Kiss – ‘Boxx (Vol. 2) – Live in Europe 1984’ (1993) – Album Review (The Kiss Bootleg Series)

I have been doing a Kiss Bootleg Series for years. You get a review every time I add a new one to the collection. Well, after buying 38 Bootleg CDs from John Humphrey’s personal collection, I figured let’s jump right back in and do a whole lot of reviews on the Bootlegs. 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…and I did wind up with some things.

This time around we have another Australian Bootleg which means it has a big “UNAUTHORIZED” across the cover. It is called Boxx (Vol. 2) – Live in Europe 1984 and was released in 1993 by a label called Banana and distributed by Apple House Music. What is with the fruit references?? It’s packaging is identical to the other two we’ve reviewed from this company All were made in Australia. This time we get a Gold Disc for the CD which is different.

This show has Bruce Kulick on guitar and he was not yet an official member. All the songs are from a show at the Gaumont Theater in Ipswich, England on October 11, 1984 for the Animalize Tour. I have a full show from this European Tour and it was the October 26 show in Stockholm on the “They Only Come Out at Night” bootleg. This one here is only 10 tracks, it is not a full show, but with only 3 songs are classic 70’s Kiss and the rest are all from the 80’s, I am truly okay with that as I love the 80’s songs. Heck, the 80’s were the era I grew up in. The 70’s, I was a little kid and influenced heavily by my brother’s taste. The 80’s were all my doing.

Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Boxx (Vol. 2) – Live in Europe 1984’ (1993) – Album Review (The Kiss Bootleg Series)”

Kiss – ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ (Bootleg Series) – Album Review

In my quest for collecting Kiss Bootlegs for eery tour they have done, I found another fantastic addition to the collection.  My local record shop, Hardy Boy Records, has been a goldmine of late for Bootlegs. I have now bought four over the last few months and all for tours I didn’t have (or a collection of Wicked Lester demos – that is another story that will be told later).

The last 2 I bought were actually the same store, so I guess that statement was entirely true.  The difference was one was the North American Tour setlist (which will come in the next week or two) and this one is the European leg of that tour with an ever so slightly different setlist.

Before we get to the show and the music, let’s discuss the cover of the album.  This album is listed as “For Promotional Use Only” and is a really cheap production.  The album jacket is plain white cover with this paper picture of the band that wraps around the back. It is glued down and not going anywhere.  But the strange thing is the people on the cover.  Now, I get it this the Animalize Tour so you would expect Mark St. John to be on the cover, but there is a problem.  This is not one of the 3 shows that Mark actually played on.  This has Bruce Kulick playing before he was an official member which would come about two months later.

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The show is from October 26, 1984 at the Johanneshov Isstadion in Stockholm, Sweden on the first leg of the tour.  The recording if an audience recording actually sounds quite excellent.  Not much crowd noise and everyone sounds pretty clear with minor instances where the sound was off a little.  This was released a year later in 1985 by a group called Poverty Records at least that’s what it says on the album itself. Continue reading “Kiss – ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ (Bootleg Series) – Album Review”