Kiss Let Fans Decide Where They'll Play in North America

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Apr 8, 2009

Never short on gimmicks, Kiss have dreamt up quite the doozy for their upcoming U.S. and Canadian tour.

In a nutshell, the over-the-hill rockers are asking that fans "demand" where Kiss perform this fall by voting on the social networking site Eventful. At the end of the campaign, all the votes are tallied - with final city selections being weighed on population size versus total votes to keep the competition fair for smaller locations - and the top-voted North American cities get a Kiss show, if they meet all the requirements listed in the small print (see below).

You can keep tabs on which cities are in the lead and vote here. As of press time, Kingston, ON stands as the No. 1-voted city, with New York second, Dallas third and down at No. 10, Toronto. Other Canadian cities on the top 40 list include Ottawa, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Fans involved in the campaign will also get the chance to buy pre-sale tickets before general sales start and are urged to create viral vids to help recruit others in their pledge to get Kiss play their city. The plan is for city-specific "best-of" videos to be played on large screens before each show.

Thanks to the folks at Idolator, here are "Five Reasons The Upcoming Kiss Tour Is The Stupidest Thing On Earth":

1. It requires you to go to a site called "Eventful."

Which is somewhere between calling your band "Final Fantasy" or your movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop on the scale of "Things I wouldn't be caught dead associating with because of their stupid names." You may know Eventful as "that silly, ignorable widget on bands' sites where they ask you if your city 'demands' them." The bottom-feeder indie bands that actually use this service end up showing up to these towns and are sad to discover that their computer-literate fans may not always be as savvy about leaving the house.

2. The system, by nature, favors big cities with lots of people in them.

Much like the ones Kiss usually hits on tour. In the band's defense, they do say "in order to keep the competition fair for smaller cities, final site selection will weigh population size versus total votes," but it's not like Kiss is going to be mad surprised when they find out that there's some huge metropolitan area in America that they never played. "Oh there's a Kansas City now? Well I hope they like Cold Gin! Wooooo!" As much as I'd love to see a grassroots effort to get Kiss in Frog Lick, Arkansas, there's just not enough people to make it happen. See, this is reason number 5,600 why music blogs need their own 4chan-style "Anonymous" army to Rickroll the shit out of this. Hey, Rick Astley, North Dakota-here comes Kiss!

3. The fine print.

Oh yeah, this:

The most demanded cities in the United States and Canada win the opportunity to host a performance by KISS, herein referred to as Artist, subject to the winning city's ability (i) to provide and pay for Artist's requirements including, without limitation, payment of performance fee based on Artist market value, which value must be negotiated with local promoter and Artist agent, (ii) Artist's production requirements, as provided in Artist's rider, to be issued to the local promoter under separate cover as part of Artist's performance agreement. In the event that any particular top winning city does not have a venue deemed suitable by the Artist, Artist management, or Artist agent, an alternate city within close proximity to such winning city with an acceptable venue will be selected to host the performance.

So this has everything to do with the willingness of a city to book Kiss. It's almost like a normal Kiss tour, but there's an extra annoying step where you have to go to the Public Library and wait in line to use the computer.

4. Fans are encouraged to make viral videos that will be shown before the show. Because nothing looks and sounds better than a YouTube blown up on a giant screen and blasted out of a PA into an echoey theater. Newsflash, guys. You are FUCKING KISS! No one knows how to make an awesome, fireworks-laden rock spectacle-and-a-half like you! Why are you letting the fans do your job?

5. They're not going to change the title of "Detroit Rock City" when another city gets more votes.

Right now, Detroit is not pulling its weight, landing at No. 6. Get on the ball, Motor City! Surely "Kingston, Ontario, Rock City" doesn't have the same ring. Also, be sure to book the tour in the six months when Kingston's Harold Harvey Arena isn't an all-syrup farmer's market.

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