Tim McPhate | KissFAQ

Today, KissFAQ launched Back In The Solo Album Groove: The KISS Albums. 35 Years Later…, an ambitious multi-week retrospective dedicated to arguably the biggest milestone in KISStory: the 1978 KISS solo albums. In conjunction with the launch, audio of the original 60-second radio commercial has been uncovered, courtesy of the Rob Freeman Archive.

The original 60-second spot was created to promote the simultaneous release of four KISS solo albums in 1978. The commercial marks one component of the unprecedented $2.5 million advertising and promotional campaign for the KISS solo albums. Some audio from this spot was also used for related television commercials. The radio spot was recorded and edited by Rob Freeman who, together with producer Eddie Kramer, recorded and mixed Ace’s solo album, “Ace Frehley.” Both Frehley’s album and the radio spot were recorded at Plaza Sound Studio in New York. Production of the radio spot was overseen by Howard Marks of Glickman Marks, KISS’ business management office.

Link to original radio spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBAbkjRuDGI&feature=youtu.be

About Back In The Solo Album Groove:
As KISS celebrate their 40th anniversary in 2013, KissFAQ.com has launched Back In The Solo Album Groove: The KISS Albums. 35 Years Later…, an ambitious multi-week retrospective dedicated to arguably the biggest milestone in KISStory: the 1978 KISS solo albums. More than 30 brand-new interviews were conducted with various individuals who either worked directly on the solo albums or have a strong connection of sorts. The

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James Reaney | The London Free Press

QMI Agency

Here’s the thing – KISS still makes an entrance like nobody else in rock and roll.

The U.S. rock superstars returned to a jammed Budweiser Gardens on Saturday night descending from a huge contraption. The KISS carrier looked like a giant spider or space walker made out of construction beams – and as it went down down down up up up went blasts of pyro hot enough to melt makeup on a fan or two

The crowd was volcanic from the start as Starchild Paul Stanley, bassist Gene Simmons and guitar hero Tommy Thayer stepped off the contraption.

In the back, Eric Singer, the drummer with the cat’s whiskers makeup and the big hands, pounded away as KISS crunched through Psycho Circus, the 1970s’ hit Shout It Out Loud and Simmons at the mic for Let Me Go, Rock ’N’ Roll.

Thayer shredded and posed in the early going. Stanley had his sweet pout working.

Full disclosure: These comments are being shaped by rock and roll hero and former Londoner Joe Chertkow, who is at the Bud, too. Back in the day, Joe & I reviewed an early KISS album chiefly by comparing it to bands we liked. Joe noticed we talked about Grand Funk Railroad. Could have fooled me.

Being the true expert, Joe reviewed KISS for the Western Gazette in one of their many visits to London in the 1970s. Joe knows. So we’re in good hands & ears.

On Saturday, with the pyro and the crazed fans, it was going to be a night at the downtown London arena.

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Wobblehouse

From the Encyclopedia Britannica: PUNK, also known as punk rock, aggressive form of rock music that coalesced into an international (though predominantly Anglo-American) movement in 1975–80. Often politicized and full of vital energy beneath a sarcastic, hostile facade, punk spread as an ideology and an aesthetic approach, becoming an archetype of teen rebellion and alienation”

Maybe rock history has it (relatively) wrong? No doubt staunch critics of KISS (IE ‘music critics’) will scoff at the suggestion that KISS were originally essentially a punk act. If so, perhaps the most influential one of all time, just a few years too early and simply too singular to be part of the traditional discussion.

Suspend your disbelief, the proof is in the pudding. Like the punks and every movement in rock, KISS created their own thing, their own look and their own sound. Both gravitated to shock value and, like the punks, KISS had zero shame, eventually drawing you in with their sheer will, devotion and spectacle.

Sure, if they ever were punk, they didn’t remain it for long and, sure, they were far from political, although the assertion that they wanted to “Rock & Roll All Nite & Party Everyday” left little for the establishment to condone or moms to embrace. And, yeah. of course they ultimately totally sold out in a way that is perhaps the very anti-thesis of a punk ethos that demands failure by definition. It was Johnny Lydon who summed up punk fatalism most succinctly in the Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” with the ever-enduring refrain” no future, no future, no future for you”.

Perhaps we miss the analogy just because KISS became way too successful to be remembered as punks? I submit that they may have been classified as something slightly other than classic rock had they folded in 1975 before ALIVE! saved them. Decked out originally in black leather, studs and white face, the bands presentation was as raw as a fist fight and far from glam or glamorous.

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