Tag: Hooligan

Kiss – ‘What Goes On Behind Closed Doors’ (2012) – Album Review

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We are to yet another disc that was included in the John Humphrey Collection I bought last year at an 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.

This particular bootleg comes to us from The Godfatherecords and was released on August 1, 2012. What you get here are a bunch of Kiss demos and these aren’t your typical rough sounding bootlegs. No, these are all pretty high quality sounding demos. The first disc is all demos spanning from 1973 to 1998, giving us 25 years of demos and you get a lot of tracks. There are 21 tracks alone on Disc 1.

And Disc 2 is something even more special. Taken directly from the source tapes that were actually used for the Kiss Box Set, we get the original Wicked Lester album. And all I can say is that is the ABSOLUTE BEST sounding recording I have ever heard of this album. I have the Wicked Lester songs on several different bootlegs and not one of them are of this quality. Damn!! It is like having an official release of the album. Yes, it is that good. Based on this, why have Kiss never officially released that album. Will we get it for the box set of the debut album? I certainly hope so.

The cover of this 2 CD set is an outtake of the photo shoot from The Elder. It has non-make-up wearing Paul Stanley touching the door knocker from the original album and his hand partially covering his face. The back cover has the the track listing, but the interesting thing are the pictures inside. You get a ton of snippets of pictures for the band on this tri-fold digipack release. There is one set of pictures that I refused to take and show on this review and no, it is not because there is nudity. It is because it is Paul, Ace and Peter wearing Nazi attire. And even one where they give the Nazi salute. By today’s standards, it is pretty offensive and controversial and I don’t want any of that non-sense here. So let’s just talk about the music.

CD One:

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Kiss – ‘Houston: The Summit Sept. 2, 1977’ (1992) – Album Review (The Kiss Bootleg Series)

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While on the Love Gun Tour, Kiss had a two night stop at the venue The Summit in Houston Texas. Those shows were on September 1st and 2nd of 1977. Here for this next Bootleg in the series, we are capturing the 2nd night of the show and this is a really cool show as Kiss were in their prime and they simply slayed on the stage that night. It is a high-energy, explosive performance for a band that was untouched at the time for their live performances. The people in Houston definitely got their money’s worth on that night. This bootleg was released in Germany on Deep Records back in 1992.

This show has never been released from the band, but they definitely have this in their archives as the videos for this show have showed up a couple times in the Kiss camp. First, in 1987, Kiss released a video called Kiss Exposed…a man was it cheesy. On that video that had a few live shots of the band from the heyday and three of those videos were taken from the Sept. 2 show in Houston. The songs used were “Beth”, “I Stole Your Love” and “Ladies Room”. But it gets better. On the Kissology Volume One 1974-1977 DVD released back in 2006, the full show of the Sept. 2 night was released so you got the full video performance. Sweet. Okay, starting with “Rock & Roll All Nite”, the video actually switches to the previous night and the last 4 songs are that night. So, almost the full show.

This is another disc that was included in the John Humphrey Collection I bought last year at an 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.

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Kiss – ‘Kiss My Axe 1978’ (1981 Re-Issue) – Album Review (The Bootleg Series)

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Happy Thanksgiving!! Here is what I am thankful for as far as music goes (of course tops is my family and friends).

I am always on the hunt for Kiss Bootlegs and I got another classic one a few weeks back. Noble Records was having their 3rd Anniversary Drop and Dylan always has some great stuff out that day. The store opened at 10 and the line had to be long as it always in as everyone wants the good stuff. I had been recovering from surgery and this was my first trip out so there was no way I was getting there early and standing in line. No, I wasn’t doing that. Instead I left the house at a little before 10 and got there around 10:20 am. I figured, if it was meant for me to have it, it would still be there. And guess what, it was still there and I grabbed it!!! Yes, I was excited. Bootleg #21 of Kiss was now in my collection.

This one was an old one. It was from 1981 and was actually a re-issue of the 1978 original release of the album. The people putting out this one spared no expense as the album sleeve is a plain white cardboard with nothing on it. Instead you get a piece of paper with a badly printed picture of the band and the details on the release. That is it. The inner sleeve is white and labels, well, as you see below, there was not much too them. But typical bootleg fashion, the band’s name is not on the label. I love these old style boots, you can’t beat them.

This was recorded live at Los Angeles Forum, California, On August 25, 1977 and this is fresh off the new album at the time, ‘Love Gun’. I’m really excited about this one because I didn’t have a bootleg from the Love Gun Tour…now I do. The band was hungry, young and insanely good at this time. The recording is an audience recording as you can hear a lot of the kids screaming around the person recording the show. But as far as audience recordings go, it isn’t bad. It isn’t the whole show as it is only 11 songs and most of them are from the ‘Love Gun’ album.

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