Today, Kiss announced that it has sold its catalog, name and likeness to Pophouse Entertainment Group. Specific plans for Kiss’ avatars has not yet been revealed, but Pophouse teased that fans can look forward to a variety of entertainment.
Benjamin Piekut, professor of music at Cornell University, says the recordings can be endlessly reconfigured to bring Kiss to life for new audiences.
Piekut says: “Since the nineteenth century, sound recording has been strongly associated with death: Kiss’ back catalog is like a bunch of tombstones that mark the passage from live performance into canned product. But developments like the Pophouse deal show that recording also promises a certain immortality.
“I don’t simply mean that you can play the album forever. No, I mean that recording breaks a band up into isolated parts – voice on one track, guitar on another – and now all those parts can be endlessly reconfigured into new arrangements, on new stages, with new virtual avatars, new tours and new audiences. Recording splices the Gene Simmons of 1981 into wild configurations that could never have been predicted.”
For interviews contact Abby Shroba Kozlowski: cell 607-229-2681; ars454@cornell.edu.
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