Kiss News

02/22/2017

KISS To Ride In Final Blocks Of Endymion Parade, Headline Extravaganza

By JoBo / Classicrock1051.com

Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images

If you�re heading to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras festivities this weekend, be on the lookout for the KISS Army!

The Endymion parade is scheduled to role at 4:15pm this Saturday. It is said to be the biggest parade in all of carnival, having more than 3,000 members.

Post-parade is the Endymion Extravaganza. KISS is set to headline the show, along with acts FloRida, and KC and the Sunshine Band at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

The plan is for band members to be in the parade, however, due to a scheduling conflict with soundcheck, members of KISS may not make it onto the floats at the beginning of the parade.

That doesn�t mean Gene Simmons won�t be on the floats at all, though! Endymion founder and captain Ed Muniz, told WWL-TV he hopes to put him in a limo and have him meet up with the Grand Marshal float somewhere between Broad and Carrollton avenues. He is hoping to have him in the parade as early as possible, and traffic willing.

02/21/2017

KISS SNAP CHAT FILTER

The KISS Army is having a blast with the new KISS Snap Chat Filter! Thanks for sharing these great photos with us!

02/19/2017

Paul Stanley Talks KISS Merch Milestone with Billboard Magazine

 A half billion dollars in sales and 125 global licensing deals can't be wrong.

By Andy Gensler / Billboard.com

An interview with Paul Stanley, KISS' hirsute party-starting frontman, doesn't go in any way, shape or form as a longtime fan might expect. This is, after all, Starchild, who back in the day in his rocktastic onstage falsetto-tinged banter would ask such trenchant questions as, "How many of you girls like to get licked?" or more famously on 1975's Alive! "How many people here like to take a taste of alcohol!?"

But with age (he's now 65), road miles (43 years) and family life (four kids between the ages of 5-22) comes wisdom. The KISS frontman touches upon such philosophical topics as human fallibility, finding your path and the value of altruism and self-empowerment and not so much partying every day. Stanley, these days, seems more Star Wars' Yoda than Starchild.

The irony is as uninterested in the material world as he now seems, we're discussing the band's latest merchandising milestone: Over the last year, with the help of longtime merch partner Epic Rights, KISS hit 125 global licensing deals. The band, throughout it's career, has sold some half a billion dollars retail value at stores and in concerts which helps back KISS' claim to being the most merchandised band of all time. In fact, in 2015 the group made the Top 150 Licensors List published in License Global which based on 2014 revenues reported their merch at $100 million. 

"Sometimes people who will watch the band from the periphery and talk to me about the band's 'golden years,'" Stanley says. "And I go, 'These are the golden years, these here now.' This has been a steam roller that has only picked up steam in terms of monetary compensation -- nothing compares to today."

Indeed while KISS trailblazed new merch and fan club territory in the mid-1970s with a torrent of t-shirts, patches, posters, lunch boxes and the formation of the Kiss Army, its vast merch arsenal today continues breaking new ground with millennial-friendly wares like KISS emojis, mobile video games, moisturizing face masks, carbon fiber bikes and debit cards (see Billboard's gallery of New KISS merch).

Billboard caught up with Stanley to discuss the band's licensing juggernaut, its origins, the odds of another reunion and how from KISS condoms to KISS coffins the band "get you coming and going�"

Billboard: Congratulations on KISS' latest merch milestone, 125 global licenses.
Paul Stanley: We've had thousands of licensing partners over the years but my objective has never been to have bragging rights by accumulating volumes of licensing partners; rather, it's been about using decades of successes as a spring board to elevate our position in terms of gaining higher stature affiliations.

How did KISS' merchandising begin?
Organically. We came at a time when fan clubs were frowned upon. Fan clubs harkened back to an age of Fabian and Frankie Avalon and seen as a ploy by management and record companies to sell the flavor of the week. But when we came into being people wanted to align themselves with us. They were the ones who said, 'We want a t-shirt, a belt buckle.' It's very easy to tag us as marketing geniuses, but I would rather say we have very acute hearing.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the interview now.

02/19/2017

Tommy Thayer Teams With Zenith Watches for Military Museum Fundraiser

By Roberta Naas / Forbes

Last night in Portland, OR, guitarist Tommy Thayer, a.k.a., the Spaceman, along with Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Eric Singer, all of the rock band KISS, gave a surprise performance at the close of a gala fundraiser event, where legendary rockers such as Alice Cooper, Robby Krieger of the Doors, Danny Seraphine from the band, Chicago, and Will Lee from The Late Show with David Letterman, among others, also performed. The exclusive �All-Star Salute to the Oregon Military� event raised $1.4 million toward completing the construction of the $20 million Oregon Military Museum named after Tommy�s father, Brigadier General James B. Thayer. To help raise funds, Tommy Thayer joined forces with Zenith Swiss watch brand to create a special commemorative watch and a small, limited edition collection.

�Obviously, this is important to me on a personal level because my father is involved,� said Tommy Thayer in a private interview yesterday, �but it is important, too, for people to remember and commemorate the amazing people and their stories of heroism. The things they did for our country are inspirational and help us understand where we came from, what helped make us, as a country.�

Thayer�s father, the 94-year-old retired Brigadier General James B. Thayer, is a decorated hero who served in World War II. In 1945, Thayer led his platoon forward in Europe, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with SS soldiers, and eventually entered Austria. �My dad�s platoon discovered and liberated an Austrian death camp for Hungarian Jews,� explains Tommy Thayer. �It was a horrific experience, but they saved the lives of 15,000 refugees in that camp.�

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the article at Forbes.com.

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