Even if you don't know the songs, you'll likely recognize the look. After 50 years in the music business, rock band Kiss has just ended its End of the Road world tour at New York's Madison Square Garden by introducing digital avatar replacements.
This apparently final, final Kiss tour (there have been other final tours prior to the End of the Road tour) kicked off at the end of January 2019 and – apart from a blip during the COVID-19 pandemic – has been going on around the world ever since. The final stretch began in October and took in venues across the US and Canada.
A two-date performance at Madison Square Garden this weekend brought the epic globetrotting farewell to a close, and after the notes of the final song died away, the next futuristic phase of the band began as four silhouettes appeared on a video wall ahead of a virtual encore of the song "God Gave Rock And Roll To You" performed by digital avatars.
The "fantasy based superheroes" are the work of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic visual effects studio, which employed motion capture technology and machine learning to replicate the movements and essence of real-life band members Gene Simmons, Eric Singer, Tommy Thayer and Paul Stanley.
The virtual performance at the Garden was created in partnership with Pophouse Entertainment, which was co-founded by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus and marks the second outing for the technology following London's ABBA Voyage shows where fans of the Swedish supergoup are treated to concerts from digital ABBAtars.
The ABBA Voyage is proving quite the money-maker, and there are similar hopes for the future of Kiss shows, "which will see avatars of the band perform to fans for decades to come."
"It’s exciting for us to go the next step and see Kiss immortalized," said Kiss lead vocal and co-founder, Paul Stanley. "I mean, we’ve spent 50 years building it to this point. And by working with ILM and working with Pophouse, we’re all sharing this vision of taking Kiss to a completely different level beyond being just a music band. And we’ve always thought of ourselves as more than just a music band."
"We can be forever young and forever iconic by taking us to places we’ve never dreamed of before," added Kiss bass player and co-founder, Gene Simmons. "The technology is going to make Paul jump higher than he’s ever done before."
The video below has more.
Source: Pophouse Entertainment