Kiss have canceled Thursday night's concert after singer Paul Stanley tested positive for Covid-19.
Kevin Mazur/GettyImagesKiss have canceled a concert scheduled for Thursday night in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, after singer Paul Stanley tested positive for Covid-19.
“Tonight’s #KISS show at The Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown, PA is unfortunately postponed due to Paul Stanley testing positive for COVID. More information about show dates will be made available ASAP,” the band wrote on Instagram, pointing out that the band and crew are all vaccinated.
“Everyone on the entire tour, both band and crew, are fully vaccinated,” the group’s statement continued. “The band and their crew have operated in a bubble independently to safeguard everyone as much as possible at each show and in between shows. The tour also has a COVID safety protocol officer on staff full-time that is ensuring everyone is closely following all CDC guidelines.”
Stanley himself took to Twitter to dispel rumors that he was in the hospital after suffering a heart attack. “PEOPLE!!! I am fine! I am not in ICU! My heart allows me to do 26 miles a day on my bike!” he tweeted. “I don’t know where this came from but it’s absolute nonsense.”
Kiss are just four shows into their End of the Road Tour, which resumed last week in Bangor, Maine. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members have concerts scheduled this weekend for Raleigh, North Carolina, and Atlanta — there is no word on the status of those shows.
Stanley’s bandmate Gene Simmons encouraged fans to get vaccinated in an interview with Rolling Stone last week. “I would highly recommend for everybody to get two Pfizer or Moderna shots, please — for the rest of us. Even if you believe the Earth is flat, it’s not,” Simmons said, detailing Kiss’s Covid protocols for the tour. “The entire road crew must be vaccinated twice. Nobody gets backstage or onstage without wearing masks, and everybody stays at a safe distance and you’ve got to wash your hands and do everything else the CDC says. Don’t listen to politicians. They’re not qualified. Listen to scientists.”
Kiss will return to Las Vegas in December for a new residency at Planet Hollywood on the Strip.
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
