Released: 1977
Tracks: Detroit Rock City; King of the Night Time World; Ladies Room; Makin’ Love; Love Gun; Calling Dr. Love; Christine Sixteen; Shock Me; Hard Luck Woman; Tomorrow and Tonight; I Stole Your Love; Beth; God of Thunder; I Want You; Shout it Out Loud; All American Man; Rockin’ in the USA; Larger Than Life; Rocket Ride; Any Way You Want It
Best track: probably Detroit Rock City
Tracks to skip: Ladies Room, Shock Me, Tomorrow and Tonight, I Stole Your Love, Beth, All American Man, Rockin’ in the USA, Larger Than Life, Rocket Ride, Any Way Your Want It
Well, here we are in the 2nd of the series of “live” albums from Kiss and it’s obvious to anyone who follows the band that they’ll never better the first one. Not any sort of a pre-conception, just the truth. Since Alive! was released after their first three studio albums, it makes sense that after their next group of three studio albums the band would release another live one. What I like about this one is that there are no repeats from Alive. I think 2 years later is a bit soon to release another live album, but it’s really just a commercial to get people to see the live show. I like that they have a picture of Gene Simmons on the front cover with the fake blood all down his face. That’s pretty cool.
I’ve always liked the idea on live albums to include some studio tracks as an added bonus, but that’s always on the contention that they’re actually good songs. Unfortunately for this album, the original side 4 was all new studio tracks which are just *bad* songs. Horrible songs. As for disc 1 and half of disc 2 (the album’s original first 3 sides) some bad songs populate those areas as well. Besides skipping half of this album (bringing it to 40 minutes of listenable material) the thing I hate about this one is how obnoxious the overdubbed crowd noise is. Listen closely and you can hear “song-ending applause” nearly the entire way through every track on here. It’s to the point where it just becomes silly because you *know* those people weren’t cheering constantly, during the entire show. Let’s pick on the band members! Ace sounds drunk on Shock Me and his guitar playing in his solo isn’t too much better. I do, however, like that riff at the end of the song…the one that leads into his solo. It should have gone on longer. Peter Criss, who was never a very good drummer anyway, is given another solo on this album, this time in God of Thunder. Makes me ask, why is this there? It’s short, which is good, but it has no reason to be there in the first place. Further picking on Cat Man…the idea of him singing to a freaking tape during Beth is the cheesiest and lamest thing EVER. He still did this when I saw the band in ‘96. Why not just make a band arrangement of the crappy tune so that it’s not the Peter Criss Karaoke Show? I know they wanted Kiss to be like the Beatles where all four of them sang, but they really should have just kept it to Gene and Paul.
I originally listened to this album and started to write this review like 6 months ago, but I stopped for whatever reason. I know I could have just slapped a grade on here since I did listen to it back in December, but I thought I should give it a shot and re-listen to it again. It’s funny, I actually like it less today than I did 6 months ago and it’ll probably get a lower grade. So much for integrity! OK, there are parts about this album I like. The songs I don’t skip are definitely tolerable and a lot of cases these “live” versions are much better than the studio ones (like Makin’ Love). What they should have done is recorded the basic tracks live and then overdubbed like they did for this album, clean up the singing/crowd interaction a bit, and take out the stupid crowd noise…then have those be the initial studio albums. Just go and play the new songs in front of an audience and record the basics and use that as song beds and then they’d have better studio albums. Ah, but that’s not how Kiss works. Another thing I like about this album, but also Kiss in general, is that Gene Simmons comes up with some cool bass lines. He’s not the best bassist in the world, and that’s fine, but he uses his talent and ability in creative ways. I’ve always liked his bass lines.
So, how to grade this? Half of it outright bites, the crowd noise is awful, and when you actually listen to the lyrics of these songs…whew, they’re bad. This album is nowhere near as good as Alive, but parts of it are fine enough. Personally, I’m over this album. I really don’t need to listen to it anymore. If they had better songs (live and new studio) and took out that crowd noise, it would probably be better. Since it’s not, it’s not an essential purchase.
Rating: 70
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