Kiss: Album by Album (1983 - 1998)

Let us continue our Kiss odyssey (Kissodyssey?) down through the years.

This period of the band's career saw big changes. Casablanca Records went out in a blaze of debt and angel dust, and their new label was more bottom-line-oriented. Bye-bye 24-hour limo service. Ace and Peter were out, Gene and Paul parted ways with manager Bill Aucoin, and then went through four guitarists in as many years. While they were still on the first of those four (Vinnie) they decided to ditch the make-up for the release of:

Lick It Up (1983)

Track Listing: Exciter / Not for the Innocent / Lick It Up / Young and Wasted / Give Me More / All Hell's Breaking Loose / A Million to One / Fits Like a Glove / Dance All Over Your Face / And On the 8th Day

Shrewd move. The visual impact of Kiss was known the world over, but it was strongly associated with their adventures in the 1970s. The band needed to re-brand themselves for the new decade.

Favorite tunes: Title track, "Exciter," "All Hell's Breaking Loose." The rest range from "meh" to not bad. "Dance All Over Your Face" is a damn funny title, though not a fave.

"Lick It Up" is such a crazy tune. Rock classic, definitely. Whatever else can be said of this era of Kiss, they produced at least three bona-fide classics. (Not to mention at least a dozen personal favorites.) This is the first of them. Beyond the rocking-ness, it is one of the funniest videos ever filmed. I'm positive they didn't mean it to be, but such are the waters 80s videos often navigate.

The other video from the album was for "All Hell's Breaking Loose." As a song, it clocks in at about Mach-2 on the absurdity-radar. But it's got nothing on the video. I was originally going to devote a whole blog to this one, but I think I can make do with only a few screencaps. Here's the full vid itself:

After fending off an attack by slow mutants, Gene pauses to roast his turkey leg on a random street fire.

They round the corner and meet a little person in Victorian garb accompanied by a man on stilts.

This little-person-and-man-with-stilts sequence is bizarrely paired with the lines "Street hustler comes up to me one day / And I'm walkin' down the street, mindin' my own business / Now he looks me up and he looks me down and says / Hey man, what be this and what be that / And why you gotta look like that?" In the video itself, the little man pantomimes haranguing Paul in such a manner.

Is this what was meant by "street hustler?" Paul's response by the way, is epic: "Well I just looked at him, I kinda laughed, I said Hey man, I am cool, I am the breeze..." You just know he really wanted people to take this and run with it. "Call me 'The Breeze,' damn it!"

From here, they continue to some kind of club, where a thrown knife is a visual reminder of the danger they navigate on our behalf.

The knife-thrower

This is followed by almost thirty seconds of fire-breathing and suggestive apple-eating by those inside whatever club this is.

Finally, they take the stage.

The ladies are taken with Paul.

An impromptu sword fight breaks out.

The little man re-appears. (No sign of the man on stilts.) Obviously Paul's "I am the breeze" line inspired him to follow Kiss to the club, where he throws Paul a sword so Kiss can escape the fray.

And off they go.

I'm not sure if this video was filmed before or after Motley Crue's "Too Young to Fall in Love," but there are a lot of similarities. Then again, when it comes to 80s metal, all rivers tend to empty in the same sea.

Ownability Factor: 8 out of 10. Nah, 10 out of 10. Why not.

Animalize (1984)

Track Listing: I've Had Enough (Into the Fire) / Heaven's On Fire / Burn Bitch Burn / Get All You Can Take / Lonely Is the Hunter / Under the Gun / Thrills in the Night / While the City Sleeps / Murder in High Heels

(God, that cover. Ugh. You just know it's something totally disgusting, as well, like their used furry Kiss thongs or something after a night banging the same blow-up doll, or something. Gross.)

I'd written some things about this album for this here overview but after another listen last night while making pasta, I decided it deserves its own entry. Stay tuned to this space for more details.

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10.

Asylum (1985)

Kiss's glam phase continues; it's difficult to truly explain this stuff, now or then. It has its precedent in the 70s, of course, and even older than that, but how all that translated to hard rock acts on Dial-MTV remains a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter: still a total mystery.

Track listing: King of the Mountain / Any Way You Slice It / Who Wants To Be Lonely / Trial By Fire / I'm Alive / Love's a Deadly Weapon / Tears Are Falling / Secretly Cruel / Radar for Love / Uh! All Night

Favorite tunes: "Tears Are Falling" (the third of the three bona-fide classics aforementioned. Three guesses what the remaining one is. Hint: It's "Heaven's On Fire.") "Uh! All Night" (one of Paul's silliest, but also one of all rock's silliest) "I'm Alive" (another if-they-could-have-bottled-the-80s-it-would-have-smelled-like-this tunes) and "Who Wants To Be Lonely." The video for that one is just jawdropping. Not just the softcore porn of it all, but how exuberant everyone is. One of my favorite Kiss tunes, nonetheless. The "oh-whoah-OHH-OHH!"s in the chorus are so ridiculously fun. When explaining Paul Stanley to anyone, be sure to include this one, "I'm Alive," and maybe even "I Still Love You" from Animalize. (Okay, that's twice I've brought up Animalize since saying I'd save it for another blog, so zip it, McMillan.)

Actually, forget what I said. As Ch'gyam Trungpa once said of Wavy Gravy, "That man is self-explanatory."

So Dumb It Might Actually Be Brilliant: "Any Way You Slice It."

Ownability Factor: 8 out of 10.

Crazy Nights (1987)

Track Listing: Crazy Crazy Nights / I'll Fight Hell to Hold You / Bang Bang You / No No No / Hell or High Water / My Way / When Your Walls Come Down / Reason To Live / Good Girl Gone Bad / Turn On the Night / Thief in the Night

A comeback album of sorts, as it was their highest-selling record of the 80s. I'll spare you any further shots of Paul Stanley's thong from the back cover.

Favorite tunes: Title track, and (see below) Least favorites: "Turn On the Night" is just... words fail me. I'm shocked this was written by Paul and not Gene, actually.

Sagacity of the Starchild: I have no idea if this is the actual case or not, but it sure seems like Paul had so much fun writing "Uh! All Night" on the last album that he said, "You know what? Why even bother with innuendo?" And "Bang Bang You" is the result. You'd figure the chorus (I'm gonna bang, bang you! I'll shoot you down with my love gun, baby!) would be the silliest line in the song, but you'd figure wrong: If love's a crime I've got a hundred schemes / I'll be the villain in your book of dreams. This should probably be a "So Dumb It May Actually Be Brilliant" entry, but I'm pretty sure it's both with no ambiguity.

Ownability Factor: 5 out of 10.

In 1988, Kiss released another compilation album: 

The band recorded two new tracks: another facepalm-rocker from Paul ("Let's Put the X in Sex") and for my money the closest thing to "Love Gun" he ever wrote, "(You Make Me) Rock Hard." Not as cool as "LG," but minus the silliness of the parenthetical, there, this is a surprisingly melodic tune. It's definitely the prettiest song ever written about getting an erection.

Personal note: I hadn't heard too much 70s Kiss at the time this came out, so getting this one was akin to discovering "Space Seed" after having watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan so many times. And for that reason I'll give it an Ownability Factor of 9 out of 10. Plus, "Rock Hard." Maybe 10 out of 10.

Hot in the Shade (1989)

Track Listing: Rise to It / Betrayed / Hide Your Heart / Prisoner of Love / Read My Body (!?) / Love's a Slap in the Face / Forever / Silver Spoons / Cadillac Dreams / King of Hearts / The Street Giveth and the Street Taketh
Away (?!) / You Love Me To Hate You / Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell / Little Caesar/ Boomerang

At the time of its release, I really hated this album, and it seemed my decision to go with the Space Ace over these guys was the right one. Ace released Trouble Walkin' the same year, something I always let my buddy Dan know when he'd try and convince this was the superior release. Many a lunchtime argument over that one. My opinion has since been upgraded to "meh." I still consider it the band's weakest effort.

Favorite track: Technically, it's not a fave - and Ace Frehley's version is a little more to my liking, to boot - but the video for "Hide Your Heart" is pretty funny. 80s videos have several trends, and Kiss made a point - as they always do with any trend that overlaps with their target market - to check off each and every box: the live concert video, (everything from Crazy Nights) the rockers-in-post-apocalyptic-landscape video (we got two of those on Lick It Up,) the models-in-strange-make-up / band-on-neon-soundstage video, etc. ("Who Wants To Be Lonely.") And then this sort of thing: the pretense to social commentary/ story-video, usually (as is the case here) about a pair of star-crossed lovers whose tale is told interspersed between shots of the band performing.

"Boomerang" has its moments, even if it, too, is kind of generic. That's my main beef with Hot in the Shade. It sounds like literally every other hard rock album from this era. Maybe it's what the guys were going for. Their competition at this point were bands like Winger, after all.

Ownability factor: 3 out of 10.

Around this time, Kiss contributed a cover of Argent's "God Gave Rock and Roll To You" to the Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey soundtrack.

I'd always assumed it was written by Petra, who covered it for their '84 album Beat the System, which is where I first heard it as that album got a lot of play in my brother's Dungeons and Dragons group. Petra was a Christian rock band - not the most predictable company for a group that listened mainly to Demon, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden et al.

Kiss opened for Argent back in the early days, before getting kicked off the tour. (One of the many bands to fire them as their opening act.) The song's been retconned as a "tribute to Eric Carr," who would sadly die of cancer in 1991. As a tribute, it's a little lame. It may be bad manners to say that, but it's too silly to be taken seriously. If I was at a funeral and the choir broke into this, I'd feel like they were making light of the affair. If I find out, however, that one night, the band was all down, and Eric started quietly preaching the gospel of rock and roll and how God put it in the souls of everyone, and then touched a wand to Paul's, Gene's, and Bruce's foreheads, who then rose as avatars of this new religion, well, all right.

Even without this scenario, if there is a man on Earth who actually feels about rock and roll the way all frontmen preach it to the crowd, it may be Paul Stanley. Here he raises it to the highest platitude. His "straight-talk" over the ending minute has all the feel of a baptist tent revival.

It was included on:

Revenge (1992)

Track listing: Unholy / Take It Off / Tough Love / Spit / God Gave Rock and Roll To You / Domino / Heart of Chrome / Thou Shalt Not / Every Time I Look at You / Paralyzed / I Just Wanna / Carr Jam 1981

Despite the terrible title and the even more terrible cover, this album unexpectedly (and perhaps even unreasonably) kicks a lot of ass. Vinnie Vincent returned to co-write some songs, though apparently he got along with Paul and Gene even worse this time around.

Sometimes The Demon Surprises Me: Although the song wouldn't surface until Gene's solo album over 10 years later, even Bob freaking Dylan worked on it. A fact so bizarre that it bears repeating in boldface: Bob Dylan and Gene Simmons collaborated on a song. The experience must have inspired Gene, as he contributes some of his best work here: "Unholy" - a cover version by the German band Die Artze must be heard to be believed - "Spit," and "Domino." (It's amusing to think of Gene showing these songs to Bob Dylan, and Dylan singing them to himself on the way home.)

Sagacity of the Starchild: Ditto for Paul, who seems especially committed to exaggerating his usual tricks on this album. Whether it's the Uh-huhs that punctuate the verses of "Take It Off" or the ridiculous fun of "I Just Wanna" to the chomp-and-stomp surreality of "Heart of Chrome," (You taped our sexy conversations / and you sold them to the BBC has been puzzling me for 20 years now) it's Paul's strongest presence on a Kiss record since Asylum.

Ownability factor: 10 out of 10.

Alive III (1993)

Track listing at the wiki.

Another one that is way better than it should be. The version of "I Was Made For Loving You" is heavier than any that appear elsewhere, and Paul's stage banter is from another planet.

Just a great collection of tunes altogether. Ownability factor: 15 out of 10. (Yes, even more than the first Alive.)

MTV Unplugged (1995)

Favorite tunes: The acoustic version of "I Still Love You" is somehow even more bombastic and gothic than the electric one. The same can't be said for "Sure Know Something," but it's an equally surprising choice for an acoustic album and a great version of it. I love that damn song. I love both damn songs. And Gene dusts off "Goin' Blind" for some damn reason - something he does again on Alive IV.  * Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10.

* I only this weekend began reading Gene's book (Kiss and Make-up) and discovered his old buddy and Wicked Lester bandmate Stephen Coronel co-wrote this one. I knew that part of it, I guess, but what never occurred to me was the reason this one pops up so much on other recordings is so Steve can continue to realize royalties from it. That's a cool enough little story for me to give "Goin' Blind" a pass from here on out.

The main attraction is the original line-up getting together for the last few songs. Which is cool, but it's just an appetizer for the course to come. After:

Carnival of Souls (1997)

Track listing: Hate / Rain / Master and Slave / Childhood's End / I Will Be There / Jungle / In My Head / It Never Goes Away / Seduction of the Innocent / I Confess / In the Mirror / I Walk Along

What's weirder, that Kiss cut a grunge-y record or that it's actually a perfectly legitimate grunge record? If you replaced Paul Stanley's vocals with Lane Staley's, "Jungle" would be one of Alice in Chains' best songs. Not that I'm suggesting Paul's vocals are bad on that - or any of these - track(s), just a) you'd have to remove Paul's vocals to fool anyone, as his voice is so distinctively Kiss, and b) if you did, no one would blink if this was slipped onto an Alice in Chains CD.

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10. Like The Elder, despite its being a solid record, Kiss more or less distanced themselves completely from it. They had good reason to, though, as they did the reunion tour and then the reunion record:

Psycho Circus (1998)

Track listing: Psycho Circus / Within / I Pledge Allegiance to the State of Rock and Roll / Into the Void / We Are One / You Wanted the Best / Raise Your Glasses / I Finally Found My Way / Dreamin' / Journey of 1000 Years

In the 90s, grunge did to metal what Rome did to Carthage. Kiss survived with its fan base intact - they and Metallica seemed to be the only metal acts of the 80s to do so - but even had they not, they always had a trump card. If times got tough, they could put the make-up back on, grab Ace and Peter from their respective small-venue tours / IRS problems, and go on tour.

Which is exactly what they did. And they made a gazillion dollars. (Well, $147 million, more precisely. The highest grossing tour in their history.)

Ace and Peter were paid per show and didn't get a cut of the merchandising/ ticket sales. Something both complain about a lot in their books. While I can sympathize - it's got to be tough to be hired back into the band you once quarter-owned as only an employee and seeing your former mates rake in the lion's share of the profits - let's keep this in mind. Peter got paid $40k per show, Ace $50k. They played around 400 shows between 1996 and 2001. That's over $16 million for Peter and $20 million for Ace.

Those are only estimations, obviously, but still. Not a bad chunk of change.

It's got to be tough to see yourself only "moderately" enriched while working just as hard as the guys who are getting five times as rich, sure. But we'll get to all of this in the solo books.

The tours aside, Psycho Circus is a reunion in name only. Peter and Ace appear basically only on "Into the Void" though Ace plays on a couple of other tracks.

Favorite tracks: Title track, "Into the Void," "Dreamin'."

Sometimes the Demon Surprises Me: It's Gene's songs that are the most surprising. There's not a clunker in the bunch - that makes Psycho Circus the only Kiss record where Gene outshines Paul. Even crazier: neither "Within," "We Are One," nor "Journey of 1000 Years" allude in any way to genitalia, his or anyone else's. This should have been the cover story of every magazine in 1998. (Compounding the oversight instead of correcting it, Time Magazine gave its "Men of the Year" Award to Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton. Way to go, nerds.)

And Men Shall Call Him... Space Ace: When Ace belts out "I'm losing power and I don't know wh-y-y-y..." it's a more-than-words moment of what's been missing from every Kiss record since The Elder.

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10

~

At some point, I'll blog up my thoughts on Alive IV, (the DVD) Sonic Boom, and Monster. I always roll my eyes when a band goes on a Farewell tour, then keeps touring and putting out albums. I don't quibble with their right to do whatever they want, of course, but as my small protest to the practice, I won't include those in this 2-part overview. The albums are worth covering, though, and I'll probably turn my attention to other aspects of the Kissverse before I get there. 

Kiss: Album by Album (1974 - 1982)

Couple quick things:

-  Use of the words "great" and "dumb" anywhere re: Kiss is completely relative and should not be taken very seriously. I'm more than happy to discuss at length the finer points of what makes something like "Turn On the Night" dumb and something like "King of the Night Time World" great, but for these Album-by-Album blogs, I'm really only talking about favorites. By all means, tell me your own. Like most Kiss fans, I'm forever amused by my own fandom of the band, so it's a moveable feast, come one, come all. 

- I usually try (and usually fail) to provide as few links as possible so as not to interrupt the flow of things. But I decided to just go to town and hyperlink to my heart's content, below and beyond. Don't feel you have to click on anything, of course - they're there if you want them but feel free to skip them. (Not like you need my permission, just saying.)

- re: The Ownability Factor (at the end of each album-entry below.) If you're into Kiss, you need it all, obviously. No excuses. This is an army not a garden party!

Enough preamble. As someone once said, "The ball is round, the game lasts 90 minutes. That is fact; everything else is pure theory."  

Paul Stanley (image below from his '78 solo album) would probably word that differently:

"Hit it!"

Kiss (1974)

Kiss's first record is more a proof-of-concept affair than a classic album. Virtually every song was a live staple for their 70s concerts. Great tunes, no doubt, but the production is notoriously flat, something that wouldn't change on their next record, either. (One of its producers went on to produce the official Baywatch soundtrack.)

Favorite tunes: "Strutter," "Black Diamond." Least favorite: "Kissin' Time," "Firehouse." When I hear Kiss described as dumb, it's the riff of "Firehouse" that I hear in my head. But that's not to say it isn't an effective delivery mechanism for what Kiss is all about; I just prefer other iterations of their mission statement. But man. When you're not a fan of "Firehouse," you've had to sit through it a million times, know what I'm saying? I like to think it's helped me become a more tolerant and patient person. So, thank you, "Firehouse."

Sagacity of the Starchild: Kiss all the way to Seattle, LA and Baltimore / You know we've been kissin' in Frisco, so let's kiss some more. ("Kissin' Time")

Ownability Factor: As Steven Hyden puts it, "Kiss has the best material of any Kiss album, but the versions on Alive! are uniformly superior." I disagree that this is the best material of any Kiss album, but it is true that the versions of these songs are better served elsewhere, and it is the first Kiss record and therefore a historical document, so I'll go as high as 11 out of 10.

Hotter Than Hell (1974)

Track listing: Got To Choose / Parasite / Goin' Blind / Hotter Than Hell / Let Me Go, Rock and Roll (that comma has always confused me - are they telling Rock and Roll itself to let them go?) All The Way / Watchin' You / Mainline / Coming Home / Strange Ways

There's a lot of rock and roll in this room. And a lot of 70s.

A pretty solid collection of tunes. As with their debut, most of them are better heard on Alive or Alive II. But still.

Favorite tunes: "Got To Choose," (woo-ooo-OO!) title track, "Parasite," "Watchin' You." Least favorite: "Goin' Blind," which details the doomed romance of a 93 year old man and underage girl. Written by Gene, obviously. The lyrics are practically non-existent except for the title of the track, repeated over and over, and the curiously on-the-nose bridge: "I'm 93, you're 16." In spite of this description, it's not the worst holdover from the Wicked Lester days.

And Men Shall Call Him... Space Ace: "Strange Ways" and "Parasite" have such a cool guitar sound. "Parasite" is a great example of Kiss Savant: just brilliantly dumb / stupidly awesome from conception to execution. (Megadeth covers "Strange Ways," if Dave Mustaine is your cup of tea.)

That Cover Is a Hot(ter than Hell) Mess, Though: I get that they were going for a Japanese influence, but it's poorly coordinated. Those yellow strips with the Japanese writing + the orange-and-purple ripped mountain-ranges extending into frame: blecch. So cluttered. And I don't know if Paul's grabbing Peter's bare ass and pulling his crotch into his backside is in actual fact hotter than Hell. But hey: 70s.

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10.

Dressed to Kill (1975)

Track listing: Room Service / Two Timer / Ladies in Waiting / Getaway / Rock Bottom / C'mon and Love Me / Anything for My Baby / She / Love Her All I Can / Rock and Roll All Nite

Produced by infamous Casablanca Records impresario Neil Bogart, it provided Kiss with their first radio staple: "Rock and Roll All Nite." My friend let me borrow this LP back in 1988 or so, and before I even finished spinning it - and start to finish it's only 30 minutes long - his older brother (whose record it actually was) showed up at my parents house and demanded it back. Man, was he pissed. 

McAnecdote: When said older brother (who graduated high school in the early 80s) showed up at my parents' house, he had his shirt unbuttoned to his bellybutton to best showcase his Paul-Stanley-esque chest hair. When I ran into him 25 years later as a patron of the bar I was running at the time, he was still rocking this look (although not quite to his bellybutton) in stubborn defiance of any fashion trends in the interim (or belonging to this century.) I asked him if he remembered the above, and he didn't. But he did ask me if I wanted to do some blow - straight out of Gross Pointe Blank. (I declined.)

Favorite tunes: "Getaway," "C'mon and Love Me," "Rock Bottom." Least favorite: "Ladies in Waiting." Good lord, Gene. And yet:

Sometimes The Demon Surprises Me: "She" is one of the classic 70s riffs. Top 10, at least. Gene's got more Kiss classics to his songwriting credit than I generally acknowledge. This is one of them.

Sagacity of the Starchild: She's a dancer, a romancer / I'm a Capricorn, and she's a Cancer ("C'mon and Love Me")

So Dumb It Might Actually Be Brilliant: "Anything For My Baby." To quote Mr. Hyden once more: "The key to appreciating Kiss is approaching it as one might a vaudevillian actor or Borscht Belt comic. You'll get nowhere by parsing the wit of the material or the nuance of the presentation. You must accept that the performance will be broad and the one-liners wince-inducing, and focus instead on the insane amount of effort on display. Kiss's specialty is delivering shameless showmanship with guileless energy, which it does in the service of songs that fumble across your reflexive pleasure centers with the grace and purpose of a 16-year-old boy unhooking his first bra strap."

Ownability Factor: 11 out of 10.

Alive (1975)

These two dudes holding up their homemade sign reunited in later years to relive their moment of glory:

This is the album that established Kiss as the "hottest band in the world," as J.R. Smalling used to famously announce them before taking the stage. From the wiki:

"In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, it was called 'a nonstop Kiss-krieg of two-note guitar motifs, fake-sounding audience noise, and inspirational chitchat,' but it was then restated as the next best thing to being there, clearly. Jason Josephes of Pitchfork Media rated it 10 out of 10 points and said that 'the album may seem like a joke, mainly because it contains every arena rock cliche in the book,' but called it 'total sonic proof of Kiss climbing their apex'."

Favorite tunes: All of them.

Phony Outrage: For some reason, anytime this album comes up, people focus on the fact that there are overdubs on a supposedly "live" album. I've never understood this. Do the same people complain about color correction or ADR looping in films? It's not even standard industry practice; it's absolutely necessary to do.

Sagacity of the Starchild: Paul Stanley's stage banter is the stuff of legend. He's not quite the Ray Hudson of the stage banter world, and in recent years seems to have lost his way. (I originally wrote "has goes too far," but I don't know if that's possible with Kiss.) Actually, maybe not - maybe going from "Do you believe in rock and roll?" to "The terrorists hate our damn freedom!" is a natural evolution. Anyway, his stuff on Alive is hilariously over the top and is the first glimpse of the microphone madness to come. Vinnie Vincent was criticized for taking too long with his solos onstage and making Paul and Gene wait, but Paul never seemed to mind making everyone else on stage wait while he asked the crowd, multiple times, whether or not they had "rock and roll pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu? I CAN'T HEAR YOU..."

Ownability Factor: 12 out of 10

Destroyer (1976)

Track Listing: Detroit Rock City / King of the Night Time World / God of Thunder / Great Expectations / Flaming Youth / Sweet Pain / Shout It Out Loud / Beth / Do You Love Me / Rock and Roll Party

Alive broke the band big, and to capitalize on the success, they brought in Bob Ezrin, who, in addition to snorting up half of Bolivia's Gross National Product during the recording session, put the band through what Paul called "musical boot camp." The cover is by renowned fantasy artist Ken Kelly.

Favorite tracks: "Detroit Rock City," "King of the Night Time World," "Do You Love Me."

Sagacity of the Starchild: You really like my limousine / you like the way the wheels roll ("Do You Love Me?")

Look What the Cat Dragged In: "Beth" is Peter Criss's proudest moment in the band. Just ask him.

So Dumb It Might Actually Be Brilliant: "God of Thunder." I mostly don't enjoy this track, to be honest. The production bells and whistle are kinda-sorta fun, but it's basically just a peg to hang stage theatrics on. Fair enough, of course, it's just having grown up on stuff like Slayer or Metallica, I'm unable to connect to either the mystical-menace intended or enjoy it in a retro sense, because the vocals are terrible, there's no riff, and it's just not really a proper song. But every now and again, it'll come on, and the lyrics and gothic pretension of it all tickles my satirical fancy. They should definitely use it in the Thor movies, mostly to have Thor hear it and raise an eyebrow. (Or a scene where he gets wicked into Kiss and cranks this all the time while drinking; make it happen, Marvel.)

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10.

Rock and Roll Over (1976)

Track listing: I Want You / Take Me / Calling Dr. Love / Ladies Room / Baby Driver / Love Em and Leave Em / Mr. Speed / See You In Your Dreams / Hard Luck Woman / Makin' Love

A rushed affair and the weakest effort from the original line-up. But that cover! Totally awesome. And if you said, "Man, that'd be a great frisbee," they're way ahead of you.

Favorite tracks: "I Want You," "Hard Luck Woman." Least Favorite Tracks: "Ladies Room," "See You in Your Dreams."

Deserves Special Mention: "Calling Dr. Love." I am far from convinced that anyone ever called Gene "Doctor Love." If anyone did, it had to be ironic. Not like Kiss has an obligation to be accurate, it's just ironic that the one guy in the band whose entire identity is wrapped up in being Doctor Cash-and-STDs is telling us people call him Doctor Love. (Then again, it's a little more believable than "God of Thunder.") Anyway.  Like "Firehouse," I've learned to enjoy the process of waiting for this one to finish.

Ownability Factor: 6 out of 10. (Frisbee: 20 out of 10.)

Love Gun (1977)

Track listing: I Stole Your Love / Christine Sixteen / Got Love For Sale / Shock Me / Tomorrow and Tonight / Love Gun / Hooligan / Almost Human / Plaster Caster / Then She Kissed Me

Another Ken Kelly cover - classic. Here's its TV ad - I get such a kick out of these things. The original came with this insert, to boot:

Assembly required.

Favorite tunes: The title track (if not the best Kiss song of all time, definitely top 3,) "I Stole Your Love," (stealing fire from the gods!) "Shock Me," "Hooligan." Least favorite: "Plaster Caster." It is frankly remarkable how fascinated these guys were with their dicks. It's tempting to think they were just pandering to their newly-pubescent fan base, but then you read up on them and nope: they basically out-adolescent-ed their fan base 10 to 1.

End of an Era: This is the last album where the original line-up appears on every track.

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 1. Which is not to say it's very good - it's actually one of my least favorites. But yeah, you got to have it. On vinyl.

Alive II (1977)

Not as good as the first Alive, but still loads of fun. (Track listing at the wiki.) Features 4 originals on Side Four (the best of which is "Rocket Ride," which features the classic line "The gravity that used to hold us down / just don't exist no more..." but does not feature any guitarwork from Ace. Kudos to Bob Kulick - he mimics Ace's style almost perfectly) and a cover of The Dave Clark Five's "Anyway You Want It."

Ownability Factor: 8 out of 10.

(In April 1978, Casablanca released a double-album of Kiss's greatest hits, Double Platinum. The only "new" track was "Strutter '78," which was just a remake with an allegedly more "disco" beat. It sure doesn't sound disco to me, though.) 

The Solo Albums (1978)

The TV ad is pretty fun. Sean Delaney was firmly against the idea of doing the solo albums, as he thought there would be winners and losers and that pointlessly dividing the band any further than it was already divided would be fatal to the original line-up. He was proven right. But, from just a fan/ consumer point of view, I love the idea. I won't do Least Favorites for these, but here are my Favorites:

Ace - all of them, will cover in depth when I get to the Space Ace blog. (EDIT: Here it is.)

Paul "Wouldn't You Like To Know Me," "Tonight You Belong To Me," and "Love In Chains." Apparently, when Paul showed up at the first studio Casablanca had booked for him, the colors/ vibes weren't right, and he insisted on booking somewhere else. When told of the money this would waste (somewhere around half a million) he replied, "Well, it's cheaper than not making the album at all." Rock star logic at its finest.

Gene "Radioactive" is fun, but you can only hear it so many times. Great call-and-response chorus, very catchy. The rest of the album is terrible. Gene's voice and compositions are both already far too prominent in the Kiss catalog, but here they are stretched beyond thin. I like the simplicity of the line/ idea of "Living in Sin," but it's ruined by the awful bit in the middle where someone Cher pretends to be in the throes of ecstasy brought about by Demon penis. Just terrible.

Peter All of them, really. Once you get past the "non-Kiss-ness" of this record, it's actually pretty smooth. For years I considered it the weakest of the solo albums, but now it's my second favorite. When I say "non-Kiss-ness," I mean the arrangements and general sound of the record, not the lyrics, as certainly You're the kind of sugar Papa likes, and when we do it, it drives me crazy would find itself at home in any Kiss tune. (Except maybe "Beth.")

And while we're on this side road, let's spare a thought for the other members of Kiss:

Eric Carr (1950 - 1991)

Vinnie Vincent. Here's how Chuck Klosterman described his post-Kiss debut: "a Tasmanian devil whirling towards vaginas and self-destruction:"

Vinnie left the band due to creative and financial differences with Gene and Paul. The Vinnie Vincent Invasion achieved some modest success with their songs from A Nightmare on Elm Street pt. 4, but Mark Slaughter (their second singer, soon to be famous for his own band via "Up All Night") left soon after.

Other players in the Kiss saga: Bob and Bruce Kulick, Tommy Thayer (Ace's replacement after the Farewell tour,) Eric Singer (Eric Carr's replacement, and the current Kiss drummer) and Mark St. John.

Ownability Factor: Ace (20 out of 10.) Paul (10 out of 10.) Peter (10 out of 10.) Gene (3out of 10.) Vinnie Vincent Invasion (12 out of 10.)

Dynasty (1979)

Track listing: I Was Made For Loving You / 2000 Man / Sure Know Something / Dirty Livin' / Charisma / Magic Touch / Hard Times / X-Ray Eyes / Save Your Love

This album was polarizing for Kiss fans at the time. As Ace put it,  before shrugging and going along with it, "What, disco's big now, so we gotta do a disco song?" I'm sympathetic to some degree, but the two so-called disco tunes ("I Was Made For Loving You" and "Sure Know Something") are, once removed from the rock vs. disco passions of the era, great tunes. Why draw a line in the sand?

Having said that, if I graduated high school in, say, 1975, and was a big Kiss fan, hearing Dynasty and seeing all these 6-year-olds with Kiss make-up on might have turned me off, too.

Incidentally, it's my friend's 6 year old's Kiss fandom that got me thinking about these guys again.

"Charisma" and "X-Ray Eyes" could be better, but the album as-a-whole continues to age well. It's a miracle it's coherent at all. At this point in their career, the band wasn't talking to one another, the tours were hampered by elaborate stage effects that didn't always work, the manager (thanks to Bill Aucoin's 50% of the merchandising profit and 25% of tour profits) was making more money off the band than the members themselves, and Ace and Peter were almost single-handedly keeping Colombian cocaine cartels and their US distributors (not to mention pharmaceutical companies) in business. Under those conditions, the album can't help but feel like a sequel to the solo albums but all on one record. Oddly enough, it might be their strongest collection of tunes.

And Men Shall Call Him... Space Ace: Ace's songs on Dynasty are great. I knew "2000 Man" was a Stones song, but I never heard it until I saw Bottle Rocket. I'm still on the fence as to which version I prefer. And I am forever amused by the way Ace delivers the line (emphasis in the original) "You tried to change me... and mess up my mind!" in "Save Your Love."

Look What the Cat Dragged In: Peter's swan song with the band, "Dirty Livin'" is probably the most disco-esque track of all. Someone should utilize it for a period piece.

Fun Fact!: Escape from Hell was the subtitle of Dynasty's Japanese release. God bless you, Japan.

Ownability Factor: 15 out of 10. 

Unmasked (1980)

Track listing: Is That You? / Shandi / Talk To Me / Naked City / What Makes The World Go Round / Tomorrow / Two Sides of the Coin / She's So European / Easy As It Seems / Torpedo Girl / You're All That I Want

This album was a commercial disappointment and isn't regarded too fondly by some folks. I'll go to the mat on this one; Unmasked is great. Some of the songs aren't so hot, but that's par for the course for any Kiss record.

And Men Shall Call Him... Space Ace: Ace's songs carry the day, here. "Talk To Me" should be in every teen movie ever made (as should "What's On Your Mind" from his '78 solo record.) And "Torpedo Girl" is, for my money, the great unsung Kiss song:

C'mon, get your feet wet!

Look What the Cat Dragged In: Peter's on the cover, but he was out of the band at this point. Anton Fig plays on the album, and Eric Carr joined the band prior to the tour.

Sagacity of the Starchild: I started off enjoying "Shandi" as a goof, but I've grown to love the damn thing through over-listening. Hazards of the trade; proceed with caution.

Sometimes The Demon Surprises Me: For years, "She's So European" annoyed me, but, as with "Shandi," repeated listenings opened it up for me. It's one of the last times Gene sounds like he's actually having fun being a rock star. And the chorus is catchy. At no time do the lyrics bring to mind anyone vaguely European, whatever that means, but realistic lyrics are not what anyone comes to Kiss for, I'd wager.

And hey!: Another fun TV ad prior to its release.

Ownability Factor: 12 out of 10.

Music from The Elder (1981) 

Track Listing: The Oath / Fanfare / Just A Boy / Dark Light / Only You / Under the Rose / A World Without Heroes / Mr. Blackwell / Escape from the Island / Odyssey / I / Finale

This album tanked in the charts and with fans at the time, but its reputation has improved in the years since. It's a bit confusing - any soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist can't help but be - but personally, I applaud them for doing it. As with Kiss "going disco" or "going grunge" (yet to come,) it's easy to see it as a misstep, but I kind of like the attitude. "We can't do that? Screw it, we're doing it."

And hell, Lou Reed even was involved. That alone is worth a chapeau / answer on Jeopardy.

Favorite tunes: "The Oath," "Dark Light," "I," "Escape from the Island."

Fun Fact!: Sales were so bad they didn't even tour, but they did put in some promotional appearances, such as this one in Holland, which has the distinction of being the first and only time Kiss played as a trio. (Although it looks and sounds lip-synched to me, so I guess it's the first and only time they pretended to play as a trio.) Ace was probably sleeping one off, or playing cards with his buddies. Or visiting the Keukenhof.

Ownability Factor: 10 out of 10.

(In June of 1982, Killers, another compilation record was released. I've never been a fan of the new tunes recorded for it, so I'm just mentioning it in passing.)

Creatures of the Night (1982)

Track Listing: Creatures of the Night / Saint and Sinner / Keep Me Comin' / Rock and Roll Hell / Danger / I Love It Loud / I Still Love You / Killer / War Machine

Ace is on the cover, but he was gone from the band at this point. He was replaced by Vinnie Vincent, whose impact was fairly immediate; he co-wrote half the album.

Favorite tunes: Title track, "I Still Love You." And:

Sometimes The Demon Surprises Me: "I Love It Loud" is one of those So Dumb It Might Be Brilliant / Kiss Savant tunes, except there's no "might" about it. The stream of consciousness lyrics, ("Whiplash! Heavy metal accident. Rock on! I want to be President. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT!") the chanting, the stripped down production: all combine for a complete classic that doubles as brilliant (though unintentional) genre deconstruction.

Absolutely one of my favorite things ever.

And "War Machine," while not a favorite, could have been a huge hit if they'd just sped it up a notch and tightened it up a bit, as Stone Temple Pilots proved less than 10 years down the road.

Sagacity of the Starchild: Even for Kiss, "Keep Me Comin'" is a bit over-the-top. You gotta keep me comin', keep me comin' / (Keep me comin', keep me comin') / You gotta keep me comin', whoa, keep me comin', babe / (Keep me comin', keep me comin') / OOH, YEAH!

Ownability Factor: 8 out of 10.

NEXT: Lick It Up to The Present

Kiss: I Pledge Allegiance to the State (of Rock and Roll)

Five months from now, Paul Stanley's memoir is due to be published, thus completing the cycle of original line-up memoirs from Kiss. I thought it'd be fun to read the other ones between now and then and blog 'em up. Before we get to any of those, though, let's get my biases out of the way via a brief overview of the Kiss phenomenon.

is as American as Bugs Bunny or Indiana Jones.

I'm not saying they're as cool as Bugs Bunny or Indiana Jones or are more American than, say, the Grateful Dead or Duke Ellington or whomever. Perhaps we should start with what I mean by American. What is it about America that Kiss embodies? Its irreverence? Its cult of hyperbole? Its rude and crude animal vigor? Its almost pathological optimism? Its sexism? Its inability to have a serious conversation without lapsing into dick jokes or emotional infantilism? All of the above?

If I could definitively answer that question, I wouldn't be blogging about it; I'd be putting it into practice. But that's my impression; when future historians and archaeologists reverse-engineer the American epoch from what they dig up about us, Kiss will be an irresistible primary source. It's a sobering thought, but perhaps only what we deserve.

More than pretty much any other band out there, they embody all the poison and the pudding of the American spectacle. (That will be my only "intellectual" link, right there. You can totally skip it, but just to define what I mean by spectacle, specifically.) But on another level, it's all just about rocking out. Which is essentially a spiritual practice. The other side of Americana - the sacred story of religious freedom. Sts. Mayflower and Horatio Alger, combined in the Starchild, the Demon, the Spaceman, and the Cat.

Which isn't to say they embody every aspect of Americana, of course. But that's the point: when future civilizations dig this stuff up and piece together the story of Kiss, we won't be around to distinguish their spectacle from a more comprehensive version of how we lived and what we believed in.

On the other hand, maybe we're kidding ourselves and Kiss is exactly what we believe in.

There are those that see the whole Kiss phenom as only marketing, their songs simply the application of some lowest-common-denominator formula. One part hard rock, one part "baby baby," one part Marvel Comics/ horrorshow, a dash of carnival blood and fire, platform shoes, and serve with "Rocket Ride." On the marketing side, well, of course. It's not a legitimate observation, is it? It's like criticizing a nation for being a country. They're not anti-corporate. But did they claim to be? Weren't they always saying, work hard, rock out, live by your own rules, and you can be rich like us? And have binders full of women?

I love Kiss, and I even love Gene - God help me - but man, this guy. I'll save it for when I cover his book.

As for their tunes, there are hundreds of blogs and fan-sites dedicated exclusively to discussion of their catalog, and everyone has a different favorite. This proves nothing, of course, certainly not that Kiss's impact as a band is equal to their legacy as a brand. But it's kind of funny. Literally every Kiss fan I know has a different favorite song than every other Kiss fan I know and, usually, elaborate criteria for their selection. But back to the question-at-hand: how do Kiss's songs stack up against other great rock bands of the past 40 years? Answer: better than most. It's not just P.R. that has enabled their survival for decades while so many of their contemporaries fell to the wayside.

When I got my first Kiss tape, they looked like this:

 

Not like this.

Which is another way of saying that in 1987 they looked like any other hard rock band of the era. A little hairier (maybe) but virtually indistinguishable from dozens of other hard rock acts. The same could never be said of Kiss in the 1970s.

Getting Crazy Nights that Christmas marked the end of a Kiss-ban in the McMillan household that had been in effect from 1979. What had happened was - and for some very adorable reason, my Mom gets defensive about this now; it's really okay, Mom! - my cousins were babysitting me and "I Was Made For Loving You" was on the radio a lot that summer. We were all dancing around to it, and they told me stories about their concerts and rumors of their on-the-road adventures. My eyes got wider and wider. 

When my mother got wind of my excitement - and presumably some of their drug-and-groupie anecdotes - that was it: Kiss was banned. Understandable enough. I'm not sure if it was just that I was older in 1987 or that the hard rock scene that emerged as a result of in the wake of Kiss's mega-success was suitably debauched enough to dilute the shock factor of her baby boy listening to drug-snorting, blood-gurgling, fire-breathing orgy enthusiasts making "grunt" songs. (Like this.)

Alas, it's not a great album. Even 1987-me knew that. A friend made me a mix with Frehley's Comet on it, though, and I instantly became an Ace fan.  

For the rest of high school, I brought up Ace, stubbornly, whenever Kiss was brought up.

I was obsessed with Marvel comics, so naturally I loved the make-up/ characters. And even though I chose The Demon for Halloween 1988, above, you can see evidence of my Ace fandom behind me, stage-left.

Hard to make out, perhaps, but that's the Space Ace, there. The little picture above the one marked is Ace, too. Double trouble!

Although I'd expanded my musical palette considerably by the time this came out (Trouble Walkin', 1989) I cranked this one an awful lot during my last few years of high school. (Get Shot Full of Rock! GET SHOT FULL OF ROCK!) That was it, by the way, for Ace solo records for another 20 damn years. (And Anomaly, released 2009, is his best since the '78 solo album. Something neither myself nor any Kiss fan, I imagine, expected.)

It wasn't until my friend and former Boat-Chipster Kevin made me four lavishly detailed mix tapes in 1998 that I once and for all grokked Kiss. 

Only one of which - Ace's, fittingly enough - survives now. They were all recorded from the original vinyl, and Kevin's tape player sped up the tracks ever-so-slightly. As a result, when I hear the "regular" version of "2000 Man," it always seems a half-step too slow to me.

Chuck Klosterman and J.M. Blaine wrote probably the most spot-on appreciation of Kiss (and by extension, cock rock itself) on the net; here's an excerpt:

"Over and over, particularly in the 80s, they (Gene and Paul) forward the idea that KISS fans are being persecuted and that people are trying to stop us from liking KISS. And that’s a brilliant aesthetic vision for the band. It’s something that never technically happens – and yet as one moves into the world of pop music and becomes more intelligent – I have to say that it’s true. People are often trying to convince me that KISS is terrible. Or that when I say I love KISS that I’m actually pretending. Or that if you like KISS somehow you are only trying to rediscover your childhood. I just believe that of all the bands to think about, KISS is by far the most fun."

The defense rests.

NEXT: Album by Album (pt. 1)