Review Summary: For those of us coming of age in the late 1970's KISS Alive! would justify a lifetime of undying loyalty. Sonically it is simply one of the best representations of a live concert ever recorded.
You had to be there to understand. It can be very difficult to review a classic record many years removed from its release. You can find yourself reviewing not so much the quality of the release at hand but instead decades of the history of the peaks and valleys of the artist's career. This can be particularly difficult when the band in question is one like KISS, the mere mention of whose name will guarantee a reaction based on decades of opinion and hyperbole. Yet that is where I find myself...reviewing the album that made, and justified, their entire career...KISS Alive!
So much has been written about the hype machine known as KISS that it is easy to forget that there was a time when they were an unknown entity more likely to fail than succeed. Yet in the early summer of 1975 when the band recorded a series of shows for this record, that is just the situation they found for themselves. In the preceding fifteen months the band had recorded and released three studio records that, to put it kindly, did not set the world on fire. In fact, they barely received any notice at all. After two years of constant touring the band stood solidly atop the bottom rung of the ladder of success. When the idea came up to record and release a live album...a double live album at that...no one had any reason to believe that their circumstances were about to change...but change they would.
You see, in spite of the fact their recordings were being ignored, the band was earning a well deserved reputation as a live act. They were regularly selling out 5000-10,000 seat halls...as a headliner. The KISS that released this record was still a young and hungry band that had a lot of confidence in themselves...but not much else. It was all that was needed. Well, that and getting Eddie Kramer to come on board to produce the record. Kramer was undoubtedly the best sound engineer for this type of music, having worked previously with Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. His production job would turn what were in their studio presentations "adequate" recordings into a bombastic spectacle of unprecedented and unsurpassed sonic ecstasy. Is that hype? You betcha...but this record delivers exactly that.
KISS Alive! would be for this reviewer, like so many others of my generation, not just our introduction to the band, but also our introduction to a whole new world of possibilities with music. Dropping the needle into those first grooves was a life changing moment..."Deuce," "Strutter," "Got To Choose," "Hotter Than Hell" and "Firehouse." There has never been a more devastating side one of a record ever recorded. Perhaps only Van Halen's debut can even come close. The ferocity of the sound hit you like being shot in the face by Dirty Harry's 44 magnum. The opening explosion that leads off "Deuce" blasted out like canon fire...and that scream...Gene Simmons ends the song with one of the best screams in all of rock history. Ace Frehley's guitar solos just shredded through the mix like sonic arrows that couldn't miss. For me, and millions like me, the hook was set. Just reel us in...and reel they did.
Side two was just as ferocious as side one. "C'mon And Love Me" was a catchy little tune in its first incarnation on the "Dressed To Kill" studio record, but here it is flat out symphonic. Perhaps no song more represents the new life breathed into these tunes more than this one. It sounds huge. "Nothin' To Lose" is definitive KISS with Gene and Peter trading vocals to absolute perfection. "Parasite" and "She" are both shining moments for Gene and Ace. Both tracks sounding so much improved over their studio predecessors...and the Ace solo that ends side two of the record probably single handedly started many a future guitarist's career...and yet there was more...
The riff that drives "Watchin' You" is probably one of the best ever conceived by the band. Gene's sinister song about voyeurism could be the best song on this great album. Or it could be "100,000" years. Certainly this track, probably more than any other, represents all the different facets of the band the best. Ace's masterful single note solo is pure genius, and after hearing this song other bands had to change the way they dealt with their audiences. Paul Stanley masterfully works the crowd as he makes them a part of the festivities over Peter Criss's extended drum solo.
And what about that drum solo? Such things are largely nothing more than pee breaks for band and audience alike...but not this one. It's important to remember that at one time Peter was a damn good drummer. He was one of the first to be lost to the trappings that the band's success brought them but here he is fully invested in himself and the band. The result is one of the very few drum solo's that truly is worth listening to...not so much for its technical proficiency...but for its musical arrangement. It really is impressive. As is side three's closing track "Black Diamond" complete with multiple, and quite musical, explosions to drive what was the set closer at the time. Magnificent...and yet there was more.
I remember setting up side four to play for the first time and thinking: how can anything be this good...only to be hit by "Rock Bottom." It starts out with an abbreviated intro that deceives you with its seemingly mis-placed beauty...and then it crashes into one of the most under-rated tracks in the entire KISS catalog. Most bands would kill for one song this good, yet this one has always seemed under-appreciated to me. "Cold Gin" hasn't been though. It was one of those tracks that managed to stay in the group's set list even through the non makeup 1980's. Here it is definitive right down to Paul's pre-song rap which has itself remained, in some form, throughout the bands history. No tequila for KISS!
What more can be said about "Rock and Roll All Nite" than hasn't been said already? This is the way we heard it first...not the "Dressed To Kill" studio version that almost all of us to a man (or woman) would hear later as we tracked down all the bands previous releases. This sing along version is definitive, complete with added guitar solos by Ace. This is truly the first KISS song heard 'round the world.
How does one close out what might be the best record ever made? With arguably the best track on here..."Let Me Go Rock-N-Roll." This sounds like a band having fun...almost like they KNEW they were on the verge of having all their dreams come true. This song has a feel that is truly...rollicking. Not a word often associated with KISS. They have never been anything resembling a "jam" band and yet here that is exactly how they come off. Most of the tracks on this record don't stray too much from the arrangements employed on their studio versions, albeit an extended guitar solo or two, but "Let Me Go Rock-N-Roll" was extended and arranged so different from its "Hotter Than Hell" predecessor as to give it a dynamic and feel of pure...unadulterated...joy. An excellent way to end the proceedings.
There are those that will point out that Eddie Kramer and the band "fixed" a lot of the record in the studio. So what? Almost every non-bootleg live record has been touched up. Do you think they invented it here? Nope. It bother's me not. Even the raising of the level of the crowd noise, which I don't think was all that enhancing anyway. There is a King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show that was done with early and untouched mixes of some of the songs that broadcast prior to the album's release. It should be sought out by the serious KISS fan. The audience levels are normal and overall it may sound even better than the final results used for the album. They had good source material to work with.
For those of us coming of age in the late 1970's KISS Alive! was the record that all other records would be judged by. It validated and justified both everything KISS would ever do in the future, and our undying loyalty to them. I can understand that it is hard to hear this record and separate who KISS became from who they were when they made this record. Some of you will never be able to get past the over-commercialization of their imagery and hear the band for what they were at that time and place.
I have always told people that KISS Alive! was the first album I ever bought and I have bought thousands trying to find a better one. I haven't found one yet. Perhaps...you had to be there to understand.
5/5
Outstanding Tracks:
Every Damn One of Em'
