Paul Stanley with one of his two sons, Colin, and Eric Singer with one of his many watches, attend last night’s Laker’s Game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Michael Brandvold

Talking Metal

Listen here:  Talking Metal #402

On this episode of the Talking Metal podcast Mark and John celebrate 40 years of Kiss. Also, Mark talks to Tommy Thayer of Kiss about his limited edition Epiphone signature model Les Paul, Black N Blue, Hunter S Thompson, Vinnie Vincent, Judas Priest, Stars, Angel, the first Metal Massacre album and various Kiss albums including Monster, Sonic Boom, Hot In the Shade and Revenge.

Jeff Giles | Ultimate Classic Rock

Jason Merritt

Hey, Kiss fans! Have the memoirs from Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, and Ace Frehley (not to mention the band’s official biography) left you kraving more Kisstory? Good news: Simmons and Paul Stanley are writing yet another book.

The new tome, titled ‘Nothin’ to Lose: The Making of Kiss (1972-75),’ is due out on August 20, and will find the duo working with co-author Ken Sharp to compile an oral history of the band’s early years. According to the press releaseannouncing the book, “the 544-page hardcover draws on more than 200 interviews, offering a captivating and intimate fly-on-the-wall account of their launch, charting the struggles and ultimate victories that led them to the threshold of superstardom.”

The release, which goes on to promise “an indelible and irresistible portrait of a band on the rise and the music scene they changed forever,” also includes an undeniably impressive list of interviewees such as Ted Nugent, Alice Cooper,Bob Seger, and members of Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, and Rush.

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Phyllis Pollack | Examiner

At the Annual Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Party held in Los Angeles, California at the Beverly Hilton tonight, Paul Stanley of Kiss stopped on the red carpet to discuss his latest project, his upcoming book.

In an interview on the red carpet, Stanleystated, “My book is about three-quarters done. It should be pretty terrific.”

He noted, “I think there’s a lot to be said for self-empowerment for what you can accomplish, when you believe in yourself, and go against all the odds and adversity.”

“So hopefully, it will be a book that is more than just a lot of smut, and a tell-all, or braggadocio,” he said. How’s that for a word? ”

What revelations will Stanley‘s fans find out about him as a person? He joked, “That I’m an exceptional guy. It’s a book that my kids will be able to read. Not right now, but it’s a book that will show where I started and that the road really isn’t that easy.”

So far, Stanley has not been very open when discussing hardships he has been through. There is a reason for this, Stanley explains, “I’m an entertainer. I’m a performer. People pay me to entertain. People pay me to forget about their problems.”

“You don’t want to hear my problems. You don’t want to hear about mine,” he said.

Maybe there are some rock fans that do. “Okay. Let me get a chair and sit down. Let me get a couch, I’ll lay down,” he joked.

I smile and offer, “I’ll be your analyst. I could do a good job.”

“I’m sure you would,” laughed Stanley.

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Michael Brandvold

news.com.au

Peters Ice Cream has re-issued the 1980 KISS “Thunderbolt” ice block, named after 1976 hit God of Thunder, to coincide with the KISS Monster Tour later this month.

Paul Stanley said the original “popsicle”, launched to coincide with Unmasked tour (See video below), was an indication of how big they were at the time.

“When we first came to Australia we knew we were big,” Stanley tells fans on YouTube. “Kissteria had gripped the nation and we heard about how massive we were and we had this huge following and we were a phenomenon, this was the sign of a real phenomenon, that we also had popsicles named after us.

Justin Lloyd

KISS bassist Gene Simmons still has 12 of the original boxes from the 1980s ice blocks.

While the Thunderbolt is a replica of the original, it has been updated for today’s tastes. In the 1980’s the black tip was grape flavour, now it’s cola.

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The Smoking Gun

A Connecticut man has pleaded guilty to participating in a coordinated online attack on Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, whose web sites were targeted in retaliation for comments the rock star made about Internet piracy.

The October 2010 denial of service attack against genesimmons.com and two other sites–which were knocked offline–was spearheaded by the online collective “Anonymous,” which dubbed its Simmons assault “Operation Payback.”

The musician, 63, upset “Anonymous” and its various sympathizers when he advised entertainment industry figures to “sue everybody, take their houses, their cars. The music industry was asleep at the wheel and didn’t have the balls to sue every freckle-faced kid who downloaded tracks.”

The FBI opened a criminal probe after a Simmons lawyer, Barry Mallen, reported the denial of service attack to federal investigators.

During a hearing last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Kevin George Poe, 25, pleaded guilty to his role in the Simmons attack. Poe, known online as “spydr101,” copped to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. FBI agents determined that Poe’s computer swamped the genesimmons.com web site with 69,000 requests during the denial of service attack.

Poe, pictured in the above mug shot, was originally indicted last year on two felony charges–conspiracy and computerimpairment–that carried a combined maximum of 15 years in prison. However, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Poe was named in a superseding criminal information that only charged him with the reduced impairment count.

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Bianca Carneiro | Mailonline

Gene Simmons takes his snacking seriously.

While his wife Shannon Tweed was dressed for a lazy Sunday, the KISS rocker was spotted wearing a fancy coat as the pair bought some last minute Super Bowl snacks at a grocery store in Los Angeles on Sunday.

The couple appeared to be prepping for a small party with friends, as they left the store with just a few bags of Stacy’s pita chips, Snapple drinks and other treats.

But Gene couldn’t wait until they got home and enjoyed a snack on an energy bar as they walked to their car.

In fact, the famous ladies man was so focused on his chocolatey chew that he didn’t even offer to help his partner of nearly 30 years as she carried the loot home.

Luckily Shannon looked ready for the workout as she balanced her goods with a large black studded handbag while wearing black jogging pants and grey trainers.

The 62-year-old singer looked bit overdressed for the occasion, wearing a black blazer and buttoned shirt with fancy jeans and his trademark cowboy boots.

After the outing, the pair returned home to later join the millions of Americans cheering on the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers 

‘Between watching grown men cry of happiness and the Clydesdale beer commercials, it was a great night of entertainment,’ she tweeted.

Chris Epting | Noisecreep

KISS lead guitarist Tommy Thayer was on hand at the 2013 NAMM show in Anaheim, Calif. over this past weekend to visit the Gibson guitar booth and give the capacity crowd an up close and personal look at his spectacular new signature Epiphone “Spaceman” Les Paul.

It’s a silver sparkle beauty that Thayer is clearly very proud of, as he should be. He’s now been in KISS for over a decade, and he’s slowly but surely carved out his own unique sound and approach, all the while being sensitive to the legacy of the “Spaceman” character originally created by original guitarist Ace Frehley.

As Tommy tells us, he didn’t want to rock the boat too early in the game, but with the last two KISS albums, Sonic Boom and Monster, he took the opportunity to begin putting his personal stamp on the sound of the “hottest band in the land.”

In just a few weeks, KISS are off to Australia to bring some thunder down under and then hopefully after they have their way with Europe, we’ll get some KISS here again in the U.S.

Aside from being a fantastic guitarist, Thayer (formerly of Black ‘N Blue) is also one of the most down-to-earth guys in the business and it’s always a pleasure when Noisecreep gets a chance speak to him.

Michael Brandvold

Michael Leonard | Gibson

KISS turn 40 in 2013. They played their first show in January 1973 in Queens, New York. Since then KISS have become adored and derided in equal measure, but their influence on a generation of guitar rockers has been huge, and they have proved themselves time and time again to be masters of marketing and self-mythology.

Below are some fun facts. If you want to read about KISS’s Gibson guitars, check out:
Ace Frehley “Budokan” Les Paul Custom, Gibson.com’s 2012 interview with KISS’s Tommy Thayer and Tommyinterviewed recently at NAMM 2013.

But here’s some fun…

1. Before changing their name to KISS, the quartet were called Wicked Lester. As Wicked Lester, they even recorded an album’s worth of demos for Epic Records in 1971-‘72 that never got released. Some of these songs would show up on later KISS albums. Drummer Peter Criss joined around April 1972 and Ace Frehley followed in January ’73. Two weeks later, they debuted as KISS.

2. Before they decided on KISS, they also considered the names Albatross, Rainbow (before Ritchie Blackmore’s post-Deep Purple band of the same name), and Crimson Harpoon. Gene Simmons was once quoted as saying that he wanted to call the band F***, but he was joking. Simmons is smart enough to know that would be uncommercial.

3. In the 1970s, some anti-rock preachers suggested KISS stood for Knights in Satan’s Service – that’s not true.

4. The Rainbow connection doesn’t end there. Ken Kelly, the artist who painted both the Destroyer and Love Gunalbum covers also painted album covers for Blackmore’s Rainbow.

5. Former Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French auditioned for lead guitarist of Kiss in late 1972/early ‘73, when they were still called Wicked Lester. But Ace got the gig. Even though Ace auditioned wearing mismatching sneakers, one red and one orange.

6. Their fervent fans are known as the KISS Army, and started in Indiana when a local radio station refused to play any KISS songs in the early ‘70s. Protesting fans marched outside of the radio station and referred to themselves as the KISS Army.

7. Original pressings of debut album KISS did not include “Kissin’ Time”. The album was reissued in July ‘74 to include the cover, “Kissin’ Time,” originally a hit for Bobby Rydell.

8. For the cover of KISS, the band wanted their debut LP to resemble Meet The Beatles. Oh, and Warner Bros. Records initially threatened to end the band’s deal if they did not remove their makeup.

9. To get the silver “Spaceman” look for his hair on the KISS artwork, Ace Frehley applied commercial spray-paint that he assumed would wash right out afterwards. Ace was wrong.

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Tim McPhate | KissFAQ

KF: I assume Tommy would have been around during this time as well. How about Peter Criss? Would he have been around during this stage?

MO: No, Peter wasn’t around at all during post-production. Tommy was around a lot because he was our contact. In the end, we had to get involved in the video side as well, because the video guys were sending us pictures that weren’t what we needed. They were sending us pictures with shots from Dallas and other shows like that, and we said, “No way. No way. We can’t do that. We can only use pictures that we’ve got. It won’t work.” So in the end we took a big hand in how the video was put together as well. That’s why we get such a big credit, if you watch the DVD, we come straight away after the band and Doc. In the end, we had to get involved in the vision as well. Because music is king and that’s the thing that we had to keep putting across to the video people that video is very, very important and vision is very much part of a KISS show when you go to see it, very much part of the spectacular, but in the end the music has to be king. The vision has to follow the music. Again, we know what the KISS Army is like and their fan base, and there’s no band in the world that treats their fans better than KISS. There is just not. The just really are so conscious of their fan base.

KF: I want to go back to Peter. Given he was struggling with carpal tunnel at the time, how do you rate his performance on the album?

MO: Well, I rate his performance really well. Because he was soft hitting, there was a bit of enhancement on the drum sound to get a bit more power into it. But it was his playing, I just had to use his good hits and when you had a really good hit, I would use that snare Continue reading →

Lyndsey Parker | And The Winner is…

Forty years ago this week, on January 30, 1973, the band formerly known as Wicked Lester played its first gig under its new name. To three people. In a long-forgotten venue in Queens called the Popcorn Club (later renamed the Coventry). Why is this notable, you ask? Well, because that was the first official concert by a not-so-little band called KISS. And four decades, 100 million in album sales, multiple lineup changes, thousands of pieces of mass-produced merchandise, and countless gallons of facepaint later, KISS (or at least founding members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley) are still rocking and rolling all nite and partying ev-er-y day.

While the group’s characters–Paul Stanley’s Starchild, Peter Criss’s Catman, Ace Frehley’s Spaceman, and Gene Simmons’s Demon–weren’t yet fully formed when KISS took the stage that fateful night in Queens (their legendary platform-footed characters would make their true debut 10 days later, at the Daisy club in Amityville, New York), the KISS guys already knew that they wanted to put their own, much more macho spin on the early 1970s’ prevailing glam-rock style.

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KissFAQ
Photos: wireimage.com

Paul Stanley and wife Erin Sutton were among the attendees at the Voice Health Institute’s Raise Your Voice Benefit on Jan. 24 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. Other notables in attendance included Aerosmith’s Tom Hamilton and Steven Tyler, the Who’s Roger Daltrey, and Lionel Richie, and actors Mel Gibson and Kate Hudson, among others.

On the red carpet, Stanley and Tyler exchanged pleasantries. Last October, the two frontmen engaged in a verbal joust.

Tim McPhate | KissFAQ

KissFAQ has conducted an interview Australia-based producer/engineer Mark Opitz regarding his role as the producer/chief mixer on KISS’ 2003 project “KISS Symphony.”

In the first of a two-part interview, Opitz discusses the challenges of capturing KISS alongside a symphony orchestra, some of the technical demands inherent to the project, the project’s post-production schedule, and working with KISS’ Tommy Thayer and conductor David Campbell, among other topics.

The following are excerpts from Opitz’s interview with KissFAQ’s Tim McPhate:

KissFAQ: Mark, let’s start with the obvious question. How did you come to be involved with KISS on “KISS Symphony”?

Mark Opitz: Doc McGhee, the manager, asked a friend of mine, Michael Gudinski in Australia, for the names of three people he thought could get involved. And at this stage it was only [at] the mix level. Michael Gudinski said there was only one [person], and it was me. But once I got involved and I started to speak to a few people, I realized it was a lot bigger. I was living in Sydney at the time, so I flew myself and two of my crew down to oversee the operation of the recording aspect of the whole thing.

KF: Mark, live albums present a multitude of challenges. And even then, “KISS Symphony” isn’t your typical live album. What were the main challenges in capturing KISS alongside a symphony orchestra?

MO: The challenges were the fact that KISS are a very active band onstage, and not only active in the way they play but in the audio aspect. I mean you have things like Paul flying off the stage to the middle of the audience at one point. You have Peter Criss going 50 feet up in the air on a drum riser. And not only that, you have massive fireworks going off all the time. Those present a lot of challenges, not just for me but for David Campbell, in particular, when he can’t see the drummer. It’s very hard to keep time as an orchestra, Continue reading →

Cassius Morris | COTN

For their 40th anniversary, COTN host, Cassius Morris, does a 7 minute spoken word piece on why he has such a passion for KISS. This is a raw, commercial free salute to the hottest band in the world. 

Mia Gray

German model Mia Gray does a photo shoot as a tribute to Paul Stanley. See Mia on her Facebook page.

Michael Brandvold