These are heady times for KISS fans. The hard-rock band is gearing up for the Oct. 6 release of its first album in 11 years, “Sonic Boom”, and will hit the road to mark the 35th anniversary of its breakthrough concert album “Alive!”

And then there’s the band’s former guitarist, Ace Frehley, who on Tuesday will release his first solo album in 20 years, “Anomaly”. The date is also significant because it marks his third year of sobriety.

But don’t look for the two camps to work out some cross-promotion efforts. Frehley was asked during a fan Q&A at the Grammy Museum on Monday whether he would join KISS on stage for the first time since he left the band in 2002. (He first left the band 20 years earlier.)

“I haven’t gotten a call,” Frehley said to laughter. “I’m not holding my breath. They took one road, I decided to take another. It’s a little late in the game for me.” 

Instead, Frehley has a busy concert schedule: Japan and Australia next month, followed by dates in the United States, and then “probably a complete worldwide tour” next year. 

Frehley, 58, said it took so long to issue a follow-up to 1989’s “Trouble Walkin’” because “I just didn’t have my act together at certain points on my life.” He had hoped to start making an album in 1995, but was invited to participate in the KISS worldwide reunion tour, which ran from 1996 until 2002.

“I got off that tour and was ready to blow my brains out,” he said. “It took me a while to get my head screwed on straight. I went into outer space for a while … came back.” 

Frehley frequently compared the new album to his self-titled 1978 solo debut. Each member of KISS released a solo album on the same day. Frehley said his sold the best. 

Among the tracks on “Anomaly” is the tune “A Little Below the Angels,” in which he recounts his hellraising days and efforts to improve his ways. ”Everybody knows I had a drinking problem for many years,” he explained. “I can laugh about it now.” 

Frehley, sporting dark shades at the evening event, seemed in good spirits, delighting his fans with the occasional bons mots. A small selection: 

- “I’m not a schooled musician. I don’t know how to read music. A lot of the chords I play, I don’t even know what they’re called.” 
- “I’ll never forget, when Paul (Stanley) came up with (the 1979 disco hit) I Was Made For Lovin’ You, I know we lost a lot of fans on that one … and I was one of the fans.” 
- “There was a lot of commitment to excellence (when KISS made records). I just didn’t always show up.”

(photo credit: Kevin Britton)

The “Harry Potter” series is all grown up, that is if you count an on-screen lip lock as a sign of maturity. In one of the most talked about moments in an upcoming “Harry Potter” movie, Emma Watson, who plays witchcraft ingenue Hermione Granger, kisses Rupert Grint, the actor who plays Harry Potter’s friend Ron Weasley.

It does not come in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which opens in the U.S. and many other countries on July 15, but in the next installment in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which is split into two movies.

Still, fans of the series can’t wait to see that bit of cinematic spark between Watson and Grint, and interestingly they appear to be less interested in Harry Potter working his own romantic mojo. In a poll conducted by online ticket seller Fandango.com, 59 percent of respondents said the on-screen kiss they most want to see is between Hermione (Watson) and Ron (Grint). Only 41 percent of respondents said they can’t wait to see the peck between Harry Potter (played by Daniel Radcliffe) and Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright). 

Maybe that has something to do with the screen appeal of the 19-year-old Watson, who was listed No. 82 on men’s magazine Maxim’s list of the most beautiful 100 women in the world.

The fact that a kiss is one of the most anticipated moments in the “Harry Potter” series shows how the movies have evolved along with the audience to more adult themes of love and romance.

On that note, director David Yates said in this Reuters story: ”Our cast are just getting that little bit older now and the hormones are starting to fly and for me it marks a real transition point between our cast as children and our cast as adults.” 

Watson herself seemed to describe a dizzying conflict of impulses in an explanation of her kiss with Grint. On the BBC program Friday Night with Jonathan Ross,” Watson said that she was not thrilled to do the kissing scene, because of the public interest. “I pounced on him, I was so desperate to get it over with,” Watson said on the program.

In other findings from the Fandango poll of more than 1,000 ticket buyers, 69 percent said that the critics’ (mostly positive) reviews of the new film have no effect on their decision to go. Also, the last movie in the series, 2007’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” ranked as respondents’ favorite movie in the series with 36 percent of the overall vote.

(Writing and reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

 The Boss is heading into his Super Bowl half-time show on Sunday, and even though he is no football fan, Bruce Springsteen knows how to talk a good game.
    
Springsteen, 58, told reporters at a news conference ahead of the Bowl that his decades-old E Street Band has just gone through a “golden age” and is playing its best music ever.
    
“We’re a bunch of old soldiers, but the band is still burning,” he said.
    
President Barack Obama’s election seems to have lightened up Springsteen, who cast a bleak view at the Bush administration. Click here to read about it.
    
Springsteen’s new album “Working On a Dream” was released on Tuesday to mixed reviews. The first song on it “Outlaw Pete” has the Internet blogosphere buzzing over suggestions the melody sounds uncannily similar to costumed rock band Kiss’ 1979 hit “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.”
    
Inevitably, the two songs were juxtaposed on video sharing site YouTube.com to give everyone a chance to judge the similarities. 
    
Did the Boss really do it? In the modern music industry, borrowing a tune quickly gets labeled stealing. But Springsteen also comes from America’s folk music tradition. Folk icon Woody Guthrie took the melody for his anthem “This Land Is Your Land” from the Carter Family, who are also legends in the folk world — and his reputation was never hurt by that reinterpretation. Springsteen has called that song song “one of the most beautiful songs ever written.”
    
Bob Dylan — another Springsteen predecessor — has made liberal use of “borrowed” material throughout his career in and out of folk music, most recently reworking the Muddy Waters song “Trouble No More” into the strikingly similar “Someday Baby” on his 2006 album “Modern Times.”
    
So maybe Springsteen gets a pass if his song sounds like a Kiss track, especially since so many pop songs exist out there. Some are bound to start sounding alike. Then again, British supergroup Coldplay could never use the folk music excuse when they were pilloried for recording a song that appeared to resemble a riff from virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani. 
    
If nothing else, Springsteen can rest assured that with his Super Bowl show and a budding song controversy, music fans are talking about him again. He’s even reaching new audiences.
    
“If you don’t die, after awhile young people show up in the front row,” Springsteen wryly told reporters this week.

That’s something you probably can’t say about Kiss.

It’s probably hard to believe — and is also pretty funny – that Gene Simmons, the front man for rock band Kiss (the one with the long tongue who spits blood and fire) has become an author. But it’s easier to fathom when you hear what the book is about: the history of prostitution. 

 Simmons, 58, talked up his “coffee table” book, titled “Ladies of the Night,” on Thursday on the U.S. chat program “The Early Show” on CBS, calling the world’s oldest profession a delicious subject that should not be taboo. But he was quick to note that he was not one to hire the ladies of the night — or day, for that matter. 

“My problem with that is they expect me to pay them. They’re supposed to pay me,” Simmons joked, in response to a question from “Early Show” co-anchor Harry Smith.

Kiss, of course, is a top-selling rock band that dates back to the 1970s. They dressed in stacked boots, tight costumes and makeup of various characters. They were huge stars in their heyday with the typical female groupies. Simmons wrote the 1977 Kiss song “Plaster Caster,” which basically talks about a guy and his girlfriend, who is making a plaster mold shaped like her boyfriend’s penis. His longtime companion is former Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed. They have a U.S. reality TV show with their kids called “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.”

Simmons said his gold-trimmed book, which traces prostitution from the Bible’s Old Testament to the geishas of Japan, is a perfect conversation starter.

“You put it on your coffee table and let the guests in your house find the delicious subject by which to spend the evening talking about,” he said.

In the opening chapter of Simmons’ book — which was released on Monday by Phoenix Books –  he advises readers that his work is not about prostitution’s dark side, which he acknowledged exists. Simmons had another point to make.

“I want people to engage in the dialogue, because this is something everybody knows exists, but in this Puritanical culture that we live in — the remnants of which we are today — we have terrific family values and that’s great, other subject matters are sort of under the rug,” Simmons said.