Gene Simmons was recognized by city and other local and state officials in Niagara Falls for his contributions to the local business community.

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Joel Hoekstra recalled how Ace Frehley once complimented his playing even though his guitar was turned off, naming it as the moment he “really understood” the KISS icon.

As the person who made the Starman persona as famous as it is and a guitarist who played licks as memorable as “Love Gun”, Ace Frehley’s rock ‘n’ roll legacy is indisputable, even though his personal history is marked by anecdotes which often sound quite out there. One such is Joel Hoekstra’s experience of jamming with the KISS legend, which took place at a rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia museum during the guitarist’s time in Night Ranger.

In a new interview with Twisted Sister’s Jay Jay French on the “Jay Jay French connection podcast”, the Whitesnake & Trans-Siberian Orchestra guitarist recalled getting a rather unexpected compliment from Ace Frehley after the performance (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):

“We had a situation where they wanted us to be the band, but have guests up. And one of them was Bun E. Carlos, one of them was George Lynch, and one of them was Ace. Ace came up there, and we were in this high-priced, small room. Everybody had to pay a lot of money to be there. It was all wood; [it was a] really loud room, and we had our amps really quiet.”

“Ace comes in and dimes it. Everything’s just on 10, and then he wouldn’t start until they jacked him up in the monitor. Like, the only thing you could hear was Ace. I mean, it was unbelievable, the rock star attitude of it all. I remember there were four of us up there, because Lynch stayed up, and Brad Gillis, of course. And those guys were over there trading, and you couldn’t hear anything. It was like a mosquito in a construction site.”

At that point, Hoekstra decided to simply tune out:

“I thought, ‘Why is anybody bothering right now?’ So, I just turned my guitar off, because I thought all I’m doing is contributing to the noise. Ace sounded great, actually. He played great, he had an amazing tone. But I just thought, ‘I’m going to do the right thing here and just turn my guitar off.’ And what was amazing about that, Ace came over to me after, and he complimented me on my playing.”

“He came over and he said, ‘Oh yeah, you did a really good job up there, you know.’ And I thought, ‘Man, my guitar was off, but, you know, thank you.’ But, yeah, I get it. That’s when I really understood Ace Frehley. He’s just a rock star. He’s larger than life, you know?”

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Although Kiss hit a rough patch popularity-wise in the US during the early ’80s, by 1984, they were back on track with their hit album “Animalize”, and headlining arenas. And for a stretch of dates supporting “Animalize” plus shows for their next album, “Asylum”, they invited ghoulish rockers W.A.S.P. to open.

However, during an interview with the Metal Voice, former W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes recalled some problems he experienced on the road with Kiss. And also, how he supposedly corrected them.

“Gene and Paul…I can’t stand those guys,” Holmes confessed (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). “They are what my mom brought me up not to be. The reason why W.A.S.P. beat up on Kiss was because of Chris here, nobody else. Because I ran the sound with the sound guy. And when we first went out on tour, I was told we couldn’t get no subs, and only 80% of PA.”

“I said, ‘I’m not gonna tour like that. Find another guitar player. Because you can’t beat up on them.’ And then, finally, the deal was if we could have two lines of merchandising, then we get full sub and full 100% of the PA. We’d have our own mixing board. But then I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll do it then.’ But it was a big hassle when the management and Blackie [Lawless].”

Holmes then recalls how there were still hurdles to overcome when touring with Kiss. And according to the guitarist, W.A.S.P. may have been the bigger draw, if you are to use t-shirt sales as a gauge.

“And believe me, the first two weeks, our merchandising, we didn’t put out two lines. They put out every bit they could. And we were doing two to one on them. And then Gene and Paul found that out. Boy, I come in to soundcheck. My roadie goes, ‘Chris. Um, our gear will not get on the stage ’til the doors are open.'”

“I’m like, ‘So we don’t soundcheck?’ He goes, ‘No.’ And I go, ‘That’s alright.’ We had all of the safeguards, the PA guy and I, we had it all worked out. I’s just the way [it is]. It’s business. That’s business. The more they can hold you down, the more the better. And you know, touring and playing arena is big business, selling shirts.”

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The upcoming Ronald Reagan biopic Reagan stars noted Donald Trump supporter Dennis Quaid as the title character, and the cast includes Jon Voight, Kevin Sorbo, and Creed’s Scott Stapp (as Frank Sinatra). Directed by Sean McNamara, the film also boasts a soundtrack with some noteworthy names. The biggest of them is Bob Dylan, who recorded a cover of Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” for the closing credits. Notably, Quaid is the third cousin of the late Gene Autry, who cut a popular version of “Don’t Fence Me In” in the 1940s.

“I was honored to have Bob join our film,” Quaid said according to Spin. “We gave him the freedom to do any song he wanted to do, whether an original or a cover, and he chose ‘Don’t Fence Me In.’ That was extra special since it was a song that Gene made famous. Bob is a great lover of the American Songbook and we were delighted with the way he delivered the song. He’s a national treasure and was the perfect addition to the film. Gene and Clint were also generous with their time and Tanya has been a friend of many years and I’m thrilled to have her song as well.”

Other contributors to the Reagan soundtrack include KISS’ Gene Simmons, who covered the 1930s torch song “Stormy Weather” for a scene featuring Reagan and wife Jane Wyman (played by Mena Suvari) in a nightclub, and country legend Clint Black, whose take on John Denver’s “Country Roads” appears in the film’s final scene. Tanya Tucker reportedly recorded a song for the movie too.

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Is there another band like Kiss? Their sound, image, and stage show remain as timeless as ever. Their recent announcement of a show performed by avatars only further cements people’s love for them and hammers home the band’s timelessness, as people worldwide will be travelling to see Kiss perform, even if it’s not the band playing.

A combination of make-up, music, eccentricity and pyro made for a band that people couldn’t get enough of. In fact, they weren’t a band; they were superheroes, borderline fictional in their magnitude. Black Sabbath once admitted that they regretted taking Kiss on tour because of how much of a difficult band they were to follow. They had such a strong idea of who they were and executed that idea so perfectly that they won over crowds better than anybody.

“Kiss was the first one to use pyro,” said Geezer Butler, recounting their tour together, “It was a completely new direction for people. People had to start thinking about stage production after Kiss. It was tough to follow them. We went on as just an ordinary band, no effects or anything, and everybody else still had their mouths wide open from seeing Kiss.”

Kiss’s show was so tight that it’s hard to imagine it being based on anybody. Given that they looked like fictional characters and presented themselves creatively and eccentrically, it was hard to imagine the idea came from anywhere other than the member’s heads. While some aspects of that will be true, Paul Stanley admits that there was a band they modelled themselves after.

“The Beatles, in many ways,” said Paul Stanley, before confirming what was important to Kiss was that they looked like a band, “Those ‘60s British groups all looked like real bands. No member of The Beatles could have fit into the Stones. No member of The Who could have been in the Dave Clark Five. You had unified images of those bands, and at the same time, there was an emphasis on the individual members.”

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NIAGARA FALLS — Over the past seven years, local business owners have forged a partnership with one of their childhood heroes.

Brothers John and Paul Janik, third generation owners of Johnnie Ryan Beverages, along with their business partner and longtime friend Chris Haick, have been fans of rock band KISS, and particularly bassist Gene Simmons, since they were in elementary school.

“I was five years old, six years old,” Paul said. “I loved Gene probably because of my background, just loving horror movies. I was always into the Classic Universal Monsters. I took to him even before he started explaining his influences.”

“I just like KISS because it was basically like living, breathing art,” John added.

Having met the band’s members on several occasions, it was one particular meeting at a 2017 comic convention in Cleveland, Ohio, that got Simmons and the brothers on the subject of the soda business. A few months later, Paul received an unexpected call from Simmons, on a Sunday afternoon.

After a series of follow-up emails and phone calls, the two sides blended their respective visions and MoneyBag Soda was born.

“We’ve been trying to market the product to people who are into specialty sodas, into non-alcoholic options for drinks, your foodies or people who just look for something different and something special and that’s kind of what the product is,” John said. “It’s natural flavor, sweetened with pure cane sugar and beautifully painted bottles.”

The following year, Simmons visited Niagara Falls for the first time to celebrate the launch of the product.

Simmons is returning to the city again on Sunday for an appearance with numerous local officials on Goat Island at Niagara Falls State Park.

Following a 1 p.m. press conference there, a presentation will take place at City Hall at 2 p.m. at which Mayor Robert Restaino and North Tonawanda Mayor Austin Tylec will recognize Simmons with keys to their cities.

A portion of Main Street between Pine and Cedar avenues will also temporarily be renamed Gene Simmons Boulevard.

On Monday, Simmons and his band will perform at West Herr Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda, with ticket proceeds going towards the theater’s expansion project. The show is Simmons’ only scheduled live performance in North America this year.

“Gene has really given up a lot of his time over the years to do promotional events like the one on Goat Island this Sunday,” John said.

“And what better way to celebrate that and to bring recognition to the area and then to have Gene Simmons come in,” Haick added.

Since the brothers last brought Simmons to the Cataract City to celebrate the launch of his product at a local 7-Eleven in 2018, they have been around the world with the fire-breathing, blood-spitting bassist.

The brothers and Haick joined Simmons in several cities on KISS’ lengthy End of the Road tour in an effort to promote the product and strike up business deals with national and international distributors.

John described hitting the road the Simmons as a great “learning experience.”

“It was interesting to see how all that came together for a big show like that and just how professional they were with us, with the fans and everything. So that was the coolest part,” John said.

“Gene and KISS for that matter were just so gracious…And there were times where Paul Stanley would come in as well,” Haick added.

In addition to international distribution, the product has garnered recognition from notable pop culture figures including Buddy Valastro of the TV series “Cake Boss,” American rapper Lil Xan and KISS frontman Paul Stanley.

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Episode 585. Well we had an entirely different topic planned for this week, but conversations take on a life of their own. We comment on the recent Unpopular KISS Opinions which exploded and completely took over the Three Sides Facebook group. This lead into discussing a couple unpopular opinions about the Elder. Which in turn led into us discussing the reality of being a fan when the Elder was released. What it was like. Could anything have saved the Elder? Short answer… no! It was a mistake to record, but without it we would have never gotten Creatures of the Night. So sit back as we sit on our front porch and tell all the kids about what it was like back in the day.

Kissing is history, but Gene Simmons is having a blast calling up his life band with the new tool he has up his sleeve. A night of kissing without being a kiss was experienced last Tuesday at the Guíxols Arena, in the wildest night to remember in the annals of Porta Ferrada.

A metal evening, yes, doubled by the previous appearance of two bands leading up to the raised fist and a sea of ​​black shirts on the track. Motörhits, a professional tribute band, put us in a situation with a real tribute to the late Lemmy Kilmister. A tanned frontman, with his sideburns and Rickenbacker bass, and merciless assaults on Death Row, Iron Fist, and Ace of Spades. And then Opus, the band that in the 80s represented the essence of the genre’s makara metal with two of its original members, spokesman Forto, with his vocal cords in miraculous health, and guitarist Paco Laguna.

Gene Simmons’ band finally appeared, sounding compact and faithful to the Kiss sound from the early days: the distant Deuce, the crushing war machine and the rarity that deserves not to be, Are You Ready? The great bass master, with his powerful, style-defining voice, is a wandering icon, but he’s ready to offer up funny commentary in Philo-Mexican Spanish (“muchas gracias, putos pendejos”) and welcome four very young fans on stage (with their faces plastered in old-fashioned costumes) to share the powerful melody of “Love It Loud.”

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Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) – Legendary rock star Gene Simmons of KISS will be honored with the Key to the City of Niagara Falls this Sunday afternoon at 1 to celebrate his successful business partnership with Niagara Falls-based Rock Steady Sodas. Simmons launched MoneyBag Sodas with Rock Steady back in 2017. Niagara Falls will also name a downtown street “Gene Simmons Boulevard” in recognition of the rock icon.

The National Buffalo Wing Festival will celebrate its 23rd year this Labor Day Weekend. There’s several new attractions this year, including 63 new wing flavors, like Maple Bacon Jalapeno, French Toast, Hot Dill Pickle and Smoked Bourbon. There’ll also be a new layout, with all food being served in Highmark Stadium’s main concourse. The field will be open for Festival-goers to walk around.

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Every kid thinks they’re the first to ever experience the heavy stuff like love and rebellion. But, and this is key, that means when stories about that kind of stuff are told well, they land for everybody—it doesn’t matter what year the bygone days are occurring, it always looks the same because it always, always sucks to be a teen. The late ’70s/early ’80s in which Detroit Rock City is set were pretty garbage times to be a teen, too. Rough time to be an underdog all around, if other things set during this time are to be believed.

There were two coming-of-age movies about the ’70s music scene right after one another at the turn of the millennium in this and Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film Almost Famous. Almost Famous is the better movie. I’m not here to pretend otherwise: It’s shot and edited better, its feelings are deeper and sadder and more real. It is so serious.

But Detroit Rock City is the one that has a kid yell at his chain-smoking, shrieking church lady of a mother to shut the hell up about Satan and just give him his drumsticks back already. It is the only movie with Edward Furlong—in the last role of his that anybody cares about, unless you are a real fanatic of The Crow—puking every last one of his guts out on stage in a stripping contest. Our heroes in this flick are not noble or virtuous, they just want to go see a band they really like, and nobody will just get off their asses about it. They just want some degree of respect, something that is apparently too much to ask.

Detroit Rock City was about the usual 20-years-ago nostalgia people were feeling in 1999. At 25, Detroit Rock City is now a window into a time nearly half a century ago, and by virtue of that (and the fact its cast’s star power has only increased since it landed), it’s worth revisiting.

It’s 1978 in Cleveland, and four pot-smoking teens just need to get through one last day of school before they can go to a show put on by the only band they care about: Kiss. High school students Hawk (Furlong), Jam (Sam Huntington), Trip (Jason DeBello) and Lex (Giuseppe Andrews) are members of their own Kiss tribute band, Mystery, and thoroughly misunderstood by their family members. None more so than Jam, whose mother (Lin Shaye, game as she’s ever been) is the type who is happy to go around stoking moral panics and yelling at Jam for everything from his clothes to his choice in music.

The guys have scrimped and saved to score four tickets to Kiss in Detroit on the night of their last day of school. It’s just a short train ride away, provided everything goes well. Nothing does, of course: Jam’s mother discovers and cruelly destroys the tickets after embarrassing Jam in front of the entire school before committing him to a humorless Catholic boarding school, which she takes him to immediately. (I guess they’re already matriculating for next semester?) On top of it all, the rest of Mystery all get slapped with detention.

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Guesting on Guitar Tales With Dave Cohen, original KISS guitarist Ace Frehley discussed his latest solo album, 10,000 Volts, touring, starting out, and looked back on his history with KISS.

Frehley: “I had really big resentments against Paul (Stanley) and Gene (Simmons)when I quit the band the first time, and even the second time. They used to say I got fired, which is complete bullshit. Both times I left on my own accord, and they would perpetuate the myth that they fired me, which is complete bullshit.”

“There was always a jealousy there. The fact that my solo album (released in 1978), with ‘New York Groove’, was the most successful out of the four. I used to get the hottest girls. I didn’t go after movie stars, though, ’cause that just complicates things. ‘Cause you’re a celebrity, you’ve got another celebrity there and it’s twice as complicated. So I don’t understand why Gene went out with Cher, Diana Ross. It just became harder, if you wanna go do anything. But Gene doesn’t party. So, he’s pretty much in the hotel. And he doesn’t like going out on vacations, he told me. He hasn’t been on a vacation in 15-plus years. But everybody’s different.”

Frehley headlined the 80’s Rock Invasion at Kewadin Casino in St. Ignace, MI on July 20. Jordan’s Rock Vault has uploaded 4K video of the full show, filmed from the pit. Watch below.

Setlist:

“Shock Me”
“Deuce”
“10,000 Volts”
“Shout It Out Loud”
“Love Gun”
“Rocket Ride”
“Hotter Than Hell” Interlude
“God of Thunder” Intro/”New York Groove”
“Rip It Out”
“Detroit Rock City”
“Love Her All I Can” Interlude
“Cold Gin”
“Rock And Roll All Nite”