Back in 2022, Jon Bon Jovi went under the knife to fix his vocal cord problem that had been well documented by the cruel trolls of the internet. After watching the documentary, ‘Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story’, we got to see first hand how bad things were for Jon. It is amazing he is even able to still sing. When Bon Jovi released the first single off their upcoming album, ‘Forever’, all questions were answered if he could sing. The answer was a resounding, yes!!
The first single was the song “Legendary”. It was released on March 14, 2024. It did not hit the Top 40 as no band from that era is probably ever going to hit again. Instead, it hit #9 on the Adult Contemporary Chart and #2 on the Rock Digital Song chart. And it even charted elsewhere as it hit #21 in Canada and #27 in the UK. Not a bad start. The song was written by Jon, John Shanks and Billy Falcon who have both been writing with Jon for quite some time.
“Legendary” pays tribute to this wife, “Dorthea”, and their sweet love. He has been married to her for decades. Heck, she has been there since the beginning. It is also a little nostalgic looking at the band’s past and all their accomplishments. It also is a look in to the future and what is in store.
Kiss is notorious for releasing Greatest Hits compilations and it is both the band and the label responsible for that travesty. Don’t get me wrong, they have a ton of great songs so a few greatest hits compilations are probably necessary. However, this is not one of them even though this one is a little different. On June 14, 2004, the label allowed a second volume in the 20th Century Masters’ Millennium Collection. They released ‘The Best of Kiss: Volume 2 – The Millennium Collection’ and what makes it a little different is that it is only compilation from Kiss that focuses solely on their material from the 1980’s. Well, most of the 80’s as it goes from 1982-1989. It does skip the ‘Unmasked’ (1980) and ‘The Elder’ (1981) albums which Volume 1 doesn’t cover either. So a big miss.
But like Volumes 1 & 3, it is only 12 songs and all are previously released so nothing new here. No remixes, single edits, just album cuts which is easier and cheaper. The look is exactly like the other comps in this set so at least they are consistent. My poor case is cracked, the CD is scratched up and is a bit of a mess, but it was free!! Noble Records threw it in when I bought some other Kiss material at the store. Such a great store!!
“Creatures of the Night” was written by Paul Stanley and Adam Mitchell and had Steve Farris on lead guitar. Steve would go on to play for the band Mr. Mister. Also on the album was Adam with additional guitars and Mike Porcaro on bass as Gene wasn’t available or something. The song starts off explosive with Eric’s drums and then some wicked, heavy guitar riffs. Paul sings with a swagger that he has not had in years. He sounds confident and serious and this is a much heavier and more determined Kiss.
“I Love it Loud” is up next and MTV played it a lot. Every time it came on it was event TV for me. I actually remember having our little black & white TV in the dining room on at dinner one night because I knew the song was coming on. When it did, I stopped eating to watch and made everyone else watch it too. Ace was in the video and I thought Kiss was chugging along just fine. Plus, I loved seeing the Giant Tank stage and Eric was slamming away on those drums. The song was written by Gene Simmons and Vinnie Vincent and it was our first glimpse in to Vinnie as a song writer and it was awesome. This was such a heavy metal track and it was the Demon rejuvenated. A massive anthem despite the simple, somewhat stupid lyrics. I love the fade out at the end to then come back again for a few more pointless seconds. Not sure the need, but as a kid, I thought it was cool.
Finally!! Kiss decided to release another live album and this one is ‘Alive III’ which was 17 years after their last release. Now they did release a live video, but this is the first album since ‘Alive II’ in 1977. The band recorded the album during the Revenge Tour in 1992 and used the recordings from the Cleveland, Detroit and Indianapolis stops of the tour. This is also the first live album of the Non-Makeup era and the first to not have the original Kiss line-up. The line-up is of course Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, but now it is Eric Singer on Drums and still Bruce Kulick on guitar. Oh yeah, and off to the side of the stage on keyboards is Derek Sherinian who toured with the band at this time since they added keyboards to a lot of the late 80’s songs.
Before we get to the music, let’s talk the packaging. We get a 2 LP set in a beautiful Gatefold cover. One side of the Gatefold has a really cool Kiss Family Tree. Although hard to read at times, it is a cool tracing back of where all the Kiss members, current and past, come from in their musical careers.
On the flip side of the Gatefold, you get the track listing and all the tour credits as well as some band pictures and a little note from the band.
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.
Before we get into the album review, let me go into the story of how I came across Billy Raffoul. My wife and I went to see Needtobreathe in concert on August 21st, 2018 (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW). Billy was the opening act of a triple bill. When we arrived he came storming on stage before we got to our seat. We didn’t mean to arrive then, traffic just sucked.
When I go to a show, I enjoy watching the opening acts and giving them the respect they deserve. Hey, you never know if they will be the next big thing. Watching Billy, I felt that he could be just that. While I was listening to him, I turned to my wife and told her that I loved his voice. It has this Jeff Buckley raspiness that was incredible. Imagine my surprise when I read his bio online, it actually mentions that same Buckley feel. Glad I wasn’t imagining things.
I can’t tell you the songs he sang as I had never heard of him before, but I do know he played Jimi Hendrix’s Fire. Hell, he is a lefty like Jimi and has that same upside down lefty guitar. I am sure he knows he could actually buy a left handed guitar!!
2 Loud 2 Old Music 