KrazyKnights1

Eric Yates

Here’s 4 recent pictures of my KISS car. I’ve added a hood scoop, spolier, and ground effects. Thanks, Eric Yates

Something Else!

On those particular dates, Gene Simmons says in this Kiss Kruise Q&A, the two bands were sharing a bill at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco with the Tubes — a band managed by venue owner Bill Graham. To perhaps no one’s surprise, the Tubes had a huge array of snacks, while Rush (then just breaking into the national scene on their Fly By Night tour) were roundly ignored.

The headliners stepped in: “You’re going to feed these guys,” Simmons told the promoter, “or we’re not getting up on stage.” Everybody, he adds, got fed.

“They were nobody,” Simmons says, in the clip above. “Nobody knew them, and they were from Canada, too. In those days, Canada meant: ‘We don’t care.’ We liked them. ‘Working Man,’ you know that song?”

Simmons goes on to do a dead-on impression — not just of Lee’s distinctive sky-high voice, but also the classic Rush track’s distinctive rhythmic signature — to huge laughs. Kiss bandmate Paul Stanley interupts then to say: “Hold on, Geddy’s on the phone,” to still bigger laughs.

Anonymous

Found this poster on a bulletin board at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa the other day. It’s an advertisement for a play that was being held at their campus theater. The 7th president, Andrew Jackson, must have been a KISS fan…

Cassius Morris | Creatures of the Net

Ara Ajizian | Musician’s Friend

During his tenure in KISS, Paul Stanley has played more guitars than any of us can imagine, and gleaned from each what makes an instrument truly exceptional. Combine that with his keen sense of visual design and you get the Paul Stanley Signature Series from Washburn. We sat down with this knight in Santa’s service to discuss these stellar instruments, and how gear has evolved over 40 years of being in the hottest band in the world.

Musician’s Friend: Tell us about your longstanding relationship with Washburn, and how the line of Paul Stanley Signature guitars came to be.

Paul Stanley: The idea of being able to create my own guitar has always been a dream. I think it’s everybody’s dream, especially when you’re growing up and you draw the ultimate guitar. Unfortunately, when you’re a kid and you draw a guitar, it looks like a ray gun. Given the opportunity to really design something, I found myself leaning on the past. The past is what got us here. Tradition is at the core of everything I try to design. I went through a couple of different companies, but ultimately I found my way to Washburn. The thing I love there is that they’re really great craftsmen, but you don’t have the red tape of a company where someone has to call someone else who has to clear what you did, and five months later you get a prototype that’s completely wrong. I went through that. When I started working with Washburn, I sketched something out and within six weeks I had a finished guitar to look at. We’ve had a great relationship.

I’m really proud of the guitars we do because they hearken back to the golden age. There’s a reason why people have always wanted vintage guitars. They were well crafted, the combination of woods and pickups was right, and that’s at the core of what I try to do. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel, just put my own spin on it.

MF: You’re a visual artist as well as a musician. How does your sense of visual style find its way into your guitar designs?

PS: The idea with this guitar was to create something classic, something that echoes things that were here before, but improves on them. Whatever guitars this may remind you of, quite honestly, this kills ‘em. It’s better balanced, the tone is tremendous, the neck, the radius, the action, the playability, everything about it. It’s great because you can have it around your neck and let go, and it stays horizontal, whereas other guitars, because of heavy tuning pegs and other things, just dip and hit the ground. The abalone and mother-of-pearl inlays are something that I’ve done over the years. Classic big frets. This is the guitar I always wanted, that never was.

MF: Some of the models in the series are equipped with mini humbuckers. What is it about the tone of the minis that earned them a spot on these guitars?

PS: Mini humbuckers are something tried-and-true, and I try to keep that in the equation when I’m designing a guitar. Something that’s been around for a while has been around because it works. The great thing about my relationship with Washburn is that they pretty much give me the freedom to run amok, and I hold their hand to the fire to make sure that we stay true to tradition. I’m a big believer that the greatest guitars were made already, and all we can do now is emulate them. There’s no secret to making a great guitar; anyone can do it. All you need is great components and great woods, and the rest is just about craftsmanship.

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David Konow | TG Daily

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, in this writer’s humble opinion Kiss absolutely deserve to be in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. You can’t compare them to Nirvana in a million years, it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but both groups, on completely opposite ends of the spectrum, have made major rock history, and deserve their place in the hall.

Now as Blabbermouth.net tells us, Kiss has actually come out in the lead to be inducted in the rock hall. Kiss fan votes are at 15.2%, Nirvana is right behind at 14.87%, third is Deep Purple at 11.89%, and Yes are at 10.52%.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony will be held next April, and we’re willing to bet that Nirvana will be inducted for sure. We also have the feeling that the bourgeois snobs and critics may not be able to hold Kiss back from being inducted as well.

twitter.com/tommy_thayer

James Jahnke | Detroit Free Press

KISS!!!!!!!!

Gene Simmons and the boys gave a shoutout to the Cadillac football team on the band’s Facebook page today. Along with a picture of Kiss with Cadillac football players in 1975, the post read: “Good luck to our friends, the Cadillac HS Football team as they play their 3rd playoff game tonight. They are 12-0 so far this year! We go way back!”

(The Vikings actually are only 11-0 heading into tonight’s 7 p.m. Division 4 regional final at Comstock Park. And if Son of Swami is right, 12-0 isn’t in the offing. But still, pretty cool.)

A little background on the Kiss-Cadillac connection:

Back in 1974, when the powerhouse Cadillac Vikings started the season with two losses, assistant football coach Jeff Neff had the idea of playing Kiss music in the locker room as a motivational tool. After all, the music was fast and loud, and, in football, as he explains, Kiss stands for “Keep it simple, stupid.”

Once the Kiss songs started flowing, the Vikings won the last seven games of the season.

In the midst of those victories, Neff got in touch with Kiss and eventually heard directly from its members. “My chair is located in the same place where Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons called me,” Neff told the Free Press in 2012.

That started a connection between the band and the school that, in 1975, led to a famous visit. Kiss, scheduled to play around that time at a Michigan college, accepted Neff’s invitation to come to Cadillac High for homecoming.

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KISSmuseum.com

Two new recent series of limited, numbered Ace Frehley artwork canvases are up for auction this week – both #1 of 18.

Beautiful works of art created by the Spaceman himself on professional 12″ x 16″ canvases mounted on a wooden frame. We have done a second series of “Rocket Ride” pieces like last year, with the difference being this new series is on a larger canvas. Acealso designed a new concept for his most famous song of all time, “Shock Me” – a design he came up with on the spot just to do something different, and with great results!

Read more about the pieces on the auction pages:

Ace Frehley Rocket Ride artwork #1 of 18
Ace Frehley Shock Me artwork #1 of 18

Chuck Yarborough | Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio — If Rock Hall voters follow the their counterparts on public polls at cleveland.com/Plain Dealer and the Rock Hallitself, three bands are shoo-ins for induction in New York City ceremonies next spring.

Those three are Nirvana, KISS and Deep Purple.

The biggest surprise, though, is that KISS has overtaken Nirvana – thought by many to be the lock for the Rock Hall for the ground-breaking influence of Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic and grunge music — in the Rock Hall’s poll.

A month ago, the Rock Hall announced a list of potential members of the Class of 2014 that included Nirvana, KISS, Deep Purple, Peter Gabriel, Hall and Oates, Link Wray, the Replacements, Linda Ronstadt, Yes, the Zombies, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Chic, LL Cool J, N.W.A., the Meters and Cat Stevens.

In the cleveland.com/Plain Dealer poll, Nirvana remains atop the heap with 14.94 percent of the more than 30,000 votes, followed by KISS, Deep Purple and (shocker) Hall and Oates.

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Something Else!

Paul Stanley says fans shouldn’t expect another unmasked tour from Kiss any time soon. The band went without makeup from 1983-1996, and has never looked back, he says.

“What we do is so unique,” Stanley said, during a Q&A on this month’s Kiss Kruise. “Once we put the makeup back on, and we reclaimed what we started as — and what we always believed in — there was no reason to go back.”

Kiss debuted with its unique set of costumed characters in March 1973, appearing for the first time without makeup on September 18, 1983 on MTV to promote their new album Like It Up. All four original members then reemerged back in costume on February 28, 1996 during the Grammy Awards.

Continue reading “‘No reason to go back’: Paul Stanley says KISS will never tour again unmasked” »

Etan Viessing | Hollywood Reporter

TORONTO - Gene Simmons is sitting this one out. But the KISS rocker’s wife Shannon Tweed-Simmons and daughter Sophie Tweed-Simmons are starring in their own Canadian reality TV series for the W network.

The eight-episode, half-hour series from Force Four Entertainment will start shooting in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Whistler, B.C. in December, with a 2014 debut.

As Shannon is a former playmate and her daughter is a straight-A student running a children’s charity in Vancouver, the series will play up the mother and daughter’s differences as they remain best friends. And Gene Simmons, who starred along with his family for seven seasons in A&E Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels, will make cameo appearances on the Canadian reality show.

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Jeff Hopkins

The KISS Kruise III Living In Sin 2 Pre-party ROCKED the Holiday Inn at the Port of Miami!!  The Breast Cancer Research Foundation was our choice of charity this year.  The LIS party was held 2 days before the Kruise started, and it was casual and fun for everyone.   It was for friends (old and new) from around the world to get together and have a good time.  We had a DJ spinning KISS tunes all party long.

Andy and I worked to gather donations all year long for our raffles, which was a great success.  This year the grand prize was a Cort Gene Simmons GS Punisher 2 Bass Guitar with case !  Our raffle tickets were $1.00 each for the general raffle and $5.00 each for the bass. We had our resident “Gene Simmons” pulling the winning raffle tickets.

This year we were honored to have Lydia Criss join us.  She brought a stock pile of her book “Sealed with a Kiss”, and sold every one of them, and graciously donated a portion of her sales to our charity.  Lydia also held a Q&A with the fans, which was a big hit, and quite entertaining  Maria Contessa ( Original Costume Designer for KISS 1973-1982) dropped by the party for a couple of hours.  She had her picture taken with fans and signed autographs. Alan G. Parker ( director of the forthcoming official Kiss movie You Wanted The Best… You Got The Best) also mixed and mingled with the crowd. We gave away lots of KISS merchandise and goodies.

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Something Else!

No matter how big Kiss has gotten, no many how many years have gone by, one pre-show ritual remains: The putting on of the makeup.

“The truth is, it’s the same ritual that we started with almost 40 years ago: We physically and literally have put on the makeup every single time,” Simmons tells CNN. “There have never been makeup people on the side. The process takes about two hours.”

Simmons founded Kiss with Paul Stanley in 1973, along with the departed Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. The band wore make up through its ’83 album Lick It Up, though by then Simmons and Stanley had been joined by Bruce Kulick and the late Eric Carr.

Kiss donned their famous makeup again in 1996, when Frehley and Criss returned for a reunion. Since, both have left again, replaced by Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer. The new players assumed the personas of their predecessors — Spaceman (Frehley’s character) and Catman (which is Criss’).

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Gerry Krochak | Calgary Sun

Jim Wells

These cats came back … and thanks for that!

After completing the Monster tour in Japan last week, logistically, reasonably, realistically and cost effectively, it made no sense to schedule a one-off show 8,007 kilometers away.

But, then again … this is no ordinary band.

For you Calgary, the masters of classic shock weren’t about to blow this one off. No damn way.

During the third rescheduled Calgary Stampede arena show in the past eight days, KISS proved once and for all that the best kind of fun is big, dumb fun.

And you can bet your Originals lunchbox on it.

The lights, the smoke, the bombs, the sparks, the blood, the fire, the fans, the spectacle and, uh, some tasty classic rock nuggets, which have stood the test of time rather well, makes the entire experience a memorable one ­— no matter how old or young you are.

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Krazy Knights

Laura Schreffler | Haute Living

Designer John Varvatos was joined by a slew of celebrity pals at Neiman Marcus this week to celebrate his new book: John Varvatos: Rock in Fashion. 

Pals such as rock photographer Mick Rock, Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley of KISS, Joe Manganiello, Dean McDermott, George Kotsiopoulos and Avan Jogia were on hand to celebrate Varvatos’ success at the invite-only event.

The coffee-table style book documents the elements of rock style that have embodied the music community for decades.

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Shayam Dodge | Mail Online

He may be a hardcore rocker but Gene Simmons has a heart made of solid gold.

The 64-year-old was honoured for his work with U.S. troops abroad and veterans at home in America during an event in Hollywood, on Thursday.

The KISS bassist is reported to have been brought to tears while giving an emotional speech as his wife Shannon Tweed and his daughter Sophie supported him from the audience.

Wearing his signature dark sunglasses, the dark haired entrepreneur donned a grey sports coat and blue jeans for his appearance at the Salute to Veterans event at Paramount Studios where he was presented with the Durning Patriotism Award.

Sporting steel toed cowboy boots the 6ft2 former reality star towered above his high heeled ladies.

Sophie, 21, wore a strapless red dress with matching strappy open toed stiletto pumps as she smiled throughout the evening, clearly proud of her famous father.

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