Latest UK News

KISS are appointed 'Games Masters' for the BBC's alternative Olympics! The 'Rock Games' is a musical version of the Olympics where rock & pop stars go head to head at 'silly' versions of Olympic sports.

Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley of KISS as 'Games Masters' will be delivering the rules of the games to stars such as Slash!

See the rock legends introduction here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wrq7m

The full series can be viewed here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wrqrk

Shannon Tweed tweed yesterday that Gene Simmons Family Jewels hadn't been picked up by A&E for the new series. However, someone then replied to say that a rescue was in the works. Not sure what is going on now, but the following statement from Gene on Ultimate Classic Rock looks pretty conclusive:

"Reality TV viewers won’t have Kiss frontman Gene Simmons to kick around anymore.

After seven seasons — leaving it with a longer run than ‘I Love Lucy’ or ‘The Honeymooners’ — ‘Gene Simmons Family Jewels’ has received its pink slip from the A&E Network. While the show never drew huge numbers, it was a genuine ratings phenomenon for the cable network, which has seen its profile rise considerably in recent years, largely thanks to the notoriety that tends to come with pointing a camera at Gene Simmons.
 
“For seven great seasons, Gene, Shannon, Nick and Sophie have been part of the A&E family, and we could not be more proud of the unparalleled run of ‘Gene Simmons Family Jewels,’” the network said in a statement originally issued exclusively to the Hollywood Reporter. “On behalf of everyone at A&E, we’d like to thank the production team at Thinkfactory Media, Gene and his amazing family for their partnership, collaboration and for opening up their lives, warts-and-all, to us throughout the years.”
 
According to Simmons, the decision to end the show stemmed from the ever-popular “scheduling conflicts.” In their own statement, the Simmons family responded, “With Kiss on tour and with my other business commitments, we have decided to draw the final curtain on our show … This is not the end of our story, it’s the beginning of a new chapter.”

Examiner.com have published the following article with the full track list for Monster:

The track list for Monster, the highly anticipated 20th studio album from legendary rock band Kiss, was revealed on Tuesday. The album will be released on Oct. 16 and is promised to be one of the band's best. The full track list is
 1.Hell or Hallelujah
 2.Wall of Sound
 3.Freak
 4.Back to the Stone Age
 5.Shout Mercy
 6.Long Way Down
 7.Eat Your Heart Out
 8.The Devil Is Me
 9.Outta this World
 10.All for the Love of Rock & Roll
 11.Take Me Down Below
 12.Last Chance
 13.Right Here Right Now

Full article can be read here.

J.M. Blaine, non-fiction editor at the L.A. literary website The Nervous Breakdown. has sent details of an interview they have done with Chuck Klosterman
on KISS. You can read the first of the 3 part series by clicking here.

There's a KISS article in the Daily Mail today which talks about the Monster book, knee ops and, er, hip replacements. Read it at the Daily Mail site

The Express printed the following article on Sunday:

ROCK BAND Kiss, of the heavily made-up faces and extravagant costumes, have unveiled their latest release, a book entitled Monster. It weighs a suitably monstrous 4st and, when opened, measures 5ft wide.
“A band that is bigger than life deserves a book that is bigger than life,” says singer and guitarist Paul Stanley to cheers from the assembled media. “Size does count,” adds Gene Simmons, the bassist with the legendary long tongue and Lothario reputation. “It is the Rolls-Royce of books,” he says, explaining how each tome is hand-bound, and goes on to describe the fanatical devotion of the sort of fan likely to cough up the necessary £2,700 to acquire a copy of Monster as “Kisstianity”.

“It sounds cultish but some people have dedicated their lives to Kiss,” says drummer Eric Singer.

 So do they worry that fans may take their ardour for the band, who have sold more than 100 million records worldwide since forming in 1972, too far? “Well,” says Simmons, “Eric has someone stalking him right now.”

Kisstinianity, he says, “is a religion of sorts, only without anybody having to die for anybody else’s sins.”

Hell Or Hallelujah is up for consideration as one of Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week, to vote please go to their new redesigned website: http://tinyurl.com/cxvvf62

Voting closes Friday, July 13 at 9am GMT.

Every week they are posting up new videos and links to tracks, and getting readers to vote for their favourites, revealing the results on a weekly basis and then putting together a Tracks Of The Month list at the end of each month.

The following 4 minute clip was shown on BBC Breakfast several times this morning. It contains footage from backstage at the London show as well as the Monster book launch: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18758702

The following review appeared in The Guardian today:-

Kiss have fetched up in a venue slightly smaller than their usual arenas in aid of a charity. Help For Heroes benefits servicemen wounded in the line of duty: "So that we can rock," avers singer-guitarist Paul Stanley, a man reassuringly steadfast in the belief that Iraq was invaded largely for Kiss's benefit. Lest any long-term fans think the self-styled Hottest Rock Band in the World have taken leave of their senses and started acting entirely out of munificence, it's worth noting that they're also over here flogging something. Not a record but a book of photos: Monster, which is three feet high and retails at $4,299. "Kiss got an up close and personal look at a 'finished proof'," offers the book's website, "and were quite impressed" – not perhaps the ringing endorsement you might hope for were you considering spending $4,299.

A three-foot-high photo book is obviously a ridiculous idea, which means, of course, that it's entirely in keeping with Kiss's ethos. Without wishing to underplay the band's music – which tonight veers from the grunty glam-rock plod of 1974's Deuce to the gleaming pop-metal of Crazy Crazy Nights and Shout It Out Loud – ridiculousness is their very lifeblood, a state of affairs underlined in no uncertain terms by their live show. Bearing in mind Kiss have not one, not two, but three walls of speaker cabinets on stage, the sound is oddly weedy and muffled – anyone would think the cabinets were empty – but it's difficult to find the energy to worry about it, bombarded as you are by other distractions. There are fireworks and flashbombs going off almost continually. Gene Simmons concludes one song by breathing fire. Tommy Thayer finishes a guitar solo by shooting fireworks out of his guitar. Drummer Eric Singer ends his own solo by extravagantly tossing his sticks in the air. He fails to catch one of them, but nil desperandum: he's got a fake bazooka, and that shoots fireworks as well.

In fact, for a band who've clearly been doing this since time immemorial – who know enough about the way publicity works to play their opening two songs not to the audience, but to the photo-grapher's pit, obligingly posing and pulling faces until everyone's got their shot – there's something endearingly ramshackle about Kiss live, at odds with their reputation for slick cynicism. A fairly interminable version of the appropriately named 100,000 Years is much enlivened when Stanley imperiously whirls his microphone around by its lead, in the style of Roger Daltrey, then drops it.

The finale of Rock and Roll All Nite comes with a pyrotechnic display so immense – certainly by the standards of the Forum, if not by those of Kiss's full-size show – that all the previous pyrotechnic displays look like a mere rehearsal. Looking on, it's hard not to be, as the band themselves would doubtless put it, quite impressed.

Rob Hutchinson has kindly sent me the following review taken from his blog.

KISS Blitz London on Independence Day!
HMV Forum Wednesday 4th July 2012

It's hotter than hell this one. It's the hottest ticket in town this summer. Period. When Sonisphere Festival was cancelled due to all manner of problems, Kiss decided to box clever, and announced a charity show at the intimate HMV Forum in North London on wait for it, 4th July. Tickets went in 90 seconds although in fact no tickets were ever sent out. Get to the venue with photo id and the credit card used for your booking, and in you go.  No id, no admission. All the £50 a head ticket money went to the excellent Help for Heroes charity www.helpforheroes.org.uk/ .

Fans were paying nine times the face value to get their hands on these little beauties on the black market, although it was only a couple of  years since they last came to these shores. Plainly the prospect of such a small show was just too much of a temptation for the Kiss Army. The joy of living in London means we are lucky and often get these cosy club type shows and this followed hot on the heels of Night Ranger and Megadeth.