The Live Album Section 1977
Kiss Alive II 1977 (Casablanca)
Hard Rock
Calling Dr.Love who prescribed the same dosage again.
As far as sequels went Kiss were far ahead of their time, as the future 1980s would be littered with the dreaded movie sequels that were based around maximum economic profit for little creativity. Now Kiss were never the most creative of bands, but they knew that their fun loving hard rock come heavy metal was both original in its execution and also viable commercially, because for the last couple of years they had been one of the biggest box office draws in the USA! Since that huge commercial breakthrough on the
Alive! album in 1975, the band had released the multi-platinum selling albums
Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over and
Love Gun (see full reviews for first two) and thus came up with the idea, of now releasing another live album at the height of their popularity. The band realised though, that a duplicate album wasn’t fair on their fanbase and therefore
Alive II would be based around the prior three studio albums mentioned, which of course came after the
Alive! album. Then there is the added bonus of some pumping original material which is based at the back end of the
Alive II album. The album was unsurprisingly produced by Eddie Kramer who had done a fantastic job on the previous
Alive! and most of the album choices were garnered from the Los Angeles Forum on the band’s “Love Gun” tour. The album highlights include adrenalin charged tracks like “Detroit Rock City” “Ladies Room” “Makin’ Love” “Calling Dr.Love” “Shock Me” “God of Thunder” and “Shout it Out Loud”. The band would then use their huge popularity the following year, to go on and release four solo albums in 1978. The great thing about both
Alive! and
Alive II is that for anybody wanting to get into the band or wanting to enjoy this period of the band again, there is no need to hear all their earlier studio albums (you should though if you’re a proper music fan) or mess around with a ‘greatest hits’ or ‘best of’ selection, because in these two live albums, you’ll the get the cream and so much more of their first six studio albums in a live setting, that still sounds as good today as it did back then and as music critic Martin Popoff would surely say “Knock It Back”.
Paul Stanley- Rhythm/Vocals
Gene Simmons- Bass/Vocals
Ace Frehley- Guitar/Vocals
Peter Criss- Drums/Vocals
Production- Eddie Kramer
Los Angeles Forum 1977