Kiss Kruise
Miami, Bahamas, Jamaica
Five days of round-the-clock, all-the-way-to-11 fun with Team Kiss.
Before I arrived on board the Norwegian Pearl – a 93,000-ton ‘Jewel-class’ cruise ship that looks like a major city block gliding through the ocean – for the start of the five-day-crazy-night Kiss Kruise, I assumed you had to be a ‘nut-class’ Kiss freak to willingly submit yourself to such a potentially mindmangling thing. Boy was I wrong.
It didn’t matter who you were – whatever age, ethnicity, gender – if you like the idea of mostly innocent 24-hour f-u-n, then this, my friends, was the place to be.
Where to begin? With the eight restaurants, with the God-knows how many bars and cafes spread over the 12 public decks? With the bands playing multiple sets, including three from Kiss, and featuring – deep breath – The Darkness, Warrant, Steven Adler, the New Roses, the Dead Deads, several others, plus ultra-brill Queen tribute act Simply Queen? All of whom were on-demand fantastic?
Or maybe the Gene Simmons Q&A, where he discussed his recent kidney operation, in which 15 kidney stones were removed, which he is of course now putting up for sale on eBay – money from which will all go to charity. Or maybe the Paul Stanley art class, which he gave from the stage of the Stardust Theater. That’s right, laptops, easels, smocks, and a non-stop repartee with the audience in which they not only learned some useful painterly techniques but also how genuinely funny Paul can be when talking to people? Or maybe back to Gene another afternoon for his pick-flicking master class. Did you know that not only can Gene flick a plectrum more than 100 yards, he can do it while firing off half a dozen more like bullets?
Or maybe back to Paul on the final night for his bedtime story: an hour of Bugs Bunny cartoons, a spontaneous Q&A with all the kids in the audience, plus some of the more adult-sized kids, before actually sitting there in his pyjamas while he read us a story. With ‘us’ also required to wear pyjamas.
Still not interested? Then how about the all-night casino? Or the live shows on the pool deck that went on till 2am? (You haven’t lived the rock star life until you’ve watched Steven Adler lead his band through Mr Brownstone while you’re tits-deep in a Jacuzzi, sipping a frozen pineapple margarita.) Or the massive, ship-wide Halloween party on the second night, where the freaks already dressed as Kiss dressed up like freaks dressed as Kiss dressed as horny nurses, Walking Dead guys and stuff? Or the fancy day trips to the islands? Wait… Did I mention there were trips to islands?
Skipping off the ship five days later, my main memories were of the three Kiss shows. The first, a ‘sail-away’ performance at 5.30pm on the pool deck, during which an unmasked, largely unplugged and totally fun-tuned Kiss played a near-90-minute set on a slowly revolving stage. When halfway through they brought up Bruce Kulick to join them, sailing through Kulick-era gems like Domino and Every Time I Look At You, plus some non-Kulick era numbers like She and Shandi, the fun-o-meter hit overdrive.
The second and third Kiss shows were at the Stardust, and these were full-dress, full-on Kisstastic shows that featured an array of different material, ensuring you really did have to see both. For me, that meant unashamed fist-in-the-air romps through Crazy, Crazy Nights and God Gave Rock’n’Roll To You II, plus full-on-tongues versions of Kiss Klassics like Cold Gin, Christine Sixteen and Detroit Rock City. You could swim through the confetti at the end and many of us had to.
The Darkness deserve a special mention too. Justin Hawkins looked like he was dressed for his own personal Halloween-meets-Joker party, while the rest of the band strutted and strolled and shimmied and molled through their greatest hits and bits.
And there was Warrant. Come on! Who doesn’t like Cherry Pie done by a band so synonymous with the 80s they should give away free Filofaxes at their shows?
Oh, and the islands. Well, the ship sailed from Miami down to the Bahamas, where we spent a hot afternoon on a private beach. Two days later it was Jamaica. Except some of us didn’t make that one as we were passed out on our ninth-deck cabin balcony. But that’s okay, because we’ll be back next year.