The video is up now for Episode 6 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
For Part 4, we are tackling my Kiss Bootlegs that I have on vinyl. We put it in chronological order for the year the album or songs were recorded, not when they were released. We start with Wicked Lester and go up to a 2010 show from L.A. We have over 20, so sit back and enjoy.
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, April 15th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
The video is up now for Episode 6 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
For Part 3, we pick up with Kiss after the reunion and start with Psycho Circus and go all the way up to today and their latest Anniversary releases. We even through in a few Kiss Adjacent Vinyl. I was surprised by how many were still sealed. And I was surprised by how upset I got on some of their packaging choices. I give my honest opinion and don’t hold back.
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 25th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
The video is up now for Episode 5 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
This week is Part 2 of the Kiss on Vinyl series we have going now. We go from 1983’s Lick it Up all the way to 1997’s Carnival of Souls and everything in between. Find out which tour was my first Kiss concert, which album might be their worst and what 12″ singles and picture discs do I have. All that and more…
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 18th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
In 2014, Kiss was celebrating their 40th Anniversary. To celebrate they did a huge tour with none other than Def Leppard. I caught the show in Charlotte, North Carolina with Leppard opening and I will admit that Def Leppard blew Kiss off the stage, but that is another story. Kiss decided to celebrate with another Greatest Hits compilation titled ‘Kiss 40’. It was released on May 23, 2014 and contained one song from every Kiss release giving them 40 tracks…well, 36 tracks and they stuck 4 other tracks on their for good measure and put out on a 2 CD set.
In Japan only, there was another release of Kiss 40 that was only a single disc edition. It had only 20 tracks and a few different ones then you got on the 2 Disc Set. And for that reason you had to have both sets. And being a Japanese Edition, you also got an OBI strip but this one was bigger as it actually covered the entire back of the CD case as well. The set also included a booklet in both English and Japanese with the lyrics to the songs. There is a new song on the set called “Samurai Son” that was done with the Japanese girl band Momoiro Clover Z and as a result there is a little picture card of the band with Kiss. The last thing is the CD booklet itself which is full of bright, vivid color pictures of the band from throughout the years. It includes every member of the band.
The opening track is “Samurai Son (U.S. Mix)” with the band Momoiro Clover Z. This song sounds like nothing you have heard before with Kiss…well except for Paul’s vocals sound like Kiss. The drums are immense, Momoiro Clover Z does some of the backing vocals and even Gene joins in as well. It is a modern sounding rock song and I think it sounds really cool. Paul hasn’t sounded better, the Japanese sounding drums are cool and there is killer riff included. The song is worth the price of admission here easily.
If there is one thing I love to find and that is Kiss Bootlegs. Whether it is on CD or vinyl, I don’t really care. I do prefer vinyl, but I’ll take it on CD as well so I can play it anywhere once I load it up to the cloud. This time around it is a CD bootleg. And not any CD bootleg, but a whole collection of radio broadcast from over the years. In fact, there are 8 shows spread over 10 CDs and includes 119 tracks. A good coverage of years from as early as 1974 all the way up to 1994. I guess there aren’t too many broadcast after the 90’s as you can see from below…
I love that it covers the make-up era and the non make-up era all the way up to prior to the big Reunion Tour. And it even includes one Non-Kiss Show with a Frehley’s Comet one. The are radio broadcast so the quality is good, but realize these are bootlegs and not pure soundboard recordings released by the band with the sound cleaned up. The set comes in a small cardboard box with each individual disc in a fake vinyl-like sleeve. Nothing fancy, but they cram a lot of music in to a small package.
These are raw and rough and that is why I like them. I really enjoy bootlegs and getting all the shows that I can have from throughout their career. The band started releasing their own “bootleg” type albums with the ‘Off the Soundboard’ Series, but after five releases, that has been put on hold currently. I do hope they get back to it soon. For now, let’s go through this set of albums.
Disc 1:
WMMS, Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio, 1st April 1974 / King Biscuit Flour Hour, The Music Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, 21st June 1975
Yes, I was there for the end. The final Kiss show. I have been a fan for around 46 years or since ever since I discovered these albums in my brothers collection. I was around 7-8 years old. The make-up, the larger than life characters, the pictures on those albums and most of all, the songs all captured this little kid’s mind and never let go. Through the good years and the bad (and there have been some), Kiss has always been a part of my life.
My very first Kiss show was December 26, 1983 for the Lick It Up Tour. My brother, Gary, gave me a ticket for the show on my birthday, which was the day before the show. Imagine my surprise. Here we are 40 years later and this time I bought the tickets. My brother took me to My First Kiss Show and I am taking him to the Last!! We arrived in New York City early morning on Friday, December 1st, 2023. Gary from Atlanta and I from Charlotte. Once we arrived, we did a couple touristy things, but one of the cool things was going to where Kiss were photographed in the suits for the Dressed to Kill album cover. That was at the southeast corner of W23rd Street and 8th Avenue looking North. I didn’t recreate it, just took a picture there.
Cheesy, yeah…but it was fun standing there where the guys made that iconic Kiss picture. The other Kiss place we went was down to Electric Lady Studios. The place where Kiss recorded their demos with Eddie Kramer, prior to the debut album. You know this studio because it was Jimi Hendrix’s Studio. If you open the door, you will see the original door and brick that was there when Kiss was. The funny thing about these two locations is that we knew we found the right locations as there were already other Kiss fans doing the same thing we planned on doing. And speaking of fans, everyone we met was so friendly and so excited about the weekend. Kiss fans, when not being overly critical, are actually great people.
I have done a few of these already on the Best & Worst songs from every Judas Priest, Cheap Trick and Whitesnake albums. I really enjoyed doing those so I thought I would continue that process and this time we would go through every Kiss studio album (including the 4 solo albums) and see what is the best song and the worst one off each album as well. Kiss has 24 studio albums to go through so sit back, grab a drink and take it all in. Now, let’s preface this with the fact that these are my choices and not necessarily yours as we can have different opinions. My worst song could be your favorite and this is okay. We all like different things or this would be a very dull world. I hope you enjoy the list!! And we will go chronological if you were wondering.
‘KISS’ (1974)
THE BEST SONG – “BLACK DIAMOND”: On an album with so many ‘classic’ Kiss tunes, it was hard to pick. The album ends with one of the band’s best songs, “Black Diamond”. The song was written by Paul and he does sing on it, but is mostly sung by Peter. The songs starts off with a 12-string acoustic guitar and Paul sings the opening line and when he screams “Hit It!”, the song turns in to a blistering rock song with Peter taking over vocals. The song was written about New York and those ladies working on the street that they would fantasize about. Peter’s gravelly vocals gave the song such a powerful edge and he put so much heart and soul in to those vocals. Towards the end of the song, there is a brief musical interlude with Ace tearing it up on guitar and Peter laying down some fills all accompanied by that nasty bass riff from Gene before Peter lays down a final barrage of drum fills and then the song slowly, distortedly comes winding down to an end. It is dark and foreboding and so metal.
THE WORST SONG – “KISSIN’ TIME”: The worst is a cover of the Bobby Rydell Song “Kissin’ Time” which was written by Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe. It was recorded two months after the release and added a couple months after that to the album. The band was not happy about this at all, but they were pressured into recording it. Paul, Gene and Peter all sang on the song and it is just a shit song. It has that whole 50’s, early 60’s style and is not a wrong song. It is easy to hear that they didn’t want to be there singing this crap and that is why I want the original version so I don’t have to hear that song anymore.
In my quest for bootlegs, another one popped up at a record show here in Charlotte. This one was fairly new as it was released in 2020 and it was still sealed. It is simply called ‘Gods of Thunder”. The show is only a partial show from the Monsters of Rock show in Sao Paulo, Brazil on August 27, 1994. That setlist had 22 tracks and this is a streamlined vinyl with only 10 tracks and not even sure these are the best 10 tracks. But the good news is, they did omit “Rock & Roll All Nite” which we didn’t really need to have another live version of that as I have a million of it already.
I’m not sure what they were going for with the cover but I am sure with the lightning and cloudy skies is the God of Thunder part, but what is with the chess board at the bottom and the poorly cropped faces on the cover. That looks about as shitty of job that I could do. The bright side is, they at least got the right people as that would’ve been the line-up in 1994. The back cover is the same scene minus the heads and the track list instead. The cool thing about it is the beautiful blue vinyl. I like that a lot. And as far as sound, it is from a radio broadcast, so the sound is fantastic. There is no denying it is a live show as nothing has been done to fix the imperfections, which is what we like about the bootlegs.
Back on the Rock the Nation Tour in 2004, Kiss offered the Instant Live CDs. Basically, after the show was over, they burned the show to 2 CDs and sold them so you could instantly walk home with the show in your pocket. The band worked with Live Nation who handled all the recording and distribution of the CDs. Now, not every show on this tour was recorded and that was due to two reasons. 1) The arena was not owned / promoted by Clear Channel Entertainment and 2) there were technical difficulties at the show. Which that would suck if you were expecting a copy.
There are about 32 different shows recorded and this is the first one I’ve ever seen out in the wild, so I bought it. And lucky for me, it was the Charlotte show from Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Charlotte, NC which is the town where I live (or just outside of it anyway). The show was from July 28, 2004. Now, only 31 left to get…joking. I don’t think I will go for all of them although that would be fun. However, if I run across any in the wild, I’ll buy them.
The packaging is simple and the same for every city. No setlist is included as each city might be slightly different. If you want the setlist, they give you website to go and download. However, that site doesn’t seem to exist anymore. The way to tell them apart was by a clear sticker with the city, venue and date of the show as seen on the cover at the top of the post. The band was Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons as you’d expect and then Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer who had taken over for Peter Criss on this tour and is still with the band as is Tommy.
The setlist isn’t printed in it so I found it and have listed it below…
I love it when I find something completely unexpected. At a record store down in St. Augustine Florida, I came across a CD Maxi Single for the song “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” but it wasn’t the Dynasty single, nope. It was the live version in support of the Kiss Alive III album. It is actually a European release and not released anywhere outside of Europe. Score!! I snatched it up just so I could show it off to you guys (and gals).
The single is for “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” off ‘Dynasty’ and I cringed when I saw this the original Alive III album as it is so overplayed, but damn! I think they do a killer job with this one. Might be the best version of this song I have heard live maybe because it is less disco sounding and more rocking. Eric’s drums are very prominent as well as Gene’s bass. The only negative is the backing vocals need a little work. Regardless, it is still a killer track. Track 1 & 3 are recorded live at The Palace of Aubern Hills, Michigan, November 29th of 1992.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 