Welcome back to Part 3 of the 6 Part series. We have already talked about the Box Set and its packaging in Part 1 and we covered Disc 1 in Part 2 which covered the years 1966-1975. That set gave us 12 Unreleased tracks. This one has a lot, but not quite as many. For Disc Two, we get 8 previously unreleased tracks out of the 20 tracks on the disc. And it is those 8 tracks we will spend most of our time here today on. The rest will get covered when I actually do a Kiss series later down the road.
I am sure now you are wondering the what is the track listing for this disc if there are 20 songs and I am going to show you in pictorial form with this picture of the back of the CD case with Paul’s Starchild face covering the whole rear of cover.
The first four tracks on this are taking from the Alive! album which was released in 1975 and since they are previously released will skip over them and get to the three previously unreleased tracks that come up next.
First we get the song “Doncha Hesitate” which was written by Paul Stanley. The song was recorded as a demo and one of the few times the whole band would get together to record a demo. However, there are different stories on when it was recorded. Gene says it was recorded for ‘Dressed to Kill’ when they were trying to come up with more songs. Paul says it was written after ‘Alive!’ and before ‘Destroyer’ which are both after ‘Dressed to Kill’…so not sure who is write on this one. The song is great for a demo as it is very raw and rough around the edges, but it falls flat as an overall song which is probably why it was never used. I do like it though and always great to have unreleased tracks that were not used in any other song.
Next we get the demo of a song called “Mad Dog”. “Mad Dog” was recorded as a demo for the ‘Destroyer’ album along with numerous other songs that Gene had (some of which went on his solo album – not this one). As they were picking through songs, Bob Ezrin would pick pieces of the demos and they would end of making a new song. The riff from this song will sound familiar as it would become the riff in the song “Flaming Youth” on ‘Destroyer’. The song kinda sucks, but it has a great solo included and I love the song “Flaming You” so I actually dug this one a bit for that connection.
“God of Thunder” is a demo and the song was originally written and sung by Paul Stanley. This to me is one of the gems on this Disc because it is so cool to here how Paul envisioned the song. You can see why Bob Ezrin had Paul give it to Gene to sing because the theme, the sonics and the lyrics all scream Gene’s demon character. Paul’s version is a faster tempo and less eerie as the final version, but it is fun and a rocking song.
We go through some songs from ‘Destroyer’ before we get to the next demo which is “Bad, Bad Lovin”. When you hear this one start up, you know it is the demo for the song that would become “Calling Dr. Love”. The verses are pure “Dr. Love”, but the chorus of “Bad, Bad Lovin” is so bad and doesn’t even fit with the feel and vibe of the verses. Re-working it become “Calling Dr. Love” was definitely the way to go. And cool that they put “Calling Dr. Love” as the next song on the album.
“Mr. Speed” is the demo of the song from ‘Rock & Roll Over’. It is not my favorite song to begin with and this does nothing to make up for that. This version has Bob Kulick on guitar and not Ace, but it is a demo so no big deal.
We are going to skip the next batch of songs as they have all been released on albums and we will go to the next unreleased track which is a Soundcheck recording of “I Want You”. It was recorded in August 1977 at the soundcheck at the Los Angeles forum. Being a soundcheck, it is loose and a freaking blast!. I love this song to begin with so any cool version I can get is fine by me. Another favorite of mine on this disc.
The next demo is of the Kiss Klassic “Love Gun”. Paul demoed this in New York with drummer Steve Korff of the band The Planets. Paul played the bass and guitar for the demo. That machine gun drum fill is the heart & soul of the song and was only replicated by Peter Criss as Paul came up with it. The demo was pretty complete and sounds really close to the final version so not much was tweaked on this one.
The last track is the Gene Simmons demo of a song called “Love is Blind”. It is one that was never recorded and it is Gene on all the instruments. And if you listen closely, you can here the click track in the background. It doesn’t sound anything like Kiss, but maybe would have fit on his solo album as it was so diverse. Gene felt it had more of an Eagles feel to it and I can hear that it in the overall sound. A really cool track to me.
And that is all the unreleased tracks. Another great disc and almost as good as the first one, but not quite. The 8 unreleased tracks are fantastic to have in the collection and I think this disc will get almost as much spin time as the first one. Overall, I will score this one a 4.5 out of 5.0 Stars. These first two discs were the majority of the Unreleased tracks from the set. There are only about 10 more over the next three discs so I am going to have to review those slightly different otherwise they will be short reviews. Until then. Enjoy!
Check it out and let me know what you think. If you want to go back and read Part 1, click on the link below:
Up next is Disc Three 1976 – 1982 (Part 4 of 6)
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