GENE SIMMONS Donates $100,000 To Gala Of Hope Fundraiser
October 27, 2016, 7 years ago
According to an article published by Langley Times, KISS icon Gene Simmons gave a $100,000 boost to the Gala of Hope fundraiser for The Centre for Child Development and Sophie’s Place Child and Youth Advocacy Centre held at the Newlands Golf and Country Club in Langley this past Saturday night (October 22nd). In addition to the donation, Simmons also auctioned off a "blade" guitar. A total of $280,000 was raised by the gala, the centre said.
Simmons was there with his wife, Canadian model and actress Shannon Tweed, to show support for their daughter, Sophie Tweed-Simmons, who lent her name to the Surrey facility.
In a statement issued by the centre, Tweed-Simmons said the team at Sophie’s Place conducted more than 200 interviews with abused children over the past year.
“It’s really important that kids have a place to go where they can be taken seriously, and where they can express what’s happened to them in a safe environment."
On October 14th the Japan Visual Summit kicked off at the Makuhari Messe International Exhibition Hall in Tokyo, Japan. Gene Simmons made a surprise appearance to close Day 1 of the summit, performing "Rock And Roll All Nite" following X Japan's headline performance with the artists featured on the bill. Check out the chaos below.
According to a report from Ultimate Classic Rock, in a nod of respect, Simmons did X Japan’s trademark rallying cry ('We are! X!') before the song’s performance started, while during 'Rock And Roll All Nite' he counted off the cues in Japanese (“ichi, ni, san“). The respect was 100 percent mutual from the crowd on and offstage, especially from X Japan drummer and pianist Yoshiki: a die-hard KISS fan, he recently told Rolling Stone that Alive II “changed my life. Then right after, I picked up a newspaper: KISS is coming to Japan! 'Mom, I need to go see this!' So my mother is in a kimono, and my 5-year-old brother, and we went to see KISS. My mom was eating sushi and Gene shows up spitting blood and fire and screaming. It blew me away.”
The three-day Visual Japan Summit is a celebration of visual kei, a Japanese musical movement spawned in the ’80s that’s indebted to glam, hard rock and heavy metal, as well as the theatrical bent of acts such as Kiss, Motley Crue and Twisted Sister.
The day before his Visual Japan Summit appearance, Simmons was on hand for the opening of the Kiss Expo Tokyo 2016 in the Harajuku neighborhood. Billed as the “first-ever official KISS exhibition supported by KISS,” the exhibit features memorabilia and artifacts culled from the band members’ collections — everything from instruments and costumes to tour ephemera and a KISS-branded coffin.