By Greg Kot
Photo by KISSonline

Once you've seen a giant demon in silver platform boots sprout wings and spit blood and fire, what's left? For Kiss, that shtick was outrageous enough to get them noticed in the '70s until they were the biggest band in the world.

On Friday at the United Center, not a whole lot had changed. Rock's answer to the Ringling Brothers - Kiss cofounders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley - brought the circus to a near-capacity audience. Fans were blinged out in vintage Kiss tour T-shirts and face paint. A few adolescents have enlisted, but the Kiss Army consisted mostly of folks who came of age in the mid-'70s, back when 10-year-olds were toting Kiss lunch boxes to school and rocking "Kiss Alive" on the stereo loud enough to annoy Cat Stevens fans everywhere.

Still selling loads of tickets, Simmons and Stanley run the greatest self-marketing machine in rock history, perhaps the first pair of businessmen-rockers to put the "r" in band, as in "brand." They keep finding new ways to sell themselves: In the '70s it was everyday-is-Halloween masks; at Friday's show, $30 got you a USB leather wristband containing digital files of the night's performance.

The garish black-and-white makeup was intact, as it was when the band brought a shot of glam to New York City grime in 1973. Simmons wore his 60 pounds of demon regalia, while Stanley was the bare-chested star man.

Take a look at some of the fans attending last night's show at Chicago's United Center!

Here are the latest approved KISS collectibles.

Pictured:

KISS Snuggie, Destroyer Towel, Rock 'N' Roll Over Blanket and Love Gun Mirror from KISS licensee Classic Imports.

Sonic Boom Drum Sticks from KISS licensee Coopersburg.

Destroyer Vinyl Clock from KISS licensee Rabbit Tanaka.

Here is some images of the Komplete KISS factory set that will be available in Walmart and Target stores in mid-November.

Komplete KISS is a 180-card factory set that includes the complete KISS Ikons and KISS 360 sets with an electric blue "KISS" parallel (samples below). Similar to the popular blood-spitting and fire-breathing parallels that were inserted into boxes of KISS Ikons and KISS 360, the electric blue "KISS" parallel is a must-have for KISS fans.

Each Komplete KISS factory set also includes a 5-card Komplete KISS foil insert (shown here). Also pictured is the Komplete KISS box.

Rock 'til you drop. Or at least until you can't do it anymore.

For B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Daltrey and so many other active icons of rock and blues circuits, those are words to live by. And 35 years after influential NYC quartet Kiss came on the scene with its self-titled debut and immediate follow-up Hotter Than Hell, they too are back touring the world and releasing new music.

Released last month exclusively to Walmart as a three-disc set, Sonic Boom is Kiss's 19th studio album and first since its 1998 album Psycho Circus. Disc one has 11 new tracks, disc two has 15 re-recorded Kiss Klassics, and disc three is a six-song excerpt from a Kiss show this past spring.

Age is of no concern to this band - half of whose members are pushing 60 years of age. Nor does it show on record or in concert for these make-up-wearing mega rock stars. Founding member and rhythm guitarist/singer Paul Stanley still has his dynamic vocal range and knack for writing instant hard rockin' classics, like album opener "Modern Day Delilah."

Here's KISS on the cover of the Spanish magazine Nocturna!

Note, too, that the magazine states that it is "only for adolescents and adults!"

Relive the Music! See last weekend's best Voodoo Experience festival performances featuring KISS. Watch it tonight at 10pm/9c only on Fuse TV. The Best of Voodoo Experience" will air on November 6th at 10:00pm (9:00 Central) on the Fuse network. Fuse is found on DirectTV channel 339 and Dish Network channel 158, or check your local cable listings.

Legendary rockers KISS show their support for wounded warriors and reflect on their 35-year-career with CNN's Naamua Delaney.

KISS rocked the 11th Voodoo Experience

By Keith Spera

Saint most likely to rock and roll all night and party every day: Tight end Jeremy Shockey. And not just because he was down front for KISS, pumping his fist skyward during "Shock Me."

Just so we're all clear on this: A review with the lines "truly great anthem," "in fine voice," and "looked fabulous" is not a negative review. I'm talkin' to you, KISS fans, especially those who reacted badly to the review I posted on Nola.com over the weekend.

When I wrote "I would have been disappointed if KISS hadn't..." and then enumerated how they in fact did all those things I expected... that's a compliment. Are some KISS songs better than others? It would defy logic to argue otherwise -- even if only debating degrees of greatness.

By Johannes Gernert
Translated from German for KISSonline

Mr. Simmons, your tongue is the most well-known tongue in the world.

The most well-known tongue of the world! Even I met my tongue recently. I was in Mexico for the MTV Latin Awards. Do you know what the award looked like? Like my tongue. At the entrance to the awards stood a giant tongue too, about four feet high. People were taking their pictures with it. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen.

Your makeup is as famous as your tongue. Do you make yourself up or does someone do it for you?

Never! We do it. It takes two hours to do properly. I could probably do it in one, but then the danger exists that it may run. In the beginning when we played in clubs, we could not afford a makeup artist so we'd do it ourselves. Now, I couldn't trust the makeup task to someone else.

By Wesley Hodges
Photo by Dino Perrucci

It is a truly surreal experience to watch KISS in concert for the first time. I'd always viewed them as one of those iconic, canonized bands that only existed in the movies (and on reality TV) until this show.

Perhaps the most appropriate band to ever close Halloween night, the Detroit rock heroes didn't disappoint in New Orleans, with their stage production highlighted by the word "KISS" blazing behind them in big white lights and a generous pyrotechnics display. The band looked great in their classic face paint and leather.

The fist pumping ensued as KISS played the hits and played into just about every possible rock cliche with their stage banter. But, I would expect, and hope for, nothing less from my first KISS concert.

Norwegian singer Maria Mena sings her cover of KISS's "I Was Made for Lovin' You" on Dutch television.

Kiss merchandise for hearth, home, and the hereafter

Kiss sweeps into the United Center on Friday on a cloud of hairspray and stage smoke, proving to fans that even in middle-age, its members still know how to rock--and sell some merch. The make-up masked quartet have had its faces and band logo painted, plastered, screen-printed, engraved, and stenciled onto any number of products over the years, but what's out there for the band's more practical fans? (Not everyone's gonna be ready to drop $250 on a "KISS Creatures box set" tableaux.) The A.V. Club sifted through T-shirts, lithographs, and Gene Simmons busts to find seven unexpectedly practical items with Kiss branding.

Kiss pencils
Sure, you could get an ordinary yellow No. 2 pencil with a pink eraser, but why would you ever do that when you could erase while staring at Ace Frehley (he might not be in the band anymore, but his legacy lives on in pencil form)? While not exciting, a Kiss pencil is certainly much more practical than a Kiss pen--because even Kiss know that mistakes happen.

KISS IS EVERYWHERE... Check out Gene in the ESPN screen shot from the IOWA vs INDIANA COLLEGE Football Game!!

Thanks,
Jim Gardner

Check out this news clip of a Texas schoolteacher whose "alter ego" comes out at night after he leaves the classroom...