This week on The Collection, we go through the brand new Kiss ‘Alive!’ 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition CD Box Set. Can’t believe it has been 50 years to one of the greatest Live albums of all time (cough, cough). I just received the box set from Fed Ex and figured I would show it to you at the exact time I went through it so we are both surprised or disappointed with what is or is not included. I had so much fun doing the Dressed to Kill box set, I figured let’s do the same thing here with ‘Alive!’. We talk about the book, the Blu-Ray and the live shows that are included and it is all great. I hope you enjoy!!
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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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To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of one Def Leppard’s biggest albums, ‘Pyromania’, they give the album the justice it needs and released an awesome box set in 2024. And what a great set it is. It has 4 CD’s, 1 Blu Ray and even includes a hard back book. It is all housed in a cardboard box that is of great quality and the images are fantastic. The housing of the CDs & Blu Ray is not a gate-fold, but instead an incredible tri-fold. The original album is remastered, there is a disc of unreleased demos and mixes, a live set from Germany and the famous live show from 1983 at the L.A. Forum. It is splendid and I have to say that as this is one of my all-time favorite albums.
But before we get to the set, what was going on in the Def Leppard world at the time of the album? Well,…here it is…The tide was changing, Def Leppard’s success was palpable at this point, but not quite there…YET! Robert John “Mutt” Lange was back as producer and the band hit the studios in January 1982 and went through November of that year at Park Gates studio in London. All didn’t go smoothly, there was one big issue and that issue was Pete Willis.
Pete’s drinking problem was…well, becoming a problem. It was causing issues that were impacting his work and the band. It got so bad that on July 11, 1982, mid-way through work on the album, the band fired Pete. This was not a rash decision as it was discussed fully amongst the band because on July 12, 1982, the very next day, the band announced his replacement in the likes of Girl’s guitarists, Phil Collen. By this point in recording, Pete had already recorded all his rhythm parts and those are still on the album. Phil came in and added a few guitar parts and as well as some solos, he had it easy.
To celebrate the band’s 40th Anniversary, they have released a new Greatest Hits Compilation. And I know what you are thinking…big deal…right? Well, this one is a little different. One, it was only released in Japan…Two, the songs were hand picked by their Japanese fans. As a result, you do get the big hits, but there also some deep cuts you don’t normally see on a Bon Jovi greatest hits set.
And the band went all out with this release. It is called ‘All Time Best 1984-2024’ and was released in November 2024. I want to say it was the 6th, but with production delays, I’m not sure exactluy. My copy didn’t show up until around the 20th of the month. Whenever it was released, what a release it is. It chock full of hits and not hits, with 50 songs covering their entire career from the 1984 debut all the up to the 2024 release of ‘Forever’. All the songs are spread over 3 CDs and they even through in a Blu-Ray if you have the Super Deluxe Edition (which I do). Plus a few things more.
On July 1, 2014, Bon Jovi released the Super Deluxe Edition box set for ‘New Jersey’ which was just a hair past the band’s 25th anniversary of the album which came out on September 19, 1988. It contained the original album with some bonus tracks as well as an additional disc of demos from during the recordings. If that wasn’t enough, there as third disc, a DVD, of the 88-minute behind the scenes documentary of the bands massive tour for ‘New Jersey’ which spanned over 200 shows and 26 countries. It was nuts. Also, included on the DVD were all the music videos for the album including both versions of “Bad Medicine”. These were previously only available on VHS. And lastly there was a booklet with pictures of the band, some commentary and lyrics to all the songs including the demos. It was a great set, only missing a live show from that era to make it complete.
For Part 2 of the New Jersey Review, we are going to go through all the bonus tracks from Disc 1 as well as all the songs from Disc 2 with comments on the DVD and booklet as well. The Original Album was reviewed in quite a lot of detail on Part 1 so we won’t repeat that here. So, sit back and enjoy the walk through of all the additional material of the Super Deluxe Edition of Bon Jovi’s ‘New Jersey’.
David Coverdale has really outdone himself with these Super Deluxe Editions Box Sets. First was the ‘1987’ album, then an UnZipped Box Set, then ‘Slide It In’ and the 1989 album ‘Slip of the Tongue’. Heck, He even did the 25th Anniversary Edition of ‘Restless Heart’ which for some reason I have yet to review. I need to get on that. Now, to the surprise of everyone, he has done a 15th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition for ‘Good to Be Bad’ now called ‘Still…Good to Be Bad’. It doesn’t seem the album has been out long enough to deserve such a treatment and that might explain why it isn’t chock full of goodness the other ones gave us. More on that soon enough. The album was the band’s 10th studio album and the first one in over a decade which is way too long to go without a Whitesnake album. But they came back with a bang.
This special edition consists of 4 CDs, 1 DVD, 1 Book, 1 Tour Program replica and 1 Album Cover Poster. And it has over 58 tracks amongst all the CDs. Well…not really. It has 15 tracks done four different ways (minus 2 tracks done 3 ways). So, this is why I say this is for the diehard fans as it is very repetitive…this is for the diehard fans as it is very repetitive! Yes, I said this twice to prove a point and yes, I did this joke on pretty much every box set review for Whitesnake because its true. Here is everything you get.
I had the absolute pleasure of joining Superdekes on his show “Scotch on the Rocks” as we discussed the box set from Kiss for Creatures of the Night…see what Deke has to say about it below, then go watch.
From Scotch on the Rocks:
It’s always a great chat when the Snowman hops on “Scotch On The Rocks” and this time was no different!
We talked of course about KISS and the Creatures album but with more of a personal angle than showing an unboxing video of the super deluxe as there are a hundreds of those kind of videos on Youtube currently.
We basically went back into the time machine to talk about how it was being a KISS fan when KISS wasn’t cool in the early 80’s. We talked about the music included in the various formats like the demo’s and live tracks with Vinnie Vincent in pretty good detail.
Some highlights were….
One of us got sprayed with perfume back in high school wearing a KISS shirt.
One of us also thought that “I Love It Loud” (live) wasn’t on the deluxe set.
One of us has Gene Simmons Money Bag Soda and could be seen swigging from the bottle of the Demon at the end of the show.
Can you believe it has been 30 years since The Black Crowes debut album, ‘Shake Your Money Maker’? It is hard to fathom some times. The Black Crowes came on the scene with the release of the album on February 13, 1990. The album goes against the grain of the music at the time. The 80’s Glam Rock scene was still alive, but the Crowes went back to the Rock & Roll roots and gave us some dirty, bluesy rock & roll and laughed in the face of those glam rockers. That scene would die out soon enough when Nirvana would come on to the scene. The album went on to sell over 5 million copies from 5 singles and reaching #4 on the Billboard 200 Chart.
The Black Crowes hail from Marietta, GA, my hometown (different high school though – they went to rival Walton and I was at Osborne). These guys were all over the place and the talk of the town. It was so cool to see these hometown heroes explode on to the scene and hit it big time. Nothing cooler than local boys making it to the top.
This box set is a 30 year celebration of the album and let me tell you the boys did it right. The box set comes in…well…a box. It looks wooden even thought it is really a very sturdy cardboard shaped to look like wood. The back cover list the track listing and inside are is the picture of the album over some flyers and passes. The admission price of $0.96 for me is intriguing because the 96 is shaped like the local rock radio station called 96 Rock which tells me that show was a promoted by that awesome radio station. It brings back a lot of memories. The set I have is the Super Deluxe Edition and the vinyl one at that. See below to see what comes in the set.
David Coverdale has really outdone himself with these Super Deluxe Editions Box Sets. First was the ‘1987’ album, then an UnZipped Box Set, then ‘Slide It In’ and now we get the royal treatment on the 1989 album ‘Slip of the Tongue’.
This special edition consists of 6 CDs, 1 DVD, 1 Book, 1 Tour Program replica and 1 Album Cover Poster. And it has over 100 tracks amongst all the discs. Here is everything you get.
Now of course that 100+ tracks is misleading and this set is truly for the ultimate fan. Why? Because the set repeats the songs a lot. Because the set repeats the songs a lot. Yes, I wrote that twice on purpose and yes, I did the same joke on ‘Slide It In’…because its true.
I had a little Christmas money and I found the Guns N’ Roses album ‘Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition’ on sale of $89.99 which is down from the $124.99 on Amazon so I decided to bite the bullet on this 4 CD set. Now, I didn’t have enough to the that $800+ Locked & Loaded Box Set so I had to pass on that one.
Now, lucky for you I will review this set and go through what it has to offer. With 73 tracks and 49 Unreleased tracks, I am not going to go through each song in detail as we would be here for days reading and I would be dead from writing all those words. You will get a “Cliff Notes” version of the review. I hope that is okay. The set has a lot to offer. Here is snap shot of what all comes with the set…(I used this picture from the web as I couldn’t get a decent picture – thanks Amazon).
The first thing that grabbed my attention was the beautiful book. It is a 96-page Hardcover Book with Unreleased Photos and tons of pictures of posters and band memorabilia. The book cover is all black and genuine fake leather embossed with the GN’R logo. It is tough to see that logo, but it is there…
2 Loud 2 Old Music 