The video is up now for Episode 6 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
For Part 4, we are tackling my Kiss Bootlegs that I have on vinyl. We put it in chronological order for the year the album or songs were recorded, not when they were released. We start with Wicked Lester and go up to a 2010 show from L.A. We have over 20, so sit back and enjoy.
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, April 15th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
The video is up now for Episode 6 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
For Part 3, we pick up with Kiss after the reunion and start with Psycho Circus and go all the way up to today and their latest Anniversary releases. We even through in a few Kiss Adjacent Vinyl. I was surprised by how many were still sealed. And I was surprised by how upset I got on some of their packaging choices. I give my honest opinion and don’t hold back.
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 25th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
The video is up now for Episode 5 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
This week is Part 2 of the Kiss on Vinyl series we have going now. We go from 1983’s Lick it Up all the way to 1997’s Carnival of Souls and everything in between. Find out which tour was my first Kiss concert, which album might be their worst and what 12″ singles and picture discs do I have. All that and more…
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 18th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
In 2014, Kiss was celebrating their 40th Anniversary. To celebrate they did a huge tour with none other than Def Leppard. I caught the show in Charlotte, North Carolina with Leppard opening and I will admit that Def Leppard blew Kiss off the stage, but that is another story. Kiss decided to celebrate with another Greatest Hits compilation titled ‘Kiss 40’. It was released on May 23, 2014 and contained one song from every Kiss release giving them 40 tracks…well, 36 tracks and they stuck 4 other tracks on their for good measure and put out on a 2 CD set.
In Japan only, there was another release of Kiss 40 that was only a single disc edition. It had only 20 tracks and a few different ones then you got on the 2 Disc Set. And for that reason you had to have both sets. And being a Japanese Edition, you also got an OBI strip but this one was bigger as it actually covered the entire back of the CD case as well. The set also included a booklet in both English and Japanese with the lyrics to the songs. There is a new song on the set called “Samurai Son” that was done with the Japanese girl band Momoiro Clover Z and as a result there is a little picture card of the band with Kiss. The last thing is the CD booklet itself which is full of bright, vivid color pictures of the band from throughout the years. It includes every member of the band.
The opening track is “Samurai Son (U.S. Mix)” with the band Momoiro Clover Z. This song sounds like nothing you have heard before with Kiss…well except for Paul’s vocals sound like Kiss. The drums are immense, Momoiro Clover Z does some of the backing vocals and even Gene joins in as well. It is a modern sounding rock song and I think it sounds really cool. Paul hasn’t sounded better, the Japanese sounding drums are cool and there is killer riff included. The song is worth the price of admission here easily.
This week we go we back to the very beginning for me when I fell in love with my first band…KISS!!! When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me bing one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.
We go through my Kiss albums on vinyl, but instead of doing all of them, we will go from the debut up until Creatures of the Night. We will save the rest for another show. I am still missing some of the more rare pieces, but I have a couple cool extras in this one.
I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 11th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.
Back in 2003, Kiss released, okay, the record company released a greatest hits compilation called The Millennium Collection: The Best of Kiss(1973-1979). It was the first of three volume set. Well, then in 2010, the label issued the ‘Icon’ Series with two volumes. The first volume is the exact same track list as ‘The Millennium Collection: The Best of Kiss’. There is nothing different to it at all except for crappier cover art and no inserts/liner notes. A very bare bones set. I do not recommend any of these sets as they weren’t done by Kiss per se.
However, as the collector in me, I do have the brand new, first time on vinyl version of Icon as Walmart has just released an Exclusive Silver Black Splatter vinyl. And since I collect everything vinyl for Kiss, I had to have it for my collection wouldn’t be complete. Okay, my collection is not complete anyway as I am missing a couple pieces that are extremely pricey, but that is for another time.
For now, let us go through this set and talk about the songs since we are here.
SIDE ONE:
The album kicks off with the first song of their debut, “Strutter”. The song was written by both Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons and over the years, this would be a rare experience as they would wind up writing songs by themselves. The music of the song was based off an old Gene song called “Stanley the Parrot” which was recorded even before there was a Wicked Lester. The song has a great opening drum fill by Peter and is an uptempo rock song that was inspired by all the sexy women in New York. There is a great bass riff by Gene why Ace belts out the solo. Paul sings the song and shows all the confidence a lead singer should show.
My love for bootlegs started with collecting Kiss Bootlegs and as you can see from the list at the bottom of this post, I have quite a few Kiss Bootlegs and as long as I keep finding them, the more I will buy. It is a never ending cycle as new Kiss bootlegs keep popping up all the time. This one I found over a Repo Records was released in 2022, but it is a re-issue of one that came out in 2012 and it is a little different than the others that I have. Most of my bootlegs are full shows, parts of one show or a collection of demos.
This one is different in that is a collection of live tracks from various shows and not one show in particular. That to me is odd. What is the purpose of this one? I can’t seem to find out. The timeframe of the shows range from 1974 up to 1978 so they are the peak years of the band. But it is still a strange collection.
What is not strange and rather cool is the packaging. The cover is a cool live shot of Gene as the Demon and the back cover is the Kiss Alive II photo of Gene with the blood all over his face. It is an awesome shot. The inner sleeve is a couple of cool band photos on bot sides. And the final piece is a cool colored vinyl in the color of purple. I don’t have too many purple discs, so very nice. The picture from the cover is on one side of the vinyl and the Kiss logo on the other, both with the Diamonds in the Dust title. I don’t have much info on this so let’s get to the music.
SIDE ONE:
The first track is “Room Service” which was taken from Fremd High School Gymnasium, Palatine, Illinois April 19, 1975 and it sounds like it was. It is very hollow sounding and not from a soundboard. It sounds like I am outside the gym getting refreshments and the sound is bleeding from the closed doors. Paul sounds good though.
Next up is the “Love Theme From Kiss” from the Bayou Theatre in Georgetown, Washington D.C. from March 25, 1974. You hear Paul say this is one we never perform live which is not true because they use to play it when it was called Acrobat. This is definitely an early version since it is 1974 and a month after the release of the debut album.
After it fades out we get “You’re Much Too Young” from Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, Tennessee on December 2, 1976. A song the band would never release, but I have several versions of it live. A really cool mostly instrumental piece with basically Gene saying “You’re Much Too Young” several times during the show. The band is jamming and Peter is killing it on the drums. An interesting cool piece that sees Ace ripping a cool solo and an all around killer track. The album jacket says The Lafayette show is from that same night as the next song “Strutter”, but at a different arena. Kiss are good, but I don’t think they are that good. That means the Lafayette show from “You’re Much Too Young” is probably from April 18, 1974. And I have that show down below in the Bootleg Series list. Just my guess.
Then we get a twofer with “Strutter and “Hard Luck Woman” back to back as they are from the same show at the Mid South Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee on December 2, 1976….wait a freaking minute…”Strutter” just ended and so did Side one. Where the heck is “Hard Luck Woman”. I think I just got ripped off. And I did. The 2022 version is missing a couple songs that were on the 2012 release. Oh well. “Strutter” was pretty good though.
SIDE TWO:
Side Two kicks off with “Ladies in Waiting” which was played at the National Guard Armory in Rockford, Illinois on November 15, 1975. The sound is really rough, it sounds like it was taken from a tape that was taken from a tape and then taken from a tape again. It is muddied and almost unlistenable. I can make out Ace’s killer solo, but the vocals are tough to hear and so are the drums, but Gene’s bass is pretty loud. All simply horrible.
Next up is a group of shows from the same show starting with “Watching You”, then a Peter Criss drum solo and lastly “Flaming Youth”. These are taken from the Roosevelt Stadium show in Jersey City, New Jersey on July 10, 1976. The sound is really good on these tracks (compared to the others). Gene sounds menacing and you can hear Peter on backing vocals really well. Peter’s drum solo is typical Peter or I should say classic Peter. It sounds great, if not a little simple. He definitely is beating the crap out of the skins, but he’s doing it as well as Peter can. You can hear the crowd scream out a few things during it. He bangs the gong and then rips a drum roll before it fades out in to “Flaming Youth”, a personal favorite. Paul’s vocals sound so deep as the tape this taken from drags a little. Man, oh man.
For the last track, we get the classic Kiss song “Deuce”. This one is from the Roberts Municipal Stadium in Evansville, Indiana on January 23, 1978. Roberts Municipal Stadium what a boring name, I guess company’s didn’t fork out millions to sponsor stadiums yet. Anyway, on to the song. Paul introduces and says this isn’t one they’d done in a long time which surprises me. When the band kicks in the sound is horrible. I can’t make hardly any of it out. I can hear Gene, but it is distant and not all that clear. Man, it is hurting the ears the high pitch it is all coming out at. I hope this ends soon as my ear might actually be bleeding.
This is a very skippable bootleg except maybe real diehards. This one makes no sense being a collection of songs from various shows. The only real cool thing about it, other than the packaging, is the fact it isn’t the standard fair of songs. You get some deep cuts and thankfully no “Rock & Roll All Nite” as I could do without that one. The sound sucks at times and sometimes not, but overall this is not one I’ll pull out very often as I prefer to hear full shows. My Overall Score is a 2.0 out of 5.0 Stars and that is being generous. It gets points for great artwork and a cool Purple vinyl. I took one for the team on this one, but still glad it is in the collection because I didn’t have it. Thanks for hanging around.
If there is one thing I love to find and that is Kiss Bootlegs. Whether it is on CD or vinyl, I don’t really care. I do prefer vinyl, but I’ll take it on CD as well so I can play it anywhere once I load it up to the cloud. This time around it is a CD bootleg. And not any CD bootleg, but a whole collection of radio broadcast from over the years. In fact, there are 8 shows spread over 10 CDs and includes 119 tracks. A good coverage of years from as early as 1974 all the way up to 1994. I guess there aren’t too many broadcast after the 90’s as you can see from below…
I love that it covers the make-up era and the non make-up era all the way up to prior to the big Reunion Tour. And it even includes one Non-Kiss Show with a Frehley’s Comet one. The are radio broadcast so the quality is good, but realize these are bootlegs and not pure soundboard recordings released by the band with the sound cleaned up. The set comes in a small cardboard box with each individual disc in a fake vinyl-like sleeve. Nothing fancy, but they cram a lot of music in to a small package.
These are raw and rough and that is why I like them. I really enjoy bootlegs and getting all the shows that I can have from throughout their career. The band started releasing their own “bootleg” type albums with the ‘Off the Soundboard’ Series, but after five releases, that has been put on hold currently. I do hope they get back to it soon. For now, let’s go through this set of albums.
Disc 1:
WMMS, Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio, 1st April 1974 / King Biscuit Flour Hour, The Music Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, 21st June 1975
I have done a few of these already on the Best & Worst songs from every Judas Priest, Cheap Trick and Whitesnake albums. I really enjoyed doing those so I thought I would continue that process and this time we would go through every Kiss studio album (including the 4 solo albums) and see what is the best song and the worst one off each album as well. Kiss has 24 studio albums to go through so sit back, grab a drink and take it all in. Now, let’s preface this with the fact that these are my choices and not necessarily yours as we can have different opinions. My worst song could be your favorite and this is okay. We all like different things or this would be a very dull world. I hope you enjoy the list!! And we will go chronological if you were wondering.
‘KISS’ (1974)
THE BEST SONG – “BLACK DIAMOND”: On an album with so many ‘classic’ Kiss tunes, it was hard to pick. The album ends with one of the band’s best songs, “Black Diamond”. The song was written by Paul and he does sing on it, but is mostly sung by Peter. The songs starts off with a 12-string acoustic guitar and Paul sings the opening line and when he screams “Hit It!”, the song turns in to a blistering rock song with Peter taking over vocals. The song was written about New York and those ladies working on the street that they would fantasize about. Peter’s gravelly vocals gave the song such a powerful edge and he put so much heart and soul in to those vocals. Towards the end of the song, there is a brief musical interlude with Ace tearing it up on guitar and Peter laying down some fills all accompanied by that nasty bass riff from Gene before Peter lays down a final barrage of drum fills and then the song slowly, distortedly comes winding down to an end. It is dark and foreboding and so metal.
THE WORST SONG – “KISSIN’ TIME”: The worst is a cover of the Bobby Rydell Song “Kissin’ Time” which was written by Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe. It was recorded two months after the release and added a couple months after that to the album. The band was not happy about this at all, but they were pressured into recording it. Paul, Gene and Peter all sang on the song and it is just a shit song. It has that whole 50’s, early 60’s style and is not a wrong song. It is easy to hear that they didn’t want to be there singing this crap and that is why I want the original version so I don’t have to hear that song anymore.
If there is one thing I love to find and that is Kiss Bootlegs. I was out on Record Store Day, in line to check out with my RSD vinyl when I looked down and to my left and at the bottom of this shelf were a handful of bootlegs. 2 Van Halen boots and 1 Kiss. Well, all three are mine now and first up we have the Kiss Bootleg, Alive! in Amityville 1973. It was recorded at the Daisy in Amityville, NY on June 16, 1973. It says it is an audience recording, but I’ve read else where it is a soundboard recording, but either way…it is a recording and I have it. The sound quality is actually quite good as it has been remastered and repaired as it says on the back cover.
The really cool thing about this album is that this is about 8 months before the debut album ‘Kiss’ came out in 1974. You can’t get much earlier than this with Kiss recordings. Except maybe the Coventry shows. This is the original line-up of Gene Simons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley. The band didn’t form until late January 1973, so we are only 6 months in to the life of this band. A lot of these songs you know as they did get released, but not all of them made to recording stages. Heck, the band hasn’t even been signed yet and Bill Aucoin isn’t even in the picture at this point. Really cool stuff. Let’s check this show out.
SIDE 1:
First up is the song “Nothin’ to Lose” and it sounds like the song from the debut. You have both Gene and Peter and they attack this song with a vicious ferocity. The lyrics don’t match up perfectly and it seems a little scattered as some of the arrangement does differ from the final studio version, but you do recognize it for what it is. The band is killing it as you can feel the energy and excitement in their playing.
The strange thing is that Peter seems to do most of the talking between songs. He does a great job, but it is weird not hearing Paul. Then we get the song “Firehouse” which seems to have Gene and Paul on vocals. The song sounds like you’d expect, but it isn’t quite the same. There is a strange scream before the chorus, and extra long drum part and the guitar solo from Ace sounds nothing like the one from the studio version. They didn’t have a siren so the end is Peter hitting the cymbals to make that sound. But still so cool to hear it played this way.
The next track is one I’ve never heard before, ever. It is called “Life in the Woods” and it is almost 8 minutes of riffing as it is a guitar heavy song. It was originally titled “Want You Beside” and written by Paul. The song has Paul yelling at the crowd to get up and get moving. There are a lot of harmonies at the beginning with Paul and Peter and then the band comes full force in. There is a break in it where they are screaming “Life in the Woods” and honestly I don’t know who is singing it as it doesn’t sound like any of the guys. And Peter seems to take over the vocals at the end and let’s out an F Bomb at the end. It is a strange song and doesn’t sound like they really know what to do with it as it is all over the place. I don’t think the song really works well and within a month or so, they stopped playing this one which is great because it is awful.
The final track on side 1 is the old Wicked Lester song “Simple Type”. This one I have heard before and have the studio version of the track on a bootleg or two. Ace opens this one with a great riff and then they lay down a cool groove while Ace throws out riffs all over the place. The studio song is less than 3 minutes I believe but this goes on for over 7 minutes. You have both Paul and Gene on vocals and I have to admit this doesn’t sound like the “Simple Type” song I remember from other bootlegs. This one is more of a rocker and the guys are letting all hang out on this one. Ace is really tearing things up here. What drags this song for 7 minutes is the cool jam section and I like to see the boys do that. Now, on the vocals so far, it seems like most of the songs have had two different people in each song singing…this would later become, one song, one voice except for may “Rock & Roll All Nite” and very few others. It’s nice to see more of a band focus here.
SIDE 2:
The first song up is “Acrobat” which is a part of two songs one of which would become “Love Theme from Kiss” off the debut and the other is called “Much Too Young” which was a Gene idea that never materialized. Most of the song is an instrumental, but there are some lyrics with the “Much Too Young” part. Mid way through, Peter gets a drum break and then Ace gets to let loose as well. If you have the Kiss Box Set, this recording of “Acrobat” is in there and it is attributed to the August Daisy shows, but there is some disagreement on that front. I don’t know or care which is true.
Next up is the classic song “Deuce” and this will sound familiar. It is basically the album version, but maybe some tweaks to the ending. Come on, you know it isn’t going to match perfectly. Gene is on vocals, liked you’d expect, and he tears it up. It is Gene, all dark and menacing. This feels like the Kiss I know and love.
“100,000 Years” is another off the debut album and you get what you expect here. You get Gene’s opening bass line which is so recognizable and then Paul comes in on vocals. Paul’s vocals are stellar and hits those high notes perfectly. And then throw in Ace’s blistering guitar work and you have a masterpiece. The biggest difference is Paul’s lyrics at the end are completely different and he even tells the woman he’s speaking to in the lyrics to give him head!! Okay, that’s different.
The famous guitar lick kicks in and you know it is time for “Watchin’ You”. Gene’s on vocals and they are a little rough as he’s screaming too loud in to the mic at first, but it gets better. This song sounds like the final version and it is such a killer tune and great to hear live.
The final track we have here is “Let Me Know” which sees Gene and Paul trade off on the vocals. It is a fun song and a little more poppy. It is basically the old song “Sunday Driver” which Paul had written. I really like this song and I love it when those two trade off on vocals. It is something they should’ve done more of through their career.
And there you have it. Another cool piece in Kisstory. I will point out that this bootleg of the show appears to be missing the songs “Black Diamond” and “Strutter” so if I ever find another version of this show and those two songs are on it, I’ll have to grab it. Otherwise, this set is awesome. I really love it. The sound quality is actually phenomenal so whatever they did to clean it up worked beautifully. I can see myself pulling this one out again and again. My Overall Score is a 5.0 out of 5.0 Stars. There is nothing negative I really have to say about this one. Yeah, “Life in the Woods” isn’t a great song, but how cool is it to have a recording of it when the band never actually recorded this song. If you see this one, you need to grab it.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 