KISSin' UK

Happy Birthday to Paul Stanley, the greatest man in rock, who turns 60 today!!

I've just been informed that Mike Japp, who co-wrote with KISS on both Paul's solo and Creatures, is currently fighting cancer. On behalf of this site I would like to wish Mike a speedy and full recovery. Mike's credits include co-writing 'Ain't Quite Right', 'Move On', 'Take Me Away, (Together As One)' and 'Saint And Sinner'. Good luck Mike, you are an important part of the KISS story.

If you didnt already know, KISS are searching for the world's best KISS tribute band - the final 4 will be invited to play in Vegas at the end  of the month in a KISS-off to see who is the best of the best, and the Winner will play at the Grand opening of Monster Mini Golf's KISS themed amusement attraction in Vegas, so we're hoping you'll vote for US when the time comes.

Voting for the top 20 out of 200+ entries begins LATER TODAY and lasts for just TWO days: Mon 16th, and Tues 17th Jan - There are two sites to keep your eyes on to make sure you get to vote:

Monster Mini Golf website:
http://www.monsterminigolf.com/kiss/band.html

Monster Mini Golf Facebook - they'll give all the details of where and
when to vote, here
http://www.facebook.com/MonsterMiniGolfKISS

Thanks to Wienerworld, I have 2 copies of the fantastic Eric Carr Unfinished Business CD to give
away, just answer the questions on the link below and submit your answers. Winners will be announced at the end of January.

Click here to enter!

There's been a couple of KISS references on Buzzcocks over the past few weeks, firstly I Was Made For Lovin' You was on the intros round, and on last weeks episode Noel Fielding was wearing Paul Stanley make-up. Noel was of course at the Islington show last year and is known for being a KISS fan. It would be good to have someone from the band on the show next year, as long as it's not someone in the Identity Parade line-up supporting a fractured wrist...

The fantastic new Eric Carr CD, Unfinished Business, will be getting an official UK release in January thanks to the guys at Wienerworld. As has happened several times in the past, we will be running a competition in conjunction with Wienerworld shortly to give away some copies of the CD, keep a look out over the next week or so. The press release for the CD is below:-

Legendary KISS drummer Eric Carr was an intricate part of the band for over 11 years
His powerful drumming rocked the music world through the metal eighties
Carr is still an influence on drummers and rock fans alike
This special 20th year commemorative CD release features over 17 rare Eric Carr recordings, including unreleased music, live performances, interview clips and more
Guests include members and former members of KISS, Twisted Sister, Seether, ZO2, Europe and more
This CD is a testament to a man whose personality and heart were as big as his enormous talent
Eric's spirit is alive in each and every song!

Eric Carr - Unfinished BusinessTracklisting:

1. Eric Speaks to the Fans
2. Just Can't Wait
3. Troubles Inside You
4. Eric Talks About His Music
5. No One's Messin' With You
6. Car Jam 1981
7. Eric Talks About His KISS Audition
8. Shandi
9. All Hell's Breakin' Loose
10. Dial L For Love
11. Elephant Man
12. Eric talks about Mark St. John
13. Midnight Stranger
14. Eyes Of Love
15. Bill Aucoin Talks About Eric
16. Through The Years
17. I Cry At Night (Bonus track recorded 1967)
18. Eric joking at KISS rehearsals

If you haven't seen it yet, there's a new Smirnoff advert doing the rounds on a lot of Sky channels with a cover of Crazy Crazy Nights by Big Foote. The song if also available on iTunes.

20 years ago on 24th November 1991 the world lost one of it's greatest drummers, the brilliant Eric Carr. Eric tragically died of cancer shortly after recording his last song with KISS (God Gave Rock & Roll To You where he provided backing vocals).

Eric is still greatly missed by his fans, his dedication to both the band and his fanbase are unrivalled to this day, he was one of the most respected members of the band by KISS fans thanks to the vast amount of time he dedicated to them.

Bruce Kulick summed up Eric a few years ago when he said the following to me:

"Eric was my friend, my bandmate and like a brother to me.
He made me laugh, he made me angry,and when he passed on he made me cry.
I remember his great drumming and his great sense of humor.
I miss him but I know he will never be forgotten. I hope he is having some great jam sessions in heaven!"

Eric's family continue to keep his memory alive, the latest CD - Unfinished Business - is a fantastic CD featuring some excellent covers of Eric's songs as well as Eric himself singing Shandi (with newly recorded backings). This is now available from both iTunes and EricCarr.com

Eric you are sorely missed, but will never be forgotten.

Gene Simmons Dream Big was the name of his talk at the London Business School aimed exclusively for business students and held at a secret location in the school. I was lucky enough to be given a press pass, however the location was still a secret until about 24 hours before the event. The location? The auditorium in the School Of Gynaecology, where else!

I arrived a bit early and was shown to my seat right near the front and behind 3 reserved seats. Hmmm, a Gene Simmons talk, wonder who on earth those seats would be for... in comes Shannon, Sophie & Nick who are lead to the middle of the auditorium, and promptly moved to the front! Brilliant, not only do I have a great seat to listen to the man himself but also get to listen to the running commentary from his family which made the night even better!

So Gene is introduced to a massive applause from the 100 or so students in the room, many of whom have yet to be introduced to a KISS song, let alone Family Jewels, KISS condoms and KISS coffins. Gene starts by talking about the importance of brand, he then demonstrates this by showing a 5 minute video literally full of Gene Simmons. It contained everything from the world of Gene, including KISS clips, Dr Pepper adverts, CNN clips, Family Guy, The Envy, movies, Indy car and finally the credits from Family Jewels turned up LOUD! The words 'Gene Simmons' must have been said at least 100 times in the video, Gene acknowledges this shortly after by saying "so, are you sick of Gene Simmons now? I'm not". Yes I’d seen all this before but a lot of the students in the room hadn’t and were genuinely surprised at the extent of the Gene Simmons brand.

The talk itself was aimed directly at students to demonstrate that if you sell your brand well enough you can make millions. Gene takes us through everything from running a business to interview skills, economic meltdown to making millions and lots more in-between. He demonstrates interview skills by dragging a nervous student up on the stage and asking him to pretend he was introducing himself for the first time. The “Gene Simmons way” was then taught showing how to stay calm & confident without looking like an idiot.

Gene then starts to talk to various people in the audience showing how important it is to speak foreign languages. At this point he talks in Japanese to an oriental looking girl, she clearly hasn't got a clue what he's on about so he tries Korean, again no clue. "So, What language do you speak?" he asks "er, I speak English" says a strong British accent! At this point a heckler pipes up and takes the piss out of Gene. The heckler was Nick Simmons who firmly put his dad in his place, very funny and something that continued throughout. Gene was making the point about how important it is to be able to communicate effectively with your customers. He did demonstrate this effectively by talking in Hungarian, German, Spanish and Hebrew to various students. At this point Gene points out that he is a partner in ortsbo.com a company that translates 53 languages in real time on social network sites. You may remember this was used for a KISS chat with Paul & Gene a few months ago. The other partner is introduced who feeds Gene with statistics about the site such as how they have matched the success of the first 3 years of Facebook in only 9 months. Clearly they have paid towards heavily towards the speech.

Gene talks more about selling yourself and Sophie gets up to help him out with an example (incidentally she told everyone she is currently in the middle of an IT course (wonder if she wants a job at my place), then out of the blue she is asked out on a date by an Icelandic stalker/student which left Gene speechless! It was very funny but the guy didn't know when to give up, nice try though, can't fault the lad.

Gene then puts his stamp on the current economic problems throughout Europe and tells us that countries are no different to businesses, only run by idiots "Richard Branson would make a great PM". He made of point of saying that people are the cause for the current state of the economy and nobody else. Blaming bankers is like "blaming the baker if you're fat", "if you took out a $400,000 mortgage when you can only afford $100,000 you've got no-one to blame but yourself".

He again gets someone up on stage to show how important it is to be organised. "What would happen if you lost your phone?" (gets out a phone with nice custom Rock & Roll Over picture on it!). At this point he lifts up his jean leg and pulls out a notebook from his cowboy boot, "hey, read this, what does it say?". The bloke dragged up then reads out the contents of Gene's day and confirms that the book is full of backup phone numbers. Selling yourself is a big factor with Gene, who then takes a business card off a student and picks fault with it showing what we should do instead.

All through the talk Gene is firmly put in place by Nick, at one point he apologised if his dad sounds racist "He's not really racist, just old". Then there's the black tissue that Gene wiped himself with and covered his face in black spots, Shannon & Nick make sure to point this out to the whole room (wish my camera had caught that one)!

At one point a student asks Shannon about marriage and she got quite emotional saying that her best advice is to write down what defines the relationship before you go any further "if I had known different I wouldn't have waited for him, I would have left" were her words. Gene then told her how he now knew better and loved the woman inside, to which she wiped a tear and blew him a kiss. This was for real, it wasn't an episode of Family Jewels and was nice to see. Incidentally, Shannon’s wedding ring... jesus any bigger and it would have taken my eye out!

Gene then told us about his life as Chaim Witz and how hard growing up was when they first moved to USA. This was spoken from the heart, he mentioned his mum a lot and some of the old jobs he had such as scraping fat from chicken skin at a butchers. At this point Shannon is a bit concerned that he hasn't been drinking enough and tells him to get a water,he doesn't hear her so she gets on stage and gets one for him. It's clear who looks after who in their relationship. Shannon also shouted over to remind everyone that Gene made his millions without booze or drugs. Gene confirmed this saying he's always been clean & sober, until Nick shouted out "you were tipsy at your wedding!", "I wasn't! Why are you kids constantly trying to get me drunk!".

There was very little KISS talk, other than some short clips and Gene talking about Hello Kitty and Angry Birds. He said that he approached both of those companies himself and convinced them to use the KISS brand, "I shouldn't tell you about Angry Birds" he then said, maybe forgetting he'd already told us on The One Show. Before he mentioned Hello Kitty he asked for a tissue to wipe his sweat, at which point Sophie passed him one. He thinks it's a Hello Kitty tissue and tells us how he's put the KISS brand in the Kitty... when Nick shouts "it's Miffy the rabbit!" to which he replies "okay, I'll get the rabbit next..". He did say the inevitable "We'll get you coming, we'll get you going", but hey, there had to be at least one of our favourite sayings in there. He also mentions how successful his kids are now saying that Nick & Sophie will be singing at a casino soon for $40,000 at this point an embarrassed Nick replies "have you really just broadcast our pay cheque?"!

Overall this was a great talk, I'm sure everyone there would agree they learnt a lot, especially me (and maybe even the Sophie stalker). Some UK fans have already called him a sellout for doing these talks - sorry I disagree, he is a great businessman, multi-millionaire and still rocking the shit out of his fans at 62. The whole talk went down very well with a bunch of students who frankly probably didn't have a clue about his life before hand. However without his family the night wouldn't have been half as entertaining as it was. I sure as hell learnt a lot from this and have seen a different side to Gene, from a confident businessman to a family man who needs Shannon, Nick & Sophie to stop him embarrassing himself!

Big thanks to Helen & Peter at LBS.

As you are probably aware Gene is currently over in the UK to present the Classic Rock awards. I had the pleasure of meeting him yesterday at the filming of The One Show, at the White City Studios in London. If you seen the show, all the KISS merchandise they shown was provided by KISSin' UK, I had to set it all up myself so apologies if it looked rough. The One Show is one of the strangest shows on TV, where they have one main guest and show clips of something random then talk to the guests about it even though they really don't give a damn. Gene handled this well and made some nice comments about wearing a Poppy, even if some people didn't appreciate his views on the NHS (twitter went nuts after the show).

If you didn't see the show you can watch it on iPlayer for a short time: One Show 7/11/11

Gene posing with my stuff after the show

I was standing next to Shannon for a lot of the filming who was very funny trying to put Gene in his place off air, his comments about making her wait for marriage didn't go down well! I got to speak to Gene a few times and he also introduced me to Shannon (who offered to take some photos for me), he was in a great mood and seemed very excited about presenting the Classic Rock awards. One of the weirdest things I've ever seen though was Gene being driven round on a bike by Pudsey Bear, so weird they had to film it twice. The owner of the dog in the pic were possibly two of the most miserable people I've ever met, Gene was trying to make conversation with them and was blanked. Hey, don't you realise... this is GENE SIMMONS!

Picture by Shannon Tweed

Matt Baker was wearing Gene makeup when I got there, thought he was going to wear it for the show but he told me it was just for a sketch at the start of the show. Just a shame that the lovely Alex Jones wasn't in Paul makeup..

Overall a great time was had, Gene was at the studio early and made plenty time to chat with us, it was surreal having free reign walking around the TV studio and being asked to help prepare the set. Big thanks to everyone involved especially Gene, Shannon, Mary, Sarah, Dave & Danny Francis (thanks for the pick!).