Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Kiss - Alive! - part two...


Kiss - Alive!  If I have all the time in the world to do this research (and my pals tell me that I really DO have that much free time), I would add a column to my All-time DLA spreadsheet.  After band name, album title, and year out, I would add this stat - Band's "#th Album."  I would then come up with an Average number.  I would bet that average number would be about 5, plus or minus one.  Back to this DLA.  According to wiki, there is some lingering controversy regarding how "live" this live album really is.  "There has been considerable debate as to how much use was made of studio overdubs.  [Gene] Simmons states in his autobiography Kiss and Make-Up, that very little corrective work was done in the studio and that most of the studio time was devoted strictly to mixing down the multi-track recordings.  He also emphasized that Kiss could not have done extensive overdubbing even if they had wanted to; thanks in no small part to the Johnny Carson album fiasco, [not sure what that is] the extremely meager budget allotted to the band simply would not allow it.  The original recordings from the July 23, 1975 concert at the Wildwood Convention Center, "Deuce," "Hotter Than Hell," "Firehouse," and "Black Diamond," along with the June 21, 1975 Cleveland Music Hall Concert, "Rock and Roll All Nite," have shown there was very little overdubbing used for the Alive album.  According to Dale Sherman's book Black Diamond and Goldmine magazine, in the early 1990s, Eddie Kramer stated there were a few overdubs to correct the most obvious mistakes: strings breaking or off-key notes, for instance.  However, in recent years, Kramer has stated that the only original live recording on the album is Ace Frehley's guitar.  Stanley has noted that there's a bass mistake in the choruses of "C'mon and Love Me."  He has also made comments that even though there have been live albums recorded later that make Alive! sound like it was recorded in a washroom, he has no qualms about it.

2 comments:

  1. I remember watching the national network news, perhaps NBC, in the mid-70's. They had a segment on how crazy the Kiss tour was. They filmed a father who had no choice but to take his ca. 13 year old kids to the concert and they were demanding every piece of memorabilia be bought. The father looks to his wife and hollers, "I don't have any more money!" Yeah, back then folks actually paid with cash and this limited purchases; nowadays folks just load it on the card!
    Spencer

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  2. I saw Kiss the last 2 times they came around the East Coast..they put on a great show and play all the old classic songs!! For the price of tickets they are always at good prices !!! Enjoy!

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