Kiss
Alive II

THE REVIEW

You want the best you got the best, the hottest band in the world... Kiss

AND LET'S GIVE THEM THE BIG CAT to the career of Kiss, in this famous live album.

Born in 1973 in the aftermath of glam, Kiss exaggerated at random or by design the kabuki theater and the grand guignol of the rock masks of Alice Cooper, the N.Y. Dolls, Bolan, Glitter, Bowie, and especially Slade, throwing themselves into a myriad of concerts in New York until the much-desired first contract... and thus an unstoppable rise in the charts began. All the critical ingredients of the most clichéd Americanism are there: bubble-gum rock for 13-year-olds, sexist lyrics, a commitment of a working-class hero gone astray, power chords galore. It's only rock 'n' roll...but I like it.

And let's tell the American truth: in the USA, those who listened to Dylan at that time or certain committed rock regarded Kiss as akin to our Cugini di Campagna, that is, as phenomena of decadent bad taste. That's how it is, we must try at least once in our life to know where we come from, who we are, etc... disengagement is not an unworthy act in popular music, on the contrary, it is sometimes SO LIBERATING.

With Kiss, rock stops at the age of 13 that each of us holds in our hearts: the problem with these Christmas-tree-concert groups is that a lot of people are still under it, as they would say at the bar of Sergio's under my house. Kiss is a band that is both loved and denigrated at the same time, demolished by certain critics (the usual pontifex Scaruffi who finds the ancient and boorish-gringo-ordinary rock of Springsteen fundamental or considers the monochord N.Y. Dolls innovators: of course he despises and devalues Bowie and worse, Kiss; I also point out that Scaruffi was in favor of the Iraq war, see his website to understand the character. Kiss would hit it big in Europe in '79 with 'Dinasty', and the two memorable dance party and jukebox hits of the time were I Was Made for Lovin' You, and Sure Know Something - do you remember Gene's axe-shaped bass in the video? Nothing will go unpunished! - I will say personally, the songs on that album were impressive, they had a drive...

I chose 'Alive II' because Kiss are at the top of their career, before the disco turn, more bewigged, made-up, and platformed than ever, and from the archival videos, they had an incredible live stage for those times. The songs are often skeletal, elementary, and we are a bit far from the poetic ambitions of Anglo-Saxon and Italian bands, but the strength of Kiss is precisely in this simplicity of rock 'n' roll grooves: the powerful and refined drumming of Peter Criss-school -simm'e napule paisà!- and the rhythms of Stanley and Simmons create a wall of sound mixing Stones, Black Sabbath, MC5, and finally Ace Freehley, a truly spacey soloist, completes the band. Freehley deserves a separate note, he is the less predictable and more lunar soul of Kiss.

It takes off with Detroit Rock City and King Of The Night Time World, and then a barrage of unforgettable anthems, of which I remember Christine Sixteen, Ladies Room, the delightful rodstewart style Hard Luck Woman, then the romantic Beth, and I Stole Your Love, with that deadly riff, the feminist anthem Love Gun, Shock Me garnished with T.Rex flavor riff with Freehley's orgasmic solo, and the glittery Shout It Out Loud that closes the live show.

The fourth side is all studio, but if it's a live album, it's unclear pourquoi: I highlight the ignorant All American Man, the little tribute by Gene Simmons to the Beatles of Back in the USSR with Rockin' in the USA, and finally the choral Anyway You Want It, an old 50s hit.

Valerio Rivoli