The Collection: Ep. 79 – Kiss: ‘Dressed to Kill’ (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)

This week we unbox the brand new Kiss ‘Dressed to Kill’ (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) box set. It is massive. There are 5 CDs and 1 Blu-Ray but it also has a bunch of goodies included. You get a 100-page Hard Back book, stickers, buttons, picks, posters photographs, newspaper, ticket stubs, backstage passes and everything and anything related with a Kiss logo on it. The album came out in 1975 and produced what would become one of the greatest rock anthems with “Rock And Roll All Nite”. The tour would spawn the greatest live album ever made, Alive!, and you get not one, but two full shows that album was taken from. The rest will hopefully be on the Alive! box set, we will get to that one after it comes out. Sit back and enjoy as you unbox with me as it just showed up on my doorstep.

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Kiss – ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1975) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

When the band completed ‘Hotter Than Hell’, they quickly went right back on tour.  That album only had the one single, “Let Me Go, Rock & Roll”, which quickly fell from the charts. That wasn’t the only thing that fell quickly, so did the album sales.  Their label, Casablanca, was hemorrhaging money with Kiss on Tour and the album doing poorly.  As a result, the band was yanked off tour to record a new album.

When they get in the studio, the producer for the record was no longer Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise as Casablanca had no money to pay anyone.  So the owner of the record label, Neil Bogart, stepped in and recorded the album.  Which isn’t really a problem as he has a ton of experience…in the pop and dance music world.  Not in Rock & Roll.  And it would be evident as the heavier sound of the band on the first two albums, was a little more pop sounding on this one.  Don’t fret, it still rocked out, but not as hard.

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Imagine you are in a band and you are now starting to write your third album in about a year’s time.  You have to be one heck of a writer to come up with that much music in such a short time.  Well, Kiss didn’t have the songs.  So, what did they do.  They pulled a couple songs from their Wicked Lester Days and re-worked them.  Now, only 8 more to go.  Paul wrote three of them, Gene got two, Ace got one and then Paul & Gene wrote one together and what a song it was.  More on that in a minute. Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1975) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)”