Tag: Rock & Roll All Nite

Kiss -‘End Of The Road’ – THE FINAL SHOW (December 2nd, 2023: Madison Square Garden)

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Yes, I was there for the end. The final Kiss show. I have been a fan for around 46 years or since ever since I discovered these albums in my brothers collection. I was around 7-8 years old. The make-up, the larger than life characters, the pictures on those albums and most of all, the songs all captured this little kid’s mind and never let go. Through the good years and the bad (and there have been some), Kiss has always been a part of my life.

My very first Kiss show was December 26, 1983 for the Lick It Up Tour. My brother, Gary, gave me a ticket for the show on my birthday, which was the day before the show. Imagine my surprise. Here we are 40 years later and this time I bought the tickets. My brother took me to My First Kiss Show and I am taking him to the Last!! We arrived in New York City early morning on Friday, December 1st, 2023. Gary from Atlanta and I from Charlotte. Once we arrived, we did a couple touristy things, but one of the cool things was going to where Kiss were photographed in the suits for the Dressed to Kill album cover. That was at the southeast corner of W23rd Street and 8th Avenue looking North. I didn’t recreate it, just took a picture there.

Cheesy, yeah…but it was fun standing there where the guys made that iconic Kiss picture. The other Kiss place we went was down to Electric Lady Studios. The place where Kiss recorded their demos with Eddie Kramer, prior to the debut album. You know this studio because it was Jimi Hendrix’s Studio. If you open the door, you will see the original door and brick that was there when Kiss was. The funny thing about these two locations is that we knew we found the right locations as there were already other Kiss fans doing the same thing we planned on doing. And speaking of fans, everyone we met was so friendly and so excited about the weekend. Kiss fans, when not being overly critical, are actually great people.

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KISS-OPOLY

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Back on June 18, there was another small Record Store Day for those items that were delayed from the main one on April 23. I was on the hunt for the Collective Soul first vinyl release of ‘Disciplined Breakdown’ and the Halestorm Tomb-Shaped Single which I did get both. I wasn’t able to get up and be there when it started so I was worried I would miss out. Around Noon, my youngest daughter and I headed out to our first stop Repo. Repo had the Halestorm, but not the Collective Soul…dang it. And while we there, we figured we’d look around.

I decided to go over to the shelves and look for some Kiss (like there was any chance I was going to find one I didn’t have. The Kiss albums were on the bottom shelf and to properly go through them, you have to sit on the slimy, sticky floor…it wasn’t that bad. When my bones creaked and moaned and I finally got down there, I saw a box sitting across the top of the albums that was not visible from above. A factory sealed Monopoly game with Kiss as the theme!! Hell Yeah!! I had been looking for it for at least a decade or more. And it was factory sealed!! Hell Yeah Again!!

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Kiss – ‘End of the Road: In Allentown 2020’ – Blu-Ray Review (Bootleg Series)

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I was out a Record Show and I found a table that had a lot of Kiss memorabilia but nothing much I really wanted as I generally stick to the music. I did find something I didn’t realize existed and that was Kiss Blu-Ray Bootlegs. This guy was selling a lot of them. I came back to the table and looked again and decided, you know, I want to try it out. When he then offered that I could get two for $15, I jumped at the chance. $15 was worth the risk. So I grabbed one from the End of the Road tour and one from the 40th Anniversary Tour as I saw both those tours, just not these shows.

So, first up we are going to go the most recent which is the End of the Road Tour and this show was filmed at the PPL Center in Allentown, PA on February 4th, 2020 just a month before COVID shut the whole touring scene down. Kiss was a full year in to the tour at this point and in fine form.

I have to say the video quality is much better than I expected. It is supposed to be a Pro-Shot video and although some of the camera angles sucked at times as they got washed out with the colors in the lights, overall it was pretty cool. The shots from the front of the stage were perfectly clear and killer you still got some shots that were muted by the lights some blurriness as the cameras couldn’t focus fast enough. But for $7.50 a piece, pretty darn acceptable.

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Kiss – ‘Alive! The Millennium Concert (2006) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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The 2000’s have seen Kiss release more live albums, greatest hits packages and box sets than Studio Albums. And this particular release has sat on the shelves for six years because one thing or another got in the way. The album was recorded on December 31, 1999 and January 1, 2000 at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, Canada and consisted of the original band members of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley. The original intention for this album was to be released as Kiss Alive! IV, but there was a problem and it got shelved because the record label, Mercury, was being gobbled up by Universal in a giant merger. Then a few years later, Universal agreed for Mercury to release it, but the band was working on the Symphony show which would become Kiss Alive IV. One thing after another kept pushing this release back. Thoughts were that it wasn’t a good show, but I think it was bad timing.

The album would see a release on November 21, 2006 when it was included on the box set Kiss Alive! 1975-2000. That box set included Alive!, Alive II and Alive III as well and since those have already been reviewed, I went with just reviewing the Millennium show as that did get a separate vinyl release of its own.

One of the cool things about this release is that there are three songs on here that had never been played by all 4 of the original members. You get “Heaven’s On Fire” and “Lick It Up” both from the non-makeup era that Peter and Ace were not on and you get “I Love It Loud” which Peter was not on and Ace was credited on the ‘Creatures of the Night’ album but reality proved he didn’t play on it. However, the opening track on here is “Psycho Circus” and Peter and Ace actually didn’t play on that song either even though it was the “Reunion” album.

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Kiss – ‘Alive!’ (1975) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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With ‘Dressed to Kill’ out and sales only slightly better than ‘Hotter Than Hell’, the only thing the band really had going for them was their live shows.  Their record label was nearly bankrupt and Kiss was about to lose their record deal and it was about to all coming to a crashing halt. The band had yet to receive any royalties after their pittance of an advance and their manager, Bill Aucoin, along with the band were ready to sue and get out of the contract.

In a last ditch effort to save the label and the band, Neil thought a Live album was the way to go.  The Live shows is where people finally understood what Kiss was all about.  With Gene Simmons spitting blood and breathing fire, with Ace Frehley’s electrifying guitar solos, Paul Stanley’s charm in his dialogue to the crowd and Peter Criss’ drum riser and solo, Kiss was a Live band that needed to be heard LIVE!!  Plus, this was cheaper than an album, so they could afford to do this route.

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‘Alive!’ was recorded over four stops on the Dressed to Kill Tour.  You had May 16 at Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, naturally; June 21 at Cleveland Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio; July 20 at RKO Orpheum Theater in Davenport, Iowa; and July 23 at Wildwoods Convention Center in Wildwood, New Jersey.  With four shows recorded, they could piece together a perfect live album…well…maybe not!

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

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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” →