"Thinking that Kiss were done was something that, towards the end of
the Farewell Tour, I really began to wonder if that, in fact, was so.
Between the audience reaction and the fun I was having, at some point
I had to reassess it and think that as long as I can have fun doing
it in top form, then there's no reason I should stop. Hence, there's
no reason Kiss should stop."

"The proof of that is that whatever tour we've done, whatever the
changes, the truth is it's Kiss. Quite honestly, there's been times
when the line-up has been different to the original line-up and it's
been better. This isn't about perpetuating fantasies, it's about
delivering reality. And Kiss is a reality."

"What makes this tour exciting is the idea of really changing the set
around in terms of music," Stanley explains. "Really shaking up the
set-list and the stage and being more free with ourselves in terms of
what songs we play. At times, we've had a mindset of what we 'have'
to play. With our catalogue of songs, at some point you really have
to put some of those songs aside because there's a lot of great
material. Otherwise it really does become a bit repetitive."

While some fans have been screaming for set-list overhauls for some
time, it seems the band were not only cornered by audience
expectation but by the trademark effects that were deemed to belong
to specific songs.

"Sometimes I think that some of those, shall we say, effects of the
show have become a bit safe, in the sense that they're expected and
predictable and may have lost their teeth," Stanley says.

"We can't be held prisoner by obligatory moments in the show because
I don't think anything is obligatory.

"For a while now our set has been pretty much the same, with maybe
three or four songs changed. It's because of the fact that we don't
want to disappoint people by not doing what have become the
quote/unquote Kiss classics. But there are loads of them. Like I
said, it's time to shake things up a bit."

"On the Kiss/Aerosmith tour - which was a massive success where we
literally went down a storm every night and blew the place apart -
there wasn't one person who said 'Why is Tommy there?'" Stanley
says. "It just doesn't enter into the realm of things. Once we hit
the stage, it's very clear within the first 10 seconds who we are.
We're Kiss."

Kiss Smacks of Change
From: The West Australian
<http://today.thewest.com.au/20040423/music/td-mus-home-
sto123631.html>