music.  When the end came and the cymbals crashed in the music, the huge curtain behind the drums at the back of the stage dropped and there was the Sphinx!  As big as the KISS sign from Crazy Nights, fourty feet wide and twenty feet high.  This thing was HUGE.  How huge?  With a deep, resounding bass note vibrating in the air, the Sphinx's mouth opened and the band walked out of it and onto the stage.  The crowd went ballistic.  They got on their instruments and ripped into "I Stole Your Love" to bombs and fireworks, with the spotlights in the Sphinx's eyes shining into the crowd.  All around the Sphinx were ribbed pipes, looking much like the "Alien" movie set, with green ooze pouring out of one of each end of the stage through the ends of the pipes as if to make it look like it was the Sphinx's lifeforce.  Everyone wasn't just on their feet, they were on their chairs.  Tony, Mr. Skeptical, was standing on his chair and leaning on the one in front of him howling like an animal all night.  Throughout the set, there was fire columns, bombs on the stage and above it, and of course smoke and lights, and during "God of Thunder", maybe my favorite KISS song, with the Sphinx's gigantic face turning side to side as if to look over the entire audience, the last verse in the song Gene stepped aside and let the Sphinx talk.  Its mouth opened revealing this laser ray inside which rattled when it spoke.  It was an awesome show, top to bottom, one none of us are going to ever forget.  But that's the way all KISS shows wound up being.  Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were constantly tossing out guitar picks to the crowd, and Tony, Steve and Pete each got one.  When Eric Carr came out to center stage with his sticks, he went to one side of the stage....then he came to the other, where we were.  He was motioning to throw his stick out to someone.  I jumped up and down screaming in my seat, and Steve and Pete both pointed to me looking at Eric, and Eric looks directly at me and says, "do you want it?"  Of course I'm behaving like a rabid monkey at this point.  He aimed his stick at me, and threw it, and it just barely sailed out of my reach.  He looked at me and shrugged.  I was absolutely heartbroken.  I remember Pete and Steve consoling me all the way back and then on through the years, saying "that stick was YOURS, man!  We were there, we knew!"  At least I had that.  But just one note about my friend Pete's thoughtfulness.... he went to see a KISS convention in Montreal a couple of years ago, where Bruce Kulick was appearing for autographs.  Pete bought a solo CD of Bruce's, and met him at the convention and had him sign it, saying "MIKE...The stick was YOURS!!"  He gave me that and Eric Carr's "Rockology" CD, a small collection of recordings of Carr's that was released independently soon after he died.  These are treasures to me.  Incidentally, before I forget to mention it, we'd also met Bruce the day of that show in Portland.  Down the street where we wandered was a tour bus, but it had a desert and a cactus plant painted on it, with cowboys and stuff.  Couldn't be the KISS tour bus.  Well, it was.  Bruce came wandering down the street and into a record shop, and Steve spotted him on the other side of the road where we were.  "Hey, is that Bruce?!"  "IT'S BRUCE!"  We darted across the street, cars screeching to a halt and us nearly getting killed, and caught up to Bruce in the store to get autographs.  He was pleasant with us, did us the service and we left him to be on our way, where we didn't want to be pains in the ass.

 

The next tour KISS did, the "Revenge" tour, Janice, Steve, me and two other girls whose names I don't remember all drove out to Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens once again. Janice and I had gotten together not long before this, and it was a real leap of faith for her to offer to go all the way out there in her new car to see a band that she didn't know a whole lot about at this point.  It turned out to be a mixed experience, with the two girls that tagged along being rather snide toward Janice in particular on the way there.  We stayed at a high rise apartment building at a family member of Steve's in Toronto for a couple of nights, which was nice in the way that it didn't cost us anything.  We got word the day after we'd arrived that KISS was going to be showing up at MuchMusic studios for an interview, and so we made sure we were going to be there when they were to show up.  A bunch of other people gathered around outside, and as the bubbleheaded Erica Ehm was hosting the show going on at the moment and promising the imminent arrival of the boys, she interviewed the opening band who came outside among us, Faster Pussycat.  I never liked this band, I always thought they were overrated and overstayed their welcome on the music scene.  The camera panned over us a few times and we wound up on TV, which was pretty cool, because I set the VCR at home to tape MuchMusic thinking that they'd be interviewing KISS at some time or another.  As it happened to work out, we were there too.  I remember during the interview when they showed up, Erica Ehm pointed us out through the window with us looking in, that we'd come all the way from Moncton driving sixteen hours to get there to see the concert.  I remember Gene Simmons sitting there, his arms crossed, gazing straight at us as we pounded on the windows and jumped up and down.  He was only about eight feet away from us, with just a pane of glass separating them from the animals outside.  It was quite an experience to be that close to your heroes that you'd been following for over fifteen years.  As the night came, the Gardens were filling up with fans in costumes and makeup, and like us, and we witnessed the stage which looked somewhat simpler than the "Hot In the Shade" set, yet maybe a bit dingier.  It was made to look this way, to resemble a street kind of look, rough around the edges.  The backdrop this time was the Statue of Liberty from the shoulders up from the back of the stage where the Sphinx was on the last tour.  Before KISS went on, just to get an example of how big this thing was, one of the roadies opened a hatch in the front of the arm that holds the torch on the statue and got on a ladder inside and climbed up, closing the door behind him.  That was a bit freaky seeing that.  There were two stairways, one on each side of the stage, that came out and over the crowd a bit, and on top of each landing of these stairways were these three-pronged things that I couldn't understand the use for.  There were tons of lights, and we wondered what exactly was going to go on when the show got underway.  We finally heard the entrance that we'd never heard at previous KISS shows...."Alllllllll riiiiiight Toronnnnttoooooooo!!  You wanted the best!  You got the best!  The hottest band in the world......KIIIISSSSSSS!"  BOOM....bombs go off and the band leapt into "Creatures of the Night", a song we thought we'd never hear from KISS again.  More bombs went off during this show than most shows I'd ever seen.  The music was tight and loud and punctual, and the set list was the best I think I'd heard at a KISS show, drawing from all eras of the band's history.  A song called "Heaven's On Fire" is about to start, Paul does his signature wail before it, and "WHHOOOOSH"....we found out what the three pronged things on the stair landings were for.  Three columns of fire shot out about ten feet each, and we were close enough to the stage to feel the heat from them blowing onto us.  During a song called "War Machine", toward the ending, four rockets shot from different parts of the stage at the Statue of Liberty, shattering the face and arm, to reveal a Terminator-like skull underneath and the middle fingered salute where the torch used to be.  The crowd went bonkers for all this stuff.  During "Firehouse", which Gene Simmons was to breathe fire at the end, he came out with his mouthful of kerosene, a sword with a lit torch at the handle end, and blew fire to the awe of the audience.  There was a box of sand that he always pitches the sword in to be taken care of by the roadies, but as he went to do that, he missed and sent the fiery instrument into the crowd!  I never saw a such a large number of people scatter so fast before.  Nobody got hurt, and Gene did a double take, but after seeing things were okay he retreated backstage.  It was a pretty wild night all in all.  Unfortunately, this was only the third show on the tour, and two shows later in Detroit, they introduced live strippers onstage during a song about them called "Take It Off".  Can't win 'em all I guess.

 

I'd have to wait a while to see KISS on the next tour, which turned out to be the Reunion Tour, when all four original band members got together again to put on the makeup and costumes and do an updated version of the Love Gun show from 1977.  Oddly enough, I had mixed feelings about the original band getting back together, because with "Revenge", I thought they'd gotten themselves on the right track musically, and with a more technically proficient band than they'd had in most previous years.  But I obviously wasn't going to pass up seeing my original music superheroes live and in person in Montreal.  This, I thought, might be the only time I'll ever get to see this.  They're all in their fifties now, after all, and who knows what the future will bring, especially with guitarist Ace Frehely's constant on-again off-again battle with alcoholism hanging in the air.  I drove up in my friend Tim's car with Tim, a guy named Al, and Pete, and it was probably the funnest road trip I'd ever been on.  We all got along great all the way there and back, shooting jokes and barbs at each other all the time, and really just had an extended guys' night out.  I was really fortunate at the time to go, as Janice volunteered to take my job over for me while I went.  Janice actually did my job as driver for BJ's Subs before I did many years ago, so she wasn't new to it.  When we arrived in Montreal, we hadn't yet had a place to stay, and we had nosebleed tickets up in the balcony to see the show.  Pete decided to take the tickets and haggle with the scalpers to see if we could somehow deal to get better tickets.  He was quite the pro about it.  He could tell what tickets some scalpers had were fake, which ones were a ripoff, and eventually he got us tickets in the bowl for only ten or fifteen dollars each more apiece.  When we finally got in, Pete jumped up in the air out of sheer joy, where he suddenly realized he was going to see his lifelong heroes live once and for all.  It was an awesome atmosphere.  People dressed in makeup and costumes as usual, bringing their signs and banners, and the 18,000 people filled the arena to its capacity to get ready for the original guys in makeup finally put on the show we'd waited to see for so many years.  Again, the introduction.....  "Alllllllll rrriiiiiight, Moonnnttreeeeeeaaaallllll!!!  You wanted the best!  You've GOT the best!  The HOTTEST...BAND...IN THE WORLD...KIIIIISSSSS!"  The stage lights up behind the curtain with the opening chords of "Deuce" ringing through the amps, and the curtain drops and the crowd goes absolutely apeshit.  I turned to Pete and we put our arms around each other and hugged, and said "we finally did it!  We're here!"  We were on the verge of tears.  We looked around us, and everyone in the stands is doing the same thing.  Obviously this was an event for the KISS community, one that's been way too long in the making.  The emotions ran high throughout the crowd all night, which turned out to be another standing room only show with the people going nuts song after song.  The band had all the nifty things that they'd had on the old "Love Gun" show, except somewhat updated.  The drum riser took the drums maybe a little higher at 25 or 30 feet, the hydraulics on either side of the stage took Gene, Paul and Ace up and over the crowd, only farther out than they used to, the pyro pinwheels went off behind the drums, so did the fire columns, bombs, explosions, and a giant digital video screen showing everything up close for everyone in the building, the whole thing.  Ace shot rockets from his guitar into the rafters.  And Gene, during his bass solo, flew to the top of the lighting rig where he sung "God of Thunder" from the ceiling of the Molson Center.  The confetti came down during "Rock and Roll All Nite" at the end of the night, and everyone left with damaged voices and a sense of euphoria that wasn't to die down anytime soon.  It was truly an event of a lifetime.

 

But that wasn't the last time I was to see my favorite band live in action.  In 1998, they were to hit the road again in support of their "Psycho Circus" CD, the first release from the original four members in about twenty years, if you don't count "Unmasked" from 1980 and "Dynasty" in 1979, both of which didn't have drummer Peter Criss playing on them, despite his vocal contribution to the lame duck song "Dirty Livin'" on the latter.  "Psycho Circus" wound up chalking up KISS' first #1 song on the Rock Radio Chart in Billboard, holding that position for a few weeks.  The CD was a solid one, and I looked forward to seeing them playing again, this time in their "Destroyer" era costumes and an updated stage show, which was to feature 3D video screens.  The timing of the show was pretty good.  It wound up being part of the honeymoon for Janice and me, as we trekked to Montreal after our wedding to go and see the show, bringing Alexandra with us as my brother Roy happily looked after her in nearby Ottawa while we saw the spectacle.  When we got to the Molson Center in Montreal the day of the show and took our seats, which were pretty good ones, we were electrified with anticipation, wondering what kind of tricks Paul & Gene & Co. were going to pull out of their hats this time.  After enduring another crappy opening band, the roadies began to to clear their equipment from the stage.  About twenty or so minutes later, while music had been playing over the PA, The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" began playing, maybe my favorite song from them.  If you're familiar with the song, you know what I mean when I speak of the breakdown part where it's just a keyboard for an extended break, then a few sporadic drum fills, and then the band kicks back in with a "YYEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" from singer Roger Daltrey.  Right at the point of the scream in that song, a gigantic black curtain with a monstrous silver KISS logo on it drapes across the stage, and the crowd went absolutely nuts, us included.  Pretty good reaction for what literally was a curtain call.  A short while after that, it was showtime.  The house lights went down, and again, with countless spotlights roaming the crowd with every person in the building in hysterics, the announcer's voice comes booming through the speakers..... "ALLLLLLL RRIIIIIIGHT MONNNNTREEEEALLLLLLLL!  YOU WANTED THE BEST!  YOU GOT THE BEST!  THE HOTTEST...BAND...IN THE WORLD.....KIIIIIISSSSS!"  With the curtain still up, the guys started into the crescendo of "Psycho Circus", and with Paul Stanley's own "YYEEEAAAAHHHH", the curtain falls, revealing a stage with three video screens, balloons on the ceiling, the God of Thunder makeshift stage at the top, and a curious looking piece of apparatus that reached all the way out past the center ice floor that resembled somewhat of a crane stretching horizontally.  With the usual bombs, fire columns, smoke, explosions and colorful fireworks, KISS carried through their over-the-top set (even for them!) and had the place every bit as loud as it was on the reunion tour.  They played a long list of great songs, and everyone in the band got to shine with their own respective solos.  Gene did his usual trip to the ceiling for "God of Thunder", Ace did his guitar solo with his rocket-shooting guitar, this time blowing up the balloons that were loaded with confetti on the ceiling, and Peter's solo this time had his drum kit rise, with no bottom to it, but this time with smoke firing out of the bottom of the platform to make it look like it was engine powered to leave the stage, and then came hovering out toward the front while he did his solo.  The screens were impressive in the beginning, as the audience put on their 3D glasses supplied to them at the entrance, and whenever the screen had a little clown guy with glasses on, that was a signal to put the glasses on and watch for a 3D effect on the screens.  It was a cool effect that was perhaps overused, and the audience got a little confused about halfway through the show about when they should have the glasses on or not.  But this is a minor complaint.  The crane-like structure that reached out over the crowd became evident to its purpose when the band launched into "Love Gun", but not before Paul would test the audience with VU meters on the screen to see how loud they could get.  "I want to come out there and see you....do you want me to?"  The response was positively deafening.  Eventually, the song started, and Paul mounted a hook on a cable hanging down from the ceiling and proceeded to be taken by pulley over the audience via this crane thing to a makeshift stage that was built at the other end of the arena.  This was something else.  "Black Diamond" kicked in eventually toward the end of the regular set, and Paul smashed his guitar onstage with bombs simultaneously blowing up with each crash of the instrument to the floor, the drums went up in the air again, the pyro pinwheels got going, and then they left the stage to a deliriously wild crowd hungry for more.  During the encore, Peter sung his usual crowd favorite "Beth", then another song or two before they launched into "Rock and Roll All Nite".  I have to say, you haven't experienced a real rock and roll show until you've seen these guys play this song live and in person.  You'll never hear another audience sing along louder and not one person on their asses in the seats.  The bombs went off, the special effects and lasers shot out, and the absolutely crazy confetti distribution began, this time with probably five times more than the reunion show (or so it seemed), with it blowing out of the top of the lighting rigs with fans pushing it out to the far reaches of the building.  It was fantastic!  This would arguably turn out to be the biggest KISS show that I was ever going to see.  We left the venue more than satisfied with what we experienced.

 

There was still one last show (?) to see, though, before the ensuing "Farewell Tour" was to culminate in 2001.  Janice and me heard about KISS re-visiting Montreal once again for one last time, and we made our arrangements and got ready to go see the boys put on their show on the tour that was billed as their swan song.  I didn't know for sure whether or not this would be the last time I would get to see them, but I wasn't going  to pass up a chance to go no matter if it was or not.  Again, we got accomodations from my brother Roy in Ottawa with Alexandra this time being looked after by Janice's sister Jennifer back in town, and we drove up once again on our next quest to see the big show.  We wound up getting tickets through Roy's longtime ladyfriend Lynn who lives in Montreal, and she got them through a scalper that she knew.  What we found out later is she paid a much higher price than she let on so that she could get us great seats, which wound up being right by the stage and only five rows up in the bowl.  We never imagined we'd be getting this close, and we thanked Lynn for her hand in making this happen for us.  It was a fantastic concert, once again, by rock and roll's original superheroes, the original four together for one last time.  When the band's classic introduction came, complete with the dropping of the KISS curtain dropped once again after the opening band while "Won't Get Fooled Again" played on the PA, KISS descended from the ceiling of the Molson Center standing atop a lighting rig that spewed smoke from the bottom and eased them down to the stage.  They played two solid hours of rock and roll, with the stage moderately modified from the Psycho Circus tour, paring down the three video screens to one big one in the middle, and there were hydraulic lifts back on either side of the stage for "Black Diamond" at the end of the show.  The "Love Gun" pulley was back, so was the "God of Thunder" flight to the ceiling, so was Ace's rocket shooting guitar solo.  It was basically the same show as "Psycho Circus", only a little less confetti and clutter from the extra video screens, but the same enthusiasm from the sold out crowd as there was in previous shows.  What was slightly different was the crowd didn't want KISS to leave when the show was done.  When the house lights came up, there was still chants of "we want KISS!", to no avail, because they'd likely left the building right after the last song.  It was a mixed feeling that I'd had when this show was done, thinking that maybe this really was the last time I'd ever see my favorite rock and roll band ever. 

 

This past year, in 2003, KISS hit the road again for a 30th anniversary tour, co-headlining with Aerosmith on a coast to coast tour across the United States.  The tour never came to Canada, unfortunately, and I would have loved to have seen the two bands together, especially where I'd never seen Aerosmith before, one of my favorite bands from the 70's.  Appartently, the two bands each played somewhat abbreviated sets of about an hour and a half each, both getting equal time onstage in abiding by their agreement.  It would have been great to see this show, notable for having a replacement guitarist for Ace Frehely in Tommy Thayer, who has been a friend and partner with KISS for many years.  The reviews of his performance were great, with most of them saying that the KISS show didn't miss Frehely because Thayer was likely more dependable and reliable than his predecessor.  The other guys got into fighting shape for this tour, with Gene dropping a ton of weight, as did Paul, to get back into their costumes from their 1975 "Alive!" tour.  Thankfully, the "Farewell Tour" didn't live up to its name, like most artists who claim to be throwing in the towel.  They say it's all over, then a year later, realizing that having hundreds of thousands of people screaming for you and paying money to see you play and not work isn't such a bad thing after all.  Whether or not Janice and me will get to see them again live, or if newly initiated KISS fan Alexandra ever will at all, though, who knows?