KISS: Road Crew Diary Entry From 1996 Reunion Tour Available

January 7, 2008

The Entertainmeny Weekly web site has been updated with a diary entry from a KISS road crew member from the Reunion Tour 1996. An excerpt from David Browne's report follows:

"Gene Simmons' blood is on my hands.

"Actually, it's not real blood, and technically, it's on my towel. But never mind. I am a roadie, at least temporarily. When KISS announced this spring that its four founding members (Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss) would reunite for the first time since 1979 for a world tour, I realized there would be no better opportunity to answer a question almost as pressing as the exact length of Simmons' tongue: What exactly do roadies do? The tour promised to re-create the burlesque excess of KISS' '70s stage shows, complete with Kabuki- bondage costumes and rocket-launching guitars. If there was roadie work to be done, this was my chance.

"So here I kneel one July afternoon at Cleveland's Gund Arena, the 15th stop on a tour that has improbably become the summer's must-see nostalgia showcase, with a potential gross of at least $50 million. (Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the industry trade magazine Pollstar, estimates KISS could be the top-grossing — and gross-out — tour of the year.) Every night, before he's hoisted to the rafters by steel wires in one of the show's most crowd-pleasing effects, Simmons, the band's demon-seed bass player, drools blood from his mouth. And each day after, someone on the crew has to clean it up."

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