Zak Wilson | Art Gods Movie
Old school record store days! Check out the hand made foamcore wall displays made by the artists at Tower Records Berkeley to promote Kiss. For more on those crazy heavy metal loving Tower Records Berkeley store artists (that helped influence the in-store look of Tower Records stores moving forward in the 80’s) check out the documentary “Art Gods” on DVD (artgodsmovie.com).
Matt Porter | The KISS Room
THE KISS ROOM, originally broadcast LIVE on Friday, January 15, from 3-5 PM EST via MontcoRadio.com!
So true …From Ziggys lightning bolt live backdrop logo adopted by ‘the Ace’, to Bowie’s face paint, to Spiders From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson‘s over-driven Les Paul, early DB is a glowing strand in KISS’s DNA, both visually and musically. Bowie made being ‘out there’ cool and KISS got the message.
At least a couple KISS fans (me and my brother) were introduced to Ziggy & KISS on the very same day. In fact it was back to back in real-time when our whole family tuned in for the ABC Friday Night At The Movies special feature‘Heroes Of Rock & Roll’ hosted by Jeff Bridges. Still have the VHS …it’s a whirlwind tour that takes us from the inception in the 50’s to 1979, when it aired. It has the coolest segue I have ever seen in my life … Ziggy pointing to the rafters with a peace sign, grimacing at the end of a hairy live version “Ziggy Stardust” when the scene cuts to Gene Simmons breathing fire as the riff to “Rockin’ In The USA” off Alive II kicks in. It may have been that very moment that I realized ‘I Wanna Rock’ (thanks Dee).
Michael Brandvold
Strange Ways
Nick DeRiso | Ultimate Classic Rock
Kiss plan to pay tribute to their 1982 Creatures Tour on a newly announced Kiss Kruise VI, which sails on Nov. 4 from Miami.
This edition of Kiss’ floating concert series will visit Cozumel and Grand Cayman before returning on Nov. 9. More details are available at thekisscruise.com.
As for the 1982 tour, fans will remember those U.S. dates as the first in which Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent appeared with the band. Both assumed newly created characters onstage. Vincent, who had been dubbed “The Wiz,” wore a design based on the Egyptian ankh, while the late Carr boasted fox-influenced face paint.
The duo replaced Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, after a period in which Kiss turned to more pop and disco styles. Creatures of the Night, which was also the first album to feature Carr and Vincent, represented a welcome turn back toward harder rock. The tour that followed celebrated Kiss’ 10th anniversary as a band, but it also marked their last tour in makeup un
til an improbable 1996 reunion with Criss and Frehley.
Today, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer round out the Kiss lineup, joining co-founders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Singer and Thayer have assumed the original Catman and Spaceman characters once assigned to Criss and Frehley, respectively. There’s no word on whether this high-seas tribute to the 1982 tour will include a return of the period-appropriate makeup worn by Carr and Vincent back in the day.
Ernest Aguila | Korea Portal
Fans of Kiss were never really sure if the the legendary rock band intends to go back and hit the studios again to record a new album for 2016.
There have been numerous reports of Gene Simmons feeling highly optimistic about Kiss releasing a new album for 2016. However, Paul Stanley was quoted to have said that the band can proceed without necessarily having to release a new record, according to sources.
“Having accomplished that, I feel we can move forward without new music. There are enough things going on in KISS that right now it doesn’t feel utterly necessary to make a new album,” he said, via Classic Rock.
The new year will find Criss, a co-founder of the rock group Kiss and a Wall Township resident, looking to finish some unfinished musical projects. The drummer and singer known for his Catman persona and chart-topping single “Beth” also vows to go to art classes in 2016 to improve his painting and drawing abilities.
“And of course bring more awareness that men get breast cancer,” said Criss, who survived the disease and has become a vocal advocate for having men check themselves for it.
Chris Medek
Michael Brandvold
Strange Ways
Chris Medek
Michael Brandvold
Brittany Spanos | Rolling Stone
Scott Lagato
A celebration of hard rock’s big hits and big hair will take place next spring in south Florida at the two-day Rockfest 80’s. Headliners include former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, Bad Company, Free and Queen singer Paul Rodgers and Night Ranger, who are best known for power ballad “Sister Christian.” The festival will take place at Markham Park in Sunrise, Florida on April 2nd and 3rd.
Ratt, the Romantics, Warrant, Cinderella’s Tom Keifer and Geoff Tate are some of the other acts to be part of the nostalgic lineup. Firehouse, John Waite, Lynch Mob, Autograph and Slaughter will also perform. More acts to be announced in 2016. The bands will be playing more of their classic hits for fans over the two-day show.
“Rockfest 80’s is a project over a year in the making,” the festival’s producer Larry Offsey said in a statement. “We are excited to launch our brand and create a true South Florida rock festival event.”
Jeff Giles | Ultimate Classic Rock
The members of Mötley Crüe have been asked countless times if they can envision ever taking the stage together again after their Final Tour concludes Dec. 31. With his latest refusal, singer Vince Neil offered former Crüe tourmates Kiss as an example of what the band is trying to avoid.
“Kiss had five farewell tours and four reunion tours. That’s exactly what we don’t want to do,” Neil told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “That was the whole reason. … We wanted to go out on top, with people saying, ‘Yeah, man, I saw the last concert. It was awesome!’ We don’t want to be that band, where it’s [billed as] Mötley Crüe, and it’s maybe one [original member’s] brother left in the band, and they’re playing clubs. … If we let that happen, we wouldn’t be thought of or remembered like we wanted to be.”
To that end, the band members signed their much-touted “cessation of touring” agreement when they announced these final dates, and although Neil admits breaking the contract wouldn’t carry a legal penalty, he insists it’s there as a reminder that unlike those other acts, the Crüe’s retirement will definitely stick.
Nathan Rabin | AV Club
KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park resembles a number of misbegotten spin-offs, as it represents the most embarrassing manifestation of a pop-culture touchstone. Like other bastard progeny—The Simpsons’ cash-grab effort The Yellow Album, the non-Beatles movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, the Atari E.T. home video game, and the Star Wars Holiday Special—it takes pop-culture monoliths in such unfathomable directions that the creators and fans of the corrupted landmarks try to wish these monstrosities out of existence through sheer force of will. (In the case of Atari’s E.T, the notorious video game wasliterally buried.) The red-headed step-children of these cultural milestones even call the integrity of their source material into question.
Although KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park is just as infamous as these other efforts, KISS never had much integrity to begin with. The television movie’s notoriety lies not in how it strays from what made KISS great, or at least fun, but rather in how it embodies the comic-book-crazed, monster-movie trash aesthetic of KISS’ Gene Simmons so purely that even he found it obnoxious. If you were to include a scene of Simmons deriding Frehley and Criss to a reporter that he’s also disparaging while receiving oral sex from a mother-daughter groupie team and counting a giant stack of $100 bills, then KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Parkwould be a perfect reflection of Simmons’ sensibility.
The G-rated nature of KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park feels dishonest. These were debauched maniacs out to fuck your girlfriend, snort your cocaine, and crash your car into a brick wall, not kid-friendly do-gooders out to solve mysteries and defeat evildoers through their space magic. Simmons is much less interested in helping people out than in helping himself to other’s people money, something he’s quite gifted at acquiring. He’s less skilled at things like “music” and “being a decent human being.”
Jackie Willis | ET
Sophie Simmons explains what really went down when the police showed up to search her family’s Los Angeles home in August.
According to a statement obtained by ET from the rep of Sophie’s father, Gene Simmons, the LAPD Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force went to the house “to discuss a crime that may have occurred on their property last year while Mr. Simmons was away on tour with KISS.” Though, the Simmons family were never suspects themselves.
The task force helps “state and local agencies to develop effective, sustainable responses to online child victimization and child pornography,” according to its website.
“It was more of a hacking situation than it was anything physical because there wasn’t actually anything physical in our house. I feel like we would’ve noticed,” Sophie told ET of the search. “But, someone used our IP address or our Wi-Fi to access something which is a relatively easy thing to do.”
The 23-year-old further explained, “If you’re ever driving down the street and your phone asks you if you want to use someone’s WIFI and you say yes, you’re now using their IP address so anything you do is linked back to whatever WIFI that is.”
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