Description
Double album on white vinyls with poster
Kiss didn’t tour or perform in 1989 or support the Smashes, Thrashes & Hits compilation outside of a few radio show appearances. Instead, Paul Stanley embarked on his first solo tour breaking away from the safety of the Kiss cocoon. Paul, promoting the tour commented, I always said I want to get close to the fans, and you can’t get much closer than the clubs… It’s like when your wife lets you go on vacation by yourself and hopes you behave well (Poughkeepsie Journal, 2/3/89). As a way to reinvigorate his performance, Paul felt, I’m safe within the confines of the band, but I think everybody should work as a solo artist (Boston Globe, 2/18/89). Those PR friendly sentiments were markedly different than the reality: I was fed up with the situation in KISS and needed to flex my muscles a little on my own — and cut the cord between me and Gene (Face the Music). Paul’s relationship with Gene had reached a low-ebb during the Crazy Nights era and the compilation gave both of them breathing space to pursue their own activities — something that Paul felt Gene had been doing, to the detriment of Kiss, for years anyway. According to Paul, My inclination was to put together a band of people I had never played with — just for the sake of doing something different — even though I planned to play a lot of the same songs (Face the Music). As a result he recruited Gary Corbett, Eric Singer, Dennis St. James, and Bob Kulick. Gary had played keyboards for Kiss on tour, and during the Crazy Nights tour had been laid-off and rehired depending on the audience sizes. Paul wanted Bob Kulick on guitar, and Bob was looking for a change at the time and left Meat Loaf’s backing band. Dennis St. James came in on bass though his connection with Bob — he’d been a member of Balance using his original surname, Feldman. And through Dennis, drummer Eric Singer entered the picture. Once Paul had decided to do the tour he faced a challenge — what to perform? He recalled, They said, ‘You don’t have to rehearse, just come in and jam, do some old songs. I said, ‘That’s the ultimate rip-off. You have fans coming, and basically your attitude toward them seems to be, You should be happy I’m here, and whatever I feel like playing is good enough. I didn’t want to do that. I said, ‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to rehearse a band and really do it right. Once I started getting into that, I realized that if I’m going to do one club, I should do 20; the amount of work is the same” (Poughkeepsie Journal, 2/26/89). The core of the set would be the songs from the catalog with Paul’s name on them — as he put it, “the vehicle may be different, but the song is the same.” Rather than giving the fans the same-old same-old, he dug into his 1978 solo album for three songs that had never previously been performed live and chose the band’s then current single, “Let’s Put The X In Sex,” which Kiss would never perform in electric concert. For good measure, “Hide Your Heart,” an unused leftover planned for inclusion on the next Kiss album would be a surprise song for fans while a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” completed things. A couple of songs rehearsed, but not performed included “Nowhere To Run” and “Move On,” the former likely due to it being overly difficult to sing on a nightly basis. Sadly, one thing missing from the tour was a resulting live release, which Paul had suggested was a possibility: “Hopefully, there’ll be some vinyl coming out of this tour, too” (Toronto Star, 3/3/89). It then took some years but finally heres a glorious vinyl recorded at the Rock N Roll Heaven Club in Toronto, Canada on the 6th of March 1989
Track list:
1. Intro
2. I Stole Your Love
3. I Want You
4. Tears Are Falling
5. Tonight You Belong to Me
6. C’mon and Love Me
7. Wouldn’t You Like to Know Me
8. Heaven’s on Fire
9. Hide Your Heart
10. I Still Love You
11. Beth/New York Groove
12. Crazy Crazy Nights
13. Reason to Live
14. Lick It Up
15. Let’s Put the X in Sex
16. Love Gun
17. Goodbye
18. Communication Breakdown
19. Detroit Rock City