Category: Album Review

Kiss – ‘Revenge’ (1992) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic86 Comments

The lack of success for the band’s last album, ‘Hot in the Shade’, had them at a crossroads again as to what to do. They were asked to record a song for Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey in February of 1991, so they brought Bob Ezrin back to record it although Gene was a little hesitant about it after the debacle of ‘Music from the Elder’. But they recorded that song, which was “God Gave Rock And Roll To You II”, and then nothing for awhile. Paul was writing songs with various people, Gene was writing with Bob Dylan (sort of – you can read about that in The Vault series), and then the tragedy of Eric Carr happened. As we discussed in the last post, Eric had heart cancer and died on November 24, 1991 and he had been sick for some time. It was a dark day in Kisstory.

Eric Singer was brought in as the drummer full time now and Kiss went back in the studio in December 1991 with Bob Ezrin back at the helm as the producer probably in part that the Bill & Ted song did so well. The band sought help from an old friend at this time to help with the songwriting. That old friend was Vinnie Vincent. Actually, I think Vinnie reached out to them, but it doesn’t matter. Vinnie had turned over a new leaf and wrote some great songs with both Gene and Paul. And then Vinnie turned back in to Vinnie and tried to renegotiate a contract with them, sued the band and then lost. And Vinnie was again on bad terms with the band. Oh well, at least they tried. There was another Kiss connection on this album as the boys from the band Black ‘N Blue were brought in to help with backing vocals. They would be Jaime St. James and Tommy Thayer. Tommy is now the current Kiss guitarist for the band. This brings the count to 7 Kiss members that worked on the album…Gene, Paul, Eric S., Eric C., Bruce, Tommy and Vinnie. Pretty cool!

Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Revenge’ (1992) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)” →

Garth Brooks – ‘Legacy’ Box Set – Album Review

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic26 Comments

Now I am not a huge Country Music fan, but there are some artist that I can’t help but like. I grew up in the South so Waylon, Willie and Johnny are staples. But there was one artist I gravitated towards and that was Garth Brooks. I actually don’t own anything he has, but I did at one time or another. When Amazon was doing their Black Friday Deals, these Legacy Box Sets popped up so I took a look. Normally these sets run for about $60 and that is way too much for me to spend as a casual fan (I say casual, but I did drive to Greensboro, NC from Charlotte, NC to see Garth live and it was worth it). The price on the box set was $19.50…SOLD!!!!

What did I get for that price? I got 7 LPs and 7 CDs all housed in a wonderful box…thus the name…box set. Here is the Hype sticker to give you an idea of what I got for my money…

Continue reading “Garth Brooks – ‘Legacy’ Box Set – Album Review” →

You Pick It! – Which Album to Review in February?

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic46 Comments

You, my reader, are going to pick an album for me to review each month.  It is really simple…first, I will give you 5 albums to choose from and second, you will tell me which one of those you would like to see reviewed on the site.  See…simple!

There are a few simple rules I have put in to place in my selections.  They are…

  • One has to be a new release (within the last month)
  • One has to be one I have never heard before (new releases don’t count for this one)
  • One has to be from a genre I don’t normally listen to at all or very often
  • And the last two are choices from my collection that I haven’t reviewed before

What are the 5 albums you ask?  Funny you should ask because I have those right here…

  New Release – Wig Wam – ‘Never Say Die’ – Their back!!

 Never Heard Before – The Velvet Underground – ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’

Not My Normal Genre – Chris Stapleton ‘ Starting Over’

  From My Collection – The Rolling Stones – ‘Tattoo You’

  From My Collection – ZZ Top – ‘Eliminator’

Let me know which one you would like to see and sometime in February, I will post a review of the album that gets the most votes. You have one week to decide and from there I will start listening to the album and do a review.

Thanks for participating!!

Kiss – ‘Hot in the Shade’ (1989) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic107 Comments

It had been two years since the last studio album, ‘Crazy Nights’ and still the band wasn’t working on a new album. Gene Simmons was out producing bands on his record label and Paul Stanley decided that in early 1989, he was going to go out on a solo tour. People were freaking out as was this the end of Kiss. Paul’s solo band on the tour had two major Kiss connections. On guitar was Bob Kulick and on drums was future Kiss drummer Eric Singer who would take over after the death of Eric Carr. Paul even went so far as to sing and record the title song to the Wes Craven movie ‘Shocker’. Kiss in my eyes, seemed doomed.

But it wasn’t the end. In mid-1989, the band got back together and finally started working on the new album. They had a very small budget for this album so instead of going in and fully recording a new album, they grabbed a bunch of demos and re-worked or even overdubbed them to turn them in to the album we have here. ‘Hot in The Shade’ has a crazy number of songs with 15 and the album was about an hour long. This was the late 80’s when bands felt they needed to fill up the entire CD and as a result, we got a lot of bloated albums at that time. If you knocked a few songs off this album, it would be a lot better but still suck.

Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Hot in the Shade’ (1989) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)” →

You Picked It!! – The Beach Boys – “Pet Sounds” – Album Review

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic21 Comments

Alright…You Picked It! It was the closest battle yet and here it is. The one you picked was The Beach Boys – “Pet Sounds”.  The votes were as follows:

  1. The Beach Boys – ‘Pet Sounds’ – 5 votes
  2. Miley Cyrus – ‘Plastic Hearts’ – 4 votes
  3. John Coltrane – ‘A Love Supreme’ – 3 votes
  4. Rage Against the Machine – ‘Renegade’ – 2 votes
  5. B-52’s – ‘Cosmic Thing’ – 2 Votes

Thanks to all for participating.  The February choices will be up on Saturday!

THE BEACH BOYS – ‘PET SOUNDS’ (1966):

I will be honest, this is a daunting task to review an album that is so loved by critics and the world. It has been listed as one of the greatest albums of all time. No pressure at all to review this. When you start researching the album, there are pages upon pages of information and every aspect of the album and at times it is overwhelming. As a result, there is no way I am going to summarize any history and go in to much detail about the making of the album and all the nuances of it either. We are going to just dive on in to the music and what I felt overall about the album. Otherwise, this could easily hit 10,000 words or more and I am not up for that and neither are you.

Continue reading “You Picked It!! – The Beach Boys – “Pet Sounds” – Album Review” →

Kiss – ‘Smashes, Thrashes & Hits’ (1988) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic92 Comments

After Kiss released the greatest hits package ‘Chikara’ to Japanese and European audiences, the U.S. finally got its own greatest hits package. This was now the fourth greatest hits set the other two being Killers and Double Platinum. Of the four, the U.S. only saw two official releases. ‘Smashes, Thrashes & Hits’ was released on November 15, 1988. Kiss wasn’t doing much at this time. They were done touring for ‘Crazy Night’, they wouldn’t start working on their next album for about at least half a year or more, Gene had his side projects of his own record label and the band was in limbo.

The album sold pretty well selling over 2 million copies in the U.S. alone. The album did have two brand new songs to help drive fans to buy it (and it worked, I bought it). And like the compilation, ‘Killers’, the two new songs were solely done by Paul Stanley. Gene was not involved yet again as he was too busy. Paul saves the day yet again. The album did contain 15 tracks, but the European release of this album saw 16 tracks which the extra track was “Crazy, Crazy Nights” from the album ‘Crazy Nights’. Apparently in the U.S., they thought that album was too new to include a song on the compilation I guess.

Now my copy of this album is very special. It was autographed by Lori if you look in the Kiss logo on the front cover. I don’t know who she is, but I bet she owned this record many years ago. All I know her signature actually isn’t worth much because it brought down the price of the album by around $50 and I only paid like $15-20 for it. Thanks Lori. You saved me a lot.

Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Smashes, Thrashes & Hits’ (1988) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)” →

Kiss – ‘Chikara’ (1988) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic99 Comments

Kiss were plugging along and everything is still right in the world. In 1988, as they were preparing for their Tour of Japan, the label and the band decided to release a greatest hits compilation. The CD was issued on May 25, 1988 and was limited to only 100,000 copies and only released in Japan. The was the 2nd greatest hits package to not be issued in the U.S., the first being 1982’s ‘Killers’. For that fact, this is a hot collector’s item for Kiss collectors and I didn’t even know about it until years after its release and I still don’t have a physical copy of this release (but I will get one someday).

The Japanese character on the back of the case and on the CD might look familiar. It is the same symbol that was on the bottom of the cover art for the band’s 1974 album, ‘Hotter Than Hell’. Eric Carr also used that symbol on his drum kits for quite some time. Chikara is the Japanese word for Power if you are interested in knowing that fact. And when you are looking to buy this CD on ebay or somewhere, the prize to get is the OBI strip with all the Japanese writing. A lot of the ones I’ve seen out there don’t have that strip anymore.

Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Chikara’ (1988) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)” →

Matt Nathanson – ‘Farewell December’ – Album Review

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic24 Comments

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

I am not big on Christmas albums. Not my favorite thing in the world. I don’t mind compilation albums with numerous different people singing various Christmas songs, but one album, by one person doing only Christmas songs. Not my thing. So when Matt Nathanson announced a Christmas album, I wasn’t thrilled, but at the same time, it was Matt Nathanson who is one of my favorite artists. So, I gave it try and now I’m glad I did.

The digital only album is nothing but covers, but it is okay as how do you write a new Christmas song when there are so many out there. He starts off with the sweet, tender “Christmas Time Is Hear” which features the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. It is a hauntingly beautiful interpretation, short and sweet and a great opener. Matt kicks things up a notch with the English/Spanish song “Donde Esta Santa Claus” which is a fun, energetic romp full of Latin flavors. It is a tasty treat and one of my favorite tracks on the album.

Matt covers “Blue Christmas” and he plays it softer than Elvis and thankfully he doesn’t try to copy that approach as it would sound too Karaoke. Matt’s version has a country flair to it and is quite pleasant as Matt’s voice is as slick as melted butter. To keep the color theme going he goes in to “White Christmas” which is amazing short at only 51 seconds so not sure why even bother including it. It is an all acoustic short instrumental that is actually quite beautiful.

Continue reading “Matt Nathanson – ‘Farewell December’ – Album Review” →

Kiss – “Crazy Crazy Nights” (1987) – 12″ Single (Bonus Edition) – (The Kiss Review Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic100 Comments

We are going to take a little break and highlight a couple singles I have in my collection. This is a little bonus material for you in the series. First up is the 12″ single for the band’s first single off ‘Crazy Nights’. It is the title track, but called “Crazy, Crazy Night” because one crazy wasn’t enough. The single was released on August 18, 1987 and was the highest charting song for the band in the UK hitting at #4 and selling over 200,000 copies (that would be the 7″ single I am sure). In the US, it only reached #64 on the Top 100 songs, but I do remember seeing the video on MTV a lot.

This 12″ single does come with 4 songs, but I can’t find much about this release at all. It does not appear that any of these songs are anything other than the album release version. I do know this version is the UK release and was not in the US so glad I was able to find a copy. The picture sleeve is nothing new as it is basically the album cover. The cool thing about it are those Vertigo Labels. Strange not seeing Mercury or Casablanca.

Continue reading “Kiss – “Crazy Crazy Nights” (1987) – 12″ Single (Bonus Edition) – (The Kiss Review Series)” →

Paul Laine – ‘Stick It In Your Ear’ (1990) -Album Review

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic32 Comments

Imagine this, you are extremely young and you get a record deal. You are set to make your first album and the label picks the great Bruce Fairbairn to produce your album. How stoked you must be. You are about to make it big time and be famous worldwide and be the big rock star you were meant to be. All your dreams were about to come true. I am sure that was what Paul Laine was thinking…I know I would have been.

But for some strange reason, that didn’t happen with this album. However, Paul would go on to make it in the industry and he is still very active today and I bet makes a pretty good living with his music. I don’t know why this album didn’t take off, but for some reason it didn’t. It was 1990 and we were at the tail end of the 80’s Rock scene and Grunge was coming on fast so I am writing it off to that as the issue because it sure as hell wasn’t the music’s fault.

Continue reading “Paul Laine – ‘Stick It In Your Ear’ (1990) -Album Review” →