The KISS Impersonators started out
as a group of kids looking for something to do on Halloween. They
made their first appearance at Patterson Elementary School in
Fremont, California, on October 31, 1976. At the time, it was
just something to do on Halloween, but it soon became an obsession.
It was an obsession that would last eight consecutive years until
KISS removed their make-up for their Lick It Up album in 1983.
In 1986, the group came together once again for a special 10th
anniversary appearance.
During their ten year span, the group made nine Halloween appearances
throughout Fremont, put on two lip-sync concerts, had two dress-up
days for photo shoots, made the front page and community section
of their local newspaper (1980 and 1983), and had a total of fifteen
different members. Only one member, the group's leader, Troy Correia,
was there from the beginning in 1976 through the group's final
appearance in 1986.
Year after year, Troy motivated the group. He took them from Levi's
outfits to costumes that closely resembled those KISS were wearing
at the time. Making patterns from scratch and using his imagination
to recreate what he saw in photos of KISS, Troy helped create
a group that was doing this years before today's KISS tribute
bands became commonplace. Along the way, the group reached local
celebrity status around their hometown of Fremont, California.
The KISS Impersonators were, and still are, a special group. Follow
their journey through this written history and see the photos
as they progressed through the years.
This website launched on Halloween night in 2013, thirty-seven
years after the group made their first appearance. In 2026, to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of that first appearance, Troy
relaunched the website you're now looking at. He revisited over
600 photographs, restoring and improving their image quality.
Some photos previously thought too damaged to save were successfully
restored, and over 50 additional images were added to the collection.
We hope you enjoy it.
Look for more material to be added to the site in the future... |
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