KISS, one of the highest grossing and bestselling rock bands of all time, still remains iconic to this day. With their out-of-the-world shows, the band gained popularity in the mid-70s as they emulated theatrics through shock, glam rock and extreme effects on stage, including fire breathing, blood spitting, smoke bombs, eccentric lighting, and pyrotechnics. Not just that, each band member donned a different face paint while dressing up in 50 pounds of armor and eight-inch heel boots. They took on unique and different personas akin to comic-style characters, the Demon (Gene Simmons), the Starchild (Paul Stanley), the Spaceman/Space Ace (Ace Frehley), and the Catman (Peter Criss). In the VH1 KISS documentary, they mention how watching Alice Cooper live made them wonder what would happen if there were four different Alice Coopers, and that’s exactly what they did. Once in a while, you would also catch levitating drum kits and rockets launching out of guitar headstocks, clearly, it’s no surprise why KISS was able to reel in numbers with their sold-out shows and eventually became a pop culture phenomenon.
A Brief Look at Their History
KISS had their first-ever live show in Queens, New York on January 30, 1973, with an audience containing barely 10 people. While they got used to the occasional ups and downs, things started looking up as they signed onto a five-song demo tape with producer Eddie Kramer (Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix). However, the success was short-lived as fans mentioned how the recorded songs did not justify their actual performances and lacked the level of energy that their live shows had. Their initial albums, such as ‘KISS’(debut album) and ‘Hotter Than Hell’ barely made an impact on the Billboard 200. But on the other end, their live performance greatly improved their reputation as people were drawn into the KISS experience and they began to attract mainstream attention. This is when KISS decided to record a double live album called ‘Alive!’ in 1975 which effectively kickstarted their legacy…and the rest is history.
To understand their impact, this KISS documentary is the perfect video to add to your watch-list:
The End of the Road World Tour
On December 2nd, 2023 KISS announced their final day of their four-year long farewell tour, the ‘End of the Road World Tour’. This long tour saw KISS play across five continents in hundreds of venues which nearly killed Paul Stanley in the process. It’s almost a funny but profound ending as rumors of their ending had been circulating since the early 2000s and had become a joke in itself. While the band members had creative differences and split up from time to time, once in a while, they would reunite and prolong their farewell — leading to half a century of KISS performances. It speaks volumes of the unending demand that their live shows brought — the sheer theatrics and exaggerated performance elements. Somehow, even after all these years, the legacy of KISS hasn’t altered one bit. Simmons made a notable mention to how their makeup is a huge part of why their shows have run for over fifty years, and successfully so. The makeup takes away from the audience noticing any lapse in time, making it seem like the first ever-KISS performance. The latest news of KISS is surrounding this very aspect of the partial immortality they achieved through their never-changing makeup and theatrics.
KISS & ILM: a Digital Rock Era
As KISS played the final night of their farewell tour, they announced an exciting collaboration of a ‘New Era’ in partnership with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM, founded by Star Wars director George Lucas) and Swedish entertainment company, Pophouse Entertainment Group. In the earlier months leading up to their final month of tour, KISS joined the visual effects team at ILM, based in their San Francisco headquarters. ILM, the same production company that worked on Star Wars, Mandalorian, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Jurassic Park etc., is known and revered highly for its cinematic contributions through their continually improving and cutting-edge technology with visual and special effects. The main idea surrounding the KISS collab with ILM is geared toward immortalizing the band members as holographic digital avatars in an idealized and superhuman form meaning they would play in front of real-life audiences as digital avatars of themselves, creating a close-to-reality concert experience. This crossover from the physical world to the digital is noteworthy and game changing for musicians as it allows an authentic digital extension that will potentially last until the end of time. FastCompany referred to KISS as a “licensed intellectual property”, rightfully so, as this enables their avatars to roam freely in the metaverse while immortalizing their live concerts digitally.
As the band wrapped up their last concert at Madison Square Garden in New York on Dec 2nd, a teaser clip popped up on the large screen with Paul Stanley’s avatar screaming, “KISS Army, your love, your power, has made us immortal. The New KISS Era starts now!”, and followed with all the band members’ avatars playing “God Gave Rock ’N’ Roll to You II’’ in unison.
A Deeper Look at the Production Process
Months prior to their farewell, KISS met with the VFX team at ILM to create their digital avatars. The process involved “getting measured, scanned, and photographed” before the band members proceeded to slip into innovative motion capture suits. The StageCraft virtual production team captured every sleek movement, from their facial expressions and gestures, to their fingertips while the band performed in motion capture suits. The advanced performance-capture technology is a testament to the groundbreaking expertise and artistry that ILM carries. The team was led by Grady Cofer (Academy Award nominated VFX Supervisor) who is “currently nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season for his work on The Mandalorian.”
The team managed to gather raw facial capture data which could be “processed in real-time via ILM’s advanced machine learning algorithms for instantaneous feedback on stage and later passed through the ILM pipeline to be augmented by the artists to ensure the resulting performances were exactly as the band intended for their new digital personas enabling KISS’s creative output to continue to enthrall audiences well into the future.” (You can read more about this in ILM’s issue linked above.)
Keeping up with KISS
Simmons and Stanley, the only consistent members of the band, reflected on their time with KISS and the idea behind immortalizing them lies in their long-found legacy. The bassist, Simmons, spoke of how this technology could keep them forever young and iconic, while adding “The technology is going to make Paul jump higher than he’s ever done before.”
It’s almost crazy to think how fifty years of creative shifts in KISS history has all led to this moment. It also brings to mind the short period when KISS toured without makeup, and though it was successful to some extent, the fans missed the fuel-driven performances that kept them on the edge. When you think about the iconic makeup and exaggerated outfits, it’s apparent that even though time would change, they wouldn’t.
Live Virtual Concert Production: The ABBA Voyage
If you are not familiar with the idea of live virtual concert productions, it’ll also interest you to know that the first band to ever do something of this kind is the Swedish pop band, ABBA with their ‘ABBA Voyage’ (KISS is the first ever US band to do so!). The concerts are held in the ABBA Arena, located near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London and gained prominence really quick. This actually marks ABBA’s first international tour in nearly four decades where they featured as digital avatars (nicknamed ‘ABBAtars’) depicting the band members as they were in the heyday of the ’70s while you, the audience gets to immerse themselves in a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you could only witness online. This is a turning point in the history of music, and also showcases potential in heavily monetizing musical careers solely through digital manipulation. According to Bloomberg, ABBA Voyage has managed to reel in 1.9 million visitors since its debut and reportedly grosses $2 million each week.
Again, ABBA worked with the renowned ILM to make this happen and the show was nominated for two categories at the 21st VFX society awards, winning the ‘Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project’ while losing to Avatar: The Way of Water in ‘Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a CG Project’.
It’s an exciting time for technology within music and in a fast-paced industry that has gained major relevance, an iconic immortalization of KISS paired with ILM only raises questions on the vast possibility of digital live concerts and to what extent that line could be steered.
Most of the references have been linked above. Other references used:
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/best-kiss-live-shows-performances-feature/
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