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.
The lack of success for the band’s last album, ‘Hot in the Shade’, had them at a crossroads again as to what to do. They were asked to record a song for Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey in February of 1991, so they brought Bob Ezrin back to record it although Gene was a little hesitant about it after the debacle of ‘Music from the Elder’. But they recorded that song, which was “God Gave Rock And Roll To You II”, and then nothing for awhile. Paul was writing songs with various people, Gene was writing with Bob Dylan (sort of – you can read about that in The Vault series), and then the tragedy of Eric Carr happened. As we discussed in the last post, Eric had heart cancer and died on November 24, 1991 and he had been sick for some time. It was a dark day in Kisstory.
Eric Singer was brought in as the drummer full time now and Kiss went back in the studio in December 1991 with Bob Ezrin back at the helm as the producer probably in part that the Bill & Ted song did so well. The band sought help from an old friend at this time to help with the songwriting. That old friend was Vinnie Vincent. Actually, I think Vinnie reached out to them, but it doesn’t matter. Vinnie had turned over a new leaf and wrote some great songs with both Gene and Paul. And then Vinnie turned back in to Vinnie and tried to renegotiate a contract with them, sued the band and then lost. And Vinnie was again on bad terms with the band. Oh well, at least they tried. There was another Kiss connection on this album as the boys from the band Black ‘N Blue were brought in to help with backing vocals. They would be Jaime St. James and Tommy Thayer. Tommy is now the current Kiss guitarist for the band. This brings the count to 7 Kiss members that worked on the album…Gene, Paul, Eric S., Eric C., Bruce, Tommy and Vinnie. Pretty cool!
For some strange reason, I am on a kick reading all about the band Kiss. I don’t know what it is, but maybe it has to do with the Kiss Review Series that I am currently in the middle of doing. The book I decided to read next was a book about the album ‘Music From the Elder’ and sadly, the timing didn’t work out for me to review this book at the same time as the album as that would’ve been great. But better late than never.
The book I read was “Odyssey – The Definitive Examination of Music From the Elder” by Tim McPhate and Julian Gill. And let me tell you , it is definitive. It is over 500 pages of every little detail, little nugget and little story about the album. You would think that one of the bands worst album (arguably) would not warrant a book, but you’d be wrong It does warrant a book for that very reason. We want to know what was going through their minds with this album? Where did the concept come from, what made them go down that road (or who)? All those questions and more were answered.
The authors of this book interview everyone under the sun that was in some way, shape or form associated with this album from engineers, to management, to gophers, to album art designers, to set directors, to actors, to even bits of interviews of the producer himself, Bob Ezrin. I mean there are interviews ad nauseam. And I mean ad nauseam. There were over 30 interviews done for the book. A great portion of this book are just interviews and it reads in that format. Questions become very repetitive because the burning question on everyone’s mind seems to be what happened to the recordings of the dialogue with the actors to help tell the story? The only dialogue on the album was around the last song, but apparently there was a lot more recorded, never released and no one knows where those recordings are or who has them. And after reading this, I don’t give a rat’s ass where it is. I hope I never hear that question again. No one knows the answer!!!
This whole interview process was my biggest complaint for this book. Too many interviews, too many repetitive questions and too many repetitive questions. See that, I am repeating myself now as a result of too many repetitive questions. I would have preferred the writers to take these interviews and actually tell a story chronologically of the whole process using these interviews as the facts for the stories and quoting the person being interviewed. It would have made this a much more enjoyable book rather than being so monotonous and became utterly boring at times.
It took me months to get through this book as the amount of minutiae was incredible. The only thing I don’t think we learned about was the toilet paper they used to wipe their ass when they went to the bathroom and thank God for that (It’s Charmin by the way – kidding). We learn where they recorded the album, all 9 studios. We learn how the door on the cover was made and the table on the gatefold. We learn that Ace stayed at his home studio mostly and rarely, if ever, joined the band other than when they recorded at his house. We learn who the actors were that read the dialogue. One was Chris Makepeace, the star from the 1980 movie ‘My Bodyguard’ which I loved. We learn that Bob Ezrin was fucked up most of the time and rarely showed up for recording. We learn Bob was ultimately responsible for the concept all though Gene was about equally involved. We learn the label changed the order of the songs on the original release which messed everything up. We learn the band really hates the album now and we learn more than we ever really wanted to know.
Was the book all bad, of course not. There really is some interesting nuggets buried in the pages of a million interviews, it takes forever to find them and enjoy them. Whenever the book broke in to commentary and became less like interviews is when I enjoyed it more. I do think one of the more interesting pieces was around the end when they interview the guy that bought the one and only script for the Elder Movie and he talked about what the movie would’ve been like if it was actually ever made. He has a one-of-a-kind collector’s item in that script and his stories were great on the movie concept.
I did like reading about the different album releases and track listings and lot about the collector’s items for The Elder. It was interesting to read more about the background of the characters in The Elder and I must say I enjoyed Robert V. Conte’s stories on what is in The Elder vault and all the conversations on the remastering projects he has been on for the band. That is some cool stuff and let me tell you Kiss fans, there is a ton of stuff in the archives, we haven’t even heard yet.
Okay, I think I have rambled on too long. This book is for the diehard fan. If you want to know every little detail about the album, and read about it more than once, then this book is for you. If you are hoping for more of a story and biography type book, then steer clear of this as it will drive you insane, and to note, that is a short drive for me. I can only muster a 2.0 out of 5.0 Stars for this as it was too much. It gets 2.0 stars as I did learn a few things and there were some great behind the scenes stories, but they were just buried in all the muck. Buyer beware on this one.
Prior to the release of their next studio album, Kiss was asked to due a song for a movie. That movie was Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Yes, one of cinema’s finest movies, I know. The song was a cover of “God Gave Rock And Roll To You” by the band Argent, but the lyrics were changed up so much, they added the “II” at the end to signify it was a little different than the original. So that meant, not only was Russ Ballard’s name on the credits, it now had Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and producer Bob Ezrin who the band was working with at the time for the new album. The single was released on August 22, 1991.
What was special about this song and release is that is the last Kiss single to feature Eric Carr. Eric wasn’t healthy enough to do the drums at the time, but he is featured in the background vocals. And luckily he was healthy enough to be in the video. Eric was extremely ill as he had been diagnosed with heart cancer. He had become so ill, he was no longer able to play, so the drum work on the song was handled by Eric Singer, who also did the drum work on the band’s next album, ‘Revenge’. Eric Carr made his last public appearance with the band shortly after the video at the MTV Musis Awards in September 1991. Shortly thereafter, Carr suffered an aneurysm then a brain hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. He later died on November 24, 1991 which was sadly, the same day Freddie Mercury of Queen had died and that overshadowed his death.
In 2014, Kiss toured their 40th Anniversary World Tour and the opening act was none other than Def Leppard. Yeah! That is right. The 2 bands I have seen in concert the most were playing together in the same show. Wow!! My family and I had just moved to Charlotte, NC that year and my brother, my sister and her husband drove up to Charlotte to see them with me. That meant a lot that would come up and see us and go see a show. I would’ve driven down to Atlanta to see that show, but it was a weekday which meant work. My sow on July 19th, 2014 in Charlotte was a Saturday!!
If I am being honest about the show, Def Leppard was absolutely amazing. Probably the best show I have seen them do. They actually blew the doors off Kiss. Kiss has become a well organized, choreographed Las Vegas show and it felt forced. It did not have the excitement as did Def Leppard’s. There was an electricity type energy in the crowd for Leppard that was not there for Kiss. Don’t get me wrong, Kiss was still great and it was still an awesome time. I am also so glad my family came up to see it with me. I can’t find a stub, but I have a shirt and some pictures!! My pictures are pretty bad as my camera was an old iPhone that took shitty pictures.
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.
In my quest to get all the Kiss Tour Books in my collection, I have now come to my fifth in the Tour Book Series. This is one of two that came from the Kiss Alive / Worldwide Tour from 1996-1997. You might remember I already did one from that tour, but that was a special edition book during the 1997 part of the tour which included the Giant 1997 Poster Calendar and had a silver cover. It was a replica of the European Book. Plus, all the pictures were different. This is original Tour Book with the Black Cover.
I bought this book right at the beginning of the pandemic. A friend of my brothers was selling it and so he reached out to me and I said, yes, buy it for me (I did pay him back). I asked my brother to hold on to it and I would grab it the next time I was down in Atlanta which would’ve only been about a month or two after I bought. 9 months later and I still hadn’t gone down thanks to Covid. I finally asked him to mail it on up to me and he graciously did.
One of the interesting things about this book is that it was bought at the October 1, 1996 show at the Omni in Atlanta. How do I know, the ticket stub was still inside. That for me is cool to know which show it was purchased because I was actually at that show. I can’t believe I have a book from the actual show I attended. What are the odds of getting one 25 years later. Our ticket stubs are below.
After Kiss released the greatest hits package ‘Chikara’ to Japanese and European audiences, the U.S. finally got its own greatest hits package. This was now the fourth greatest hits set the other two being Killers and Double Platinum. Of the four, the U.S. only saw two official releases. ‘Smashes, Thrashes & Hits’ was released on November 15, 1988. Kiss wasn’t doing much at this time. They were done touring for ‘Crazy Night’, they wouldn’t start working on their next album for about at least half a year or more, Gene had his side projects of his own record label and the band was in limbo.
The album sold pretty well selling over 2 million copies in the U.S. alone. The album did have two brand new songs to help drive fans to buy it (and it worked, I bought it). And like the compilation, ‘Killers’, the two new songs were solely done by Paul Stanley. Gene was not involved yet again as he was too busy. Paul saves the day yet again. The album did contain 15 tracks, but the European release of this album saw 16 tracks which the extra track was “Crazy, Crazy Nights” from the album ‘Crazy Nights’. Apparently in the U.S., they thought that album was too new to include a song on the compilation I guess.
Now my copy of this album is very special. It was autographed by Lori if you look in the Kiss logo on the front cover. I don’t know who she is, but I bet she owned this record many years ago. All I know her signature actually isn’t worth much because it brought down the price of the album by around $50 and I only paid like $15-20 for it. Thanks Lori. You saved me a lot.
Kiss were plugging along and everything is still right in the world. In 1988, as they were preparing for their Tour of Japan, the label and the band decided to release a greatest hits compilation. The CD was issued on May 25, 1988 and was limited to only 100,000 copies and only released in Japan. The was the 2nd greatest hits package to not be issued in the U.S., the first being 1982’s ‘Killers’. For that fact, this is a hot collector’s item for Kiss collectors and I didn’t even know about it until years after its release and I still don’t have a physical copy of this release (but I will get one someday).
The Japanese character on the back of the case and on the CD might look familiar. It is the same symbol that was on the bottom of the cover art for the band’s 1974 album, ‘Hotter Than Hell’. Eric Carr also used that symbol on his drum kits for quite some time. Chikara is the Japanese word for Power if you are interested in knowing that fact. And when you are looking to buy this CD on ebay or somewhere, the prize to get is the OBI strip with all the Japanese writing. A lot of the ones I’ve seen out there don’t have that strip anymore.
It has been over a year now since I have seen a live show and it could be another year before I get to see another one. I started thinking back on all the shows I have seen and the memories came flooding back. Now back some time last year, the LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or Less did a live stream on the Nigel Tufnel Top 10 Favorite Live Shows of all time. Each guests gave a list of their 11 favorite shows and I had a list for the show. I thought why not spell it out here for everyone to read in all its glory and add some pictures and extra information, if I have any. I hope you enjoy.
11. Motley Crue – Girls, Girls, Girls Tour (1987):
November 22, 1987 at the Omni in Atlanta, GA. The opening act was Guns N Roses. The lineup alone makes it a favorite but what happened at the show is why it is on the list. It was not a good show at all which is why it is down at 11. It is only on the list for what happened at the show. During GNR’s set, Axl jumps off stage at about the 2nd song to grab a security guard who pushed his friend. Axl is held backstage while the band plays a couple songs (“Communication Breakdown” and “Honky Tonk Women”) with one of their roadies and that was all got from them. Motley delayed coming on and then put in a half-ass show and left early in protest of Axl’s arrest (at least this is the rumor we heard). It pissed me off so much I stopped listening to both bands for awhile. Ticket prices at the time were only $17.50.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 