When Kiss were preparing to tour their album ‘Rock And Roll Over’, They rented some space at Camp Curtis Guild Armory in Reading, Massachusetts and rehearsed. They recorded one rehearsal on November 15, 1976 which is a very famous bootleg that has been going around for years. In fact, I recently reviewed this rehearsal on a vinyl bootleg I have called ‘Choppers ‘N Chicks’. This time around it is the CD from 2015 called ‘Return to Thunder: Winter Tour 1976/1977’. We get that whole show rehearsal as well as some bonus tracks not on that last release.
This package comes in a cardboard vinyl sleeve replica with some cool live shots as well as the Kiss logo from the Rock & Roll Over album. The disc is housed in a cardboard sleeve and if that wasn’t enough they included a 4-page booklet that has 4 pictures. One of each Kiss member including Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, the late, great Ace Frehley and Peter Cris…oops…they have a typo…it should be Peter Criss with two S’s.
This is another disc that was included in the John Humphrey Collection I bought last year at auction. where I got my hands on 38 Bootleg CDs from his personal collection. Oh, if you don’t know who John Humphrey is, you need to know he is a massive Kiss collector. And he is the drummer of the band Seether. John decided to sell off his entire collection…sort of…he kept all the vinyl (like 4,000 of them). He did it through an auction at Backstage Auctions and I had to have a piece of it…which I did.

Track 1-19: Rehearsals Camp Curtis Guild Armory, Reading, Ma, U.S.A. November 15 1976:
The album opens with a fade in as the band is doing “Detroit Rock City”. It picks up right as Paul starts singing the lyrics. It all sounds a little hollow due to the type of recording, but you can hearing everything fairly well. Vocals are good as no one has blown their voice yet as this is only rehearsals. They aren’t half-assing anything as Peter sounds on point, and Ace’s solo is full on like you’d expect.
Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Return to Thunder: Winter Tour 1976/1977’ (2015) – Album Review (The Kiss Bootleg Series)”

