Paul Stanley, Steven Tyler and the Easter Bunny

Denise Quan | CNN

(CNN) — There are pros and cons to holding a press conference in the middle of an outdoor shopping mall, especially in Los Angeles.True, the weather will probably be nice, and pretty people will be walking around for a built-in audience straight out of Central Casting. But on the downside, your event is in danger of being upstaged by the random celebrity who happened to be shopping at the mall with his family.Just before Aerosmith made a grand entrance at Wednesday’s presser to announce details of their summer tour, CNN stumbled across Paul Stanley from KISS…in a hut with the Easter Bunny.The guitarist said he and his wife needed to get something from Pottery Barn, and decided to bring their three young children to pose with the oversized white rabbit. They pulled up in their car, walked to the center courtyard and were immediately bombarded by a 50 foot poster of Aerosmith – strategically positioned right behind the bunny hut. He whipped out his cell phone and blew in a call to Steven Tyler.”Hey man, where are you?” asked the Aerosmith singer.”I’m at The Grove,” Stanley replied.”Oh man!,” said Tyler.

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You’ve Never Heard Kiss’ ‘Alive!’?!

Jenna Strucko | NPR

Note: This is a recurring series in which we ask our unimaginably young interns to review classic albums they’ve never heard before. Jenna Strucko is an intern for NPR Music.

The album art for Kiss' Alive!

I know nearly nothing about heavy rock and metal music. And even if Kiss isn’t exactly metal, it’s still much heavier than what I’m used to. From what knowledge base could I possibly write about this band? Up until this point, the closest I’d come to Kiss was singing along to the refrain of Wilco‘s nostalgic “Heavy Metal Drummer.” Well, maybe that’s not entirely true — I did see Kiss in those Dr. Pepper commercials during the Super Bowl a few years back…

Regardless, the question remained — how could I get the full Kiss experience in one album? Considering the band’s theatricality, it seemed a good jumping-off point would be a live record. So Alive! was my Kiss record of choice, an early live album that predates the band’s forthcoming 2012 release by 37 years (which, in the spirit of full disclosure, is nearly twice my age).

Maybe my exposure to the commercials as my only basis for Kiss are to blame, but as I listened to Alive! the picture in my head — pyrotechnic light displays, men in makeup jump-shredding their guitars, and screaming fans drowned out by mile-high speakers — took over anything else.

As a result, I found that the music by itself didn’t satisfy my expectations. From the distinct sound of a firework cannon at the start of “Deuce,” I found myself sitting at my computer itching to type “Kiss live videos” into my search bar. I sensed that by just listening to the live recordings, I wasn’t quite getting the full experience.

Unfortunately, this is not a “You’ve Never Seen” piece, and so I resisted the urge to see Kiss instead of hear Kiss, and instead decided to focus on the music and see what I could learn.

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KISS Monster Mini Golf update

KISSasylum

Photographer Steve Sils returns to the KISS Monster Mini Golf course in Las Vegas to take some detailed shots of the new facility that were not possible during the mayhem and excitement of opening day.