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Friday, April 29, 2011

KISS: "Alive!": Complete 43 ´Ultimate Albums´ Film

VH1 documentary on the release of 1975 KISS Alive, and it’s affect on the music industry.  At the time, double live albums were unheard of, especially by a band with no radio hits at the time. 


Paul Stanley said: “We were coming off three albums which had done marginally well, although nowhere near what it took to keep a band of our magnitude on tour. We were spending far beyond what we were making” 


Gene Simmons has likened the album to being a souvenir of their career to that point, one that wasn’t as expensive as it was going to be to create new studio album. Producer Eddie Kramer was recruited early on for the project. This would be his first time working with the band since producing their original studio demo in March 1973. He recalled, “I got this phone call one day saying ‘hey do you want to do this live album by KISS?’ And I said, ‘sure....let me think about it!’ And funny enough, on my desk I had another tape that I was considering from a band called Boston. And I said let me call this guy, Tom Scholz (Boston’s guitarist/chief songwriter). And I spoke to Tom and said, ‘look man, that tape you sent me is GREAT! Don’t change it, just put it out the way it is, I can’t help you!’ So I decided to do KISS ‘cause it was more of a challenge.”

What parts of which shows were used to create the album has long provided a tremendous amount of discussion. As does the question about how much “touch up” work was done in the studio on the album. It really must be stressed that there really was neither the time nor money to do extensive work on the recording. There most certainly was work done on the album. According to Eddie Kramer, “Who cares if it was over-dubbed. So what, it doesn’t matter – the energy still came through. All the bombast, all the glory and craziness” 

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