On October 12, 1996, the original KISS lineup of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, back in full makeup for the Alive/Worldwide reunion tour, played a sold-out Saturday night at Albany’s Knickerbocker Arena, with a young Deftones opening. Some 13,038 fans packed the building, many of them in homemade greasepaint, for a 23-song set that opened on “Deuce,” ran through “Cold Gin,” “Shock Me,” “God of Thunder” and “Black Diamond,” and closed with an encore of “Detroit Rock City,” “Beth” and “Rock and Roll All Nite.” One local reviewer wrote that it felt as if it were 1976 all over again, and Simmons duly breathed fire and spat blood before the band moved on to Buffalo the next night. Thirty years later, it remains one of the great nights of the reunion era in the Capital Region.
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