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.

Wishing you a very happy birthday...we hope you have an awesome day, before rockin' Minneapolis tonight!

Check out this KISSONLINE EXCLUSIVE video clip of KISS performing "Detroit Rock City" last night in Chicago!

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 are 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.

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.

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...