An Easter KISS

After all the new stuff I’ve posted recently, I thought I’d drop back about 35 years for this live KISS recording.

Electric Magic, recorded Oct. 21, 1974, at the Brewery in East Lansing, Mich., captures KISS on the brink of disaster. Hotter than Hell would be out the following day; Alive! was still a year off. In the meantime, the band was fast going nowhere. Their debut had sold only 75,000 copies. Neither a tour with Blue Oyster Cult nor national TV appearances were giving the band that push into the big time. To make things worse, their label, Casablanca Records, was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The band on this recording is one that’s hungry – you can hear it in the music, which is raw in a way missing from the cleaned-up Alive! recording. Kiss is represented here as they really were, without the studio “corrections.”

The set list is very similar to Alive!, minus, of course, the tracks from Dressed to Kill, which wouldn’t be released until March of 1975. The sound isn’t as clean as the official recording, but the band is just as tight, honed by months of touring. I’m not sure of the original source, maybe an FM broadcast.

Introduction.mp3
Deuce.mp3
Strutter.mp3
Got to Choose.mp3
Firehouse.mp3
She.mp3
Nothing to Lose.mp3
Parasite.mp3
100,000 Years.mp3
Black Diamond.mp3
Let Me Go Rock ‘n’ Roll.mp3
Cold Gin.mp3

Labels: classic rock, live music, rock

posted by aikin @ 8:09 PM