Description

A massive and beautiful box set featuring 4 pictures discs in individual sleeves, poster, promo display, puzzle, Love Gun ruler and a massive 76 page booklet

The Love Gun album would be the band’s highest charting of their original incarnation, hitting #4 on the Billboard Top-200. The period, both album and tour, marked the beginning what is generally considered to the Super Kiss era. The 1977 Love Gun tour (and following tour supporting Alive II) show was impressive and majestic, and certainly represented the band at the zenith of their live performance. But it seems rather strange to consider that the Love Gun tour run covered a meager 32 performances. This box features two shows from that tour, Cow Palace in San Francisco on the 16th of August and Fresno Selland Arena on the 17th of August. By this time the track I Stole Your Love had taken over the opening spot and is very effective, Take Me follows hot on its heels. The set lists for this tour would feature heavily on the Love Gun record and its predecessor Rock And Roll Over with a couple Klassics mixed in for good measure. On the Fresno show you will hear Paul talking about how the the girls can meet him in the Ladies Room, the song hits a great groove but is only a prelude to a powerful version of Firehouse that really delivers in getting the audience wild, Ace plays a superb solo and they go crazy when Gene breathes fire. Paul introduces the next song as the title track from their new album, in the following years he would use a much longer wrap that would get almost x rated, but for now the band would let the music do the talking. By far the strongest song on the new record, Love Gun hits on all fronts, great lyric, great riff and Ace plays a perfect solo that can only be called intense. One glaring omission on Alive II was the next song, Peter Criss autobiographical song from Love Gun aptly titled Hooligan. The song is great live, the version featured here finds the band delivering the goods and it has a great feel live. Peter’s vocal is great and he is in great voice and in one of my favourite versions. “Bad bad Christine Sixteen”, crazy to hear songs like this and even the Rolling Stones’ Stray Cat Blues where bands would talk openly about under aged love. Peter’s drumming is great on this song, he hits it to take the band out of a long pause to perfection, sadly his drum solo is missing from this recording I would have liked to hear as he is having a great night. Makin’ Love sounds like a proto metal version of Zep’s Whole Lotta Love and has a great swagger to it, the new songs have fully developed live and the timing to record the second live album was perfect as the Californian concerts are certainly high points of the tour. The band is plagued by feedback at the beginning of Shock Me and the bass frequencies are close to overloading the recording also but it clears by the time Ace takes his first solo but this version sounds a bit tentative and disjointed. It is not until the band jam that leads to Ace’s solo does the band clear the cobwebs so to speak. As usual Ace delivers a “smoking” solo, since he is the only player on stage the recording is excellent and we can enjoy it in his full glory. The band returns to end the song and Paul shouts “Ace Frehely” and the tape cuts in the loud cheer and the band hammer into Detroit Rock City, while the cut does omit several songs, according to the KISS Alive Forever, the songs do not circulate or are lost. Whatever the reason the edit is handled smoothly. Peter gets his second solo spot and turns in a typically heartfelt version of Beth that leaves the audience clambering for more and become impatient as the chants of “We want KISS” echo through the arena. The beginning of Black Diamond sound eerie but as the band break into the song the audience responds loudly, Peter gives a typically great vocal delivery on the song, sounds damn good to my ears. The song is given the usual bombastic finale, a well played and enjoyable concert. These shows is an assault on all of the senses.

Track list:
1. I Stole Your Love-San Francisco
2. Take Me-San Francisco
3. Ladies Room-San Francisco
4. Firehouse-San Francisco
5. Love Gun-San Francisco
6. Hooligan-San Francisco
7. Christine Sixteen-San Francisco
8. Makin Love-San Francisco
9. Shock Me-San Francisco
10. Guitar Solo Ace Frehley-San Francisco
11. I Want You-San Francisco
12. Dr Love-San Francisco
13. Shout It Out Loud-San Francisco
14. Bass Solo-Gene Simmons-San Francisco
15. God Of Thunder-San Francisco
16. Drum Solo-Peter Criss-San Francisco
17. Rock And Roll All Nite-San Francisco
18. Detroit Rock City
19. Black Diamond
20. I Stole Your Love-Fresno
21. Take Me-Fresno
22. Ladies Room-Fresno
23. Firehouse-Fresno
24. Love Gun-Fresno
25. Hooligan-Fresno
26. Christine Sixteen-Fresno
27. Makin Love-Fresno
28. Shock Me-Fresno
29. Guitar Solo Ace Frehley-Fresno
30. Detroit Rock City-Fresno
31. Beth-Fresno
32. Black Diamond-Fresno