Dissed by KISS

Remember that Eventful.com Internet voting campaign to bring the rock band KISS to the Clay County Regional Events Center?

The band's tour dates were announced earlier this week, but a little context may be in order before we get to that.

Events center manager Scott Hallgren came across a promotion through Eventful, a networking Web site that helps performers and their fans find one another for concerts. KISS partnered with Eventful to let the fans decide where the band should tour.

The official KISS Web site said: No matter where fans say "from stadiums to cornfields" if there are enough votes, the KISS tour will be there! (Look, an exclamation point.)

But there's more.

"In order to keep the competition fair for smaller cities, final site selection will weigh population size versus total votes," their tacky-looking Web site continued. "More than 8,000 cities and towns are already represented on the fan-submitted list."

To make your vote for KISS count, Eventful asked you to supply information about your gender, year of birth, zip code and e-mail. Then you clicked on a yellow "demand it" button and Eventful counted a vote to bring KISS to Spencer.

Now, you know the basics.

Hallgren did interviews and the city began to climb the list, past New Orleans and Las Vegas, Providence, R.I., and Raleigh, N.C. to name a handful.

And a lot of us have been getting Eventful's annoying spam ever since. Still, even if you don't like that kind of music, it was a small price to pay to get Spencer and the events center a "win."

We know Spencer finished right around No. 70 overall and we know Spencer was one of the highest "small" American cities when the contest closed. I'd like to be more specific, but our request for the final "top 100" wasn't too high on Eventful's to-do list this week.

It didn't matter anyway. The KISS tour begins in Detroit and Cleveland. Put Des Moines, West Des Moines, Ankeny and Urbandale together and you still only have 75 percent of London, Ontario, the next city on the tour. They stay in Canada for concerts in Montreal and Toronto.

In fact, Uncasville, Conn., is the only city on the tour stop that seemed relatively unknown. About the size of Muscatine, and still bigger than all of Clay County, it's apparently the token "cornfield" city on the tour. "Mapquest" the city and you'll find it's near Hartford and Providence, halfway between Boston and New York City.

As for No. 70-ish Spencer?

"I haven't even talked to them," Hallgren said of the tour promoters. "We tried to make an inquiry call, but we weren't getting anywhere."

Hallgren was realistic. He thought the competition would bring an increased awareness of the Spencer market as a venue for concerts.

"We've achieved that goal because it certainly did increase awareness for us," Hallgren said. "But obviously, the ultimate angle would have been to get a KISS date."

There's no reason to fault KISS for booking Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle and all of the other conventional tour stops on their schedule. They're a big band that can fill big venues.

But don't tell fans "hey, you get to route our tour," and "we'll give small cities a chance" when the plan is to trot out the same old urban locales.

You're a rock band, KISS, but next time, spare us that song and dance.