Imagine it’s 1977. You’re a manager for the band Kiss. The
\nband’s popularity has hit a peak thanks to Destroyer, but their
\nlast two albums have been dropping in quality. (Add in the rumors
\nthat there is tension within the band, and you’ve got a juicy
\ntimebomb that you’re sitting on.) What is one to do in order to
\nreclaim the glory that the band just grasped?<\/p>\n
The answer might seem obvious: Kiss first grabbed the brass ring
\nwith
\nAlive!<\/i>, so why not unleash a second live set on the
\nmasses?<\/p>\n
Well, for plenty of reasons.
\nAlive II<\/i> is a half-assed attempt at a live disc, hastily
\nthrown together and not necessarily capturing the band at its best.
\nAnd that’s being kind.<\/p>\n
Think about it. It had only been two years since
\nAlive!<\/i> had been released, so putting out a second live disc
\nseemed to be a tad too soon. It was also the fourth Kiss album in
\ntwo years – a possible sign that the band was suffering from
\ncreative burnout. (Never mind that Kiss had basically been
\nreleasing one album every six months since their debut came out in
\n1974.)<\/p>\n
Oh, sure, you could argue that the inclusion of five new studio
\ntracks on side four of
\nAlive II<\/i> meant that the band wasn’t running dry creatively.
\nGranted, “All-American Man” and “Rocket Ride” are better than half
\nof the sludge on
\nLove Gun<\/i>. But including another cover -this time, the Dave
\nClark Five’s “Any Way You Want It” – was a sign of bad juju. (Add
\ninto this the rumors that guitarist Ace Frehley played on only one
\nstudio track – “Rocket Ride,” which he also sings lead vocals on –
\nand you’ve got a further sign of trouble.)<\/p>\n
And think about it again. What new ground could Kiss break with
\nAlive II<\/i>? For an album that featured songs only from
\nDestroyer<\/i>,
\nRock And Roll Over<\/i> and
\nLove Gun<\/i>, Gene Simmons and company had greatly narrowed
\ntheir field of vision – in a sense, perhaps too much. It was a
\nmistake to completely ignore their pre-
\nAlive!<\/i> history; if anything, Kiss should have pulled out a
\nfew rabbits that weren’t taken from the hat the first time around.
\n(“Room Service,” perhaps?)<\/p>\n
Think about it one last time.
\nAlive!<\/i> was meant to show listeners where Kiss’s true energy
\nwas – on stage – and to get people interested in their three
\nprevious albums.
\nAlive II<\/i> was basically thrown together to have new Kiss
\nmaterial on the shelves for the holidays. Sound-wise, this is not
\nKiss at their best; the recording sounds quite muddy, with the
\ncrowd noise almost drowning out the band at times. There has also
\nbeen the claim made that a lot of studio trickery went into getting
\nthis album ready for the masses – if so, couldn’t they have cleaned
\nup the overall sound, for Crissake?<\/p>\n
\nAlive II<\/i> is proof that the music industry is more about
\nmarketing than it is about the music. If it were otherwise, this
\ndisc would have been cut down and replaced with a better-sounding
\nalternative with a better track listing – and this “studio side”
\nbullshit would have either been eliminated, or included as a bonus
\n7-inch record. Kiss has yet to top the original
\nAlive!<\/i> – and
\nAlive II<\/i> suggested they were nowhere near accomplishing that
\nfeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5731],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-39549","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kiss","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39549"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}