If I close my eyes, I can see my friend’s brother’s
stack of records in his basement. I remember what it felt like to
hold the LP version of this release in my hands and to hear my
friend saying, “Don’t scratch it!” I can remember the crowd’s
fade-in and the way this release has always been put up on a
pedestal. After spending time with this release this week, I
remember why.
Alive II has always held memories for me,
dating back to 7th grade and my buddy Tom’s brother’s record
collection. Mike had every Van Halen, AC/DC and Police record, but
I always was drawn to KISS, and to this day it has helped define my
musical boundaries, proving what a “concert” really was. It’s made
better by the reliance on material from Destroyer, the
band’s best album and the first one by them I ever heard.
Kicking off with “Detroit Rock City,” the crowd is
electric and the band sounds tight, especially Gene Simmons on
bass. Launching then into its companion piece, “King Of The Night
Time World” always made me think that the kid who died in “Detroit
Rock City” ended up in Hell and found guitarist/vocalist Paul
Stanley singing this song. One of the magical qualities of this
release is the way in which Paul Stanley interacts with the crowd.
It felt like he was talking to me.
Granted, in 7th grade, I didn’t understand the
innuendo behind “Makin’ Love” and “Love Gun.” It was mainly the
drumming of Peter Criss that sparked my interest through those
tracks. While Criss’ “Beth” will probably always be his legacy, his
drumming was enough for me to inspired to practice my snare drum
lessons. The guitar riff on “Makin’ Love” is one of the best the
band ever wrote and Criss’ bombastic cymbal crashes and flurry of
snare fills make this song excellent. Guitarist Ace Frehley shines
on this track as well.
However, it is the amazing “God Of Thunder” that has
always made this release for me. It’s in the way it transitions out
of “Beth” and in the way that I could always imagine the mysterious
Gene Simmons stalking around the stage before finally approaching
the microphone to start this song, fog and darkness around him.
“Shout It Out Loud” and the band’s insistence that “You’ve got to
have a party” always made me think it should have led off the
concert.
As for the last five tracks, all new studio
recordings, I like the concept of what KISS did than the actual
tracks. Bands should do things like this on live albums and release
material that makes the sum of the material on the live record more
than just different versions of the studio songs, which this does.
(One quick aside: Guitarist Bob Kulick, Bruce Kulick’s brother,
plays guitar on four of the studio tracks. Frehley only plays on
“Rocket Ride.”)
