5) Double Platinum/Smashes, Thrashes & Hits song remixes As I’ve stated before, I take a real dim view when bands and/or producers screw with the integrity of their own original recordings. Nothing wrong with going back and doing remixes to clean up the sound quality or remove defects, but it chafes my hiney no end when they start making major changes to the recordings like overdubbing new vocals or guitar parts or drum machines or whatever, and that’s what Kiss did on their first two best-of compilations, 1978’s Double Platinum and 1988’s lamely-titled Smashes, Thrashes & Hits. Smashes contains noticeably-different mixes of "Love Gun" and "Rock And Roll All Nite", and in a very heinous move, they substituted Peter Criss’ original vocal on "Beth" with that of the late Eric Carr. I don’t fault Carr so much here because he was really desperate to get a lead vocal on any Kiss record. Gene and Paul would give a couple tunes to Eric to sing in concert, but their egos were too fragile to allow another talented singer like him to grab a little of the spotlight on record, so he seized the opportunity to sing here, but I always thought it was very insulting to Peter Criss—"Beth" is his baby, pure and simple! In some cases, they simply re-cut songs altogether, like "Strutter ‘78" on Platinum, where they added a totally unnecessary disco-y beat to the song. Mind you, they didn’t do this to every track on those albums, but what I’m saying is if you’re so proud of your previous output, then why fuck with it?
4) Eric Singer in Peter’s make-up/Tommy Thayer in Ace’s In a move that pissed off more than a few Kiss fans (me included), when Peter Criss parted company with the band for the second time in 2001, Gene and Paul compounded the situation by bringing drummer Eric Singer back to the band and having him wear Criss’ cat make-up and costume for their overseas tours. Criss later returned briefly in 2003 for a tour, but when Ace Frehley left for good in 2002, he was also replaced with a facsimile, former Black ‘N’ Blue guitarist Tommy Thayer, who’d previously been "Ace" in a Kiss tribute band, and was also part of the Kiss technical staff on the road. Singer and Thayer are both good soldiers and very good musicians as well, but I would’ve much preferred to see Kiss retire the make-up and costumes for good after the original four broke up the second time and if Gene and Paul wanted to continue making new music under the band’s name with Singer and Thayer (or Bruce Kulick), then fine and dandy. Everything that’s transpired since the so-called "Farewell" tour in 2000 has made this group look more like a Kiss tribute band than the real McCoy—sorta like when Willie Mays played for the Mets...
3) Dynasty/Unmasked/Music From The Elder Kiss was a very fractured band following the release of the four solo albums in 1978, and the period from ‘79 to ’81 was downright strange, as the band had no real musical direction during that time. They had lost their edge, and were trying to appeal to too-wide an audience, and the whole thing pretty much disintegrated over three of the weakest albums in the band’s history. Not that there weren’t some good songs on Dynasty—"I Was Made For Lovin’ You" has aged remarkably well in almost 30 years and "Sure Know Something" is one of Paul Stanley’s finer vocal performances. Problem was, this stuff just wasn’t Kiss! The hardcore fan base that had been brought up on "Deuce", "Cold Gin" and "Black Diamond" felt disenfranchised, and rightfully so. Although the band still rocked-out in concert, they were wimping-out on record, big-time. Actually, Unmasked really wasn’t a bad record at all—if it had been done by a different band. It would have made a great Toto or Eddie Money album, or a really edgy Billy Joel album instead. In fact, on the song "She’s So European", if you didn’t know any better, you’d almost swear that it was the Piano Man himself singing instead of Gene Simmons. As for Elder—an ambitious but ill-advised concept album intended to impress the critics—it was just plain weird hearing Paul Stanley singing about "a child in a sun dress" and other Harry Potter-ish fantasy clap-trap. A couple tracks do rock out here, namely "The Oath" and "Escape From The Island" (a rare Kiss instrumental), and right at the end of the final track "I", we hear the call-to-arms from Gene when he screams, "I wanna Rock and Roll all night!" This signaled the end of this three-year "Lost Weekend", as their next album would be much harder and heavier and return the band to its former glory.
2) Kiss Meets The Phantom of The Park "A Hard Day’s Night meets Star Wars", as Paul Stanley described the original concept of the 1978 made-for-TV Kiss movie, Phantom is one of those classic "seemed like a brilliant idea at the time" deals—and a monumental flop too. It didn’t seem as bad to me when I was 14 as it does today, and boy, is it bad! Loaded with dreadful dialogue that sounds like it was written by 3rd-graders, a hokey storyline, and simply awful acting all around—and most of that came from the professional stiffs they hired for this thing! At least the band had an excuse—they weren’t trained actors. It didn’t help that the movie was produced by the Hanna-Barbera folks, better known for their Saturday morning cartoon fare—can you imagine the possibilities if say, George Lucas or Steven Spielberg had directed? The film was beset with problems anyway, as Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were easily bored and got fed up with waiting around for shooting to begin—Ace actually got in his car one day and drove off in his full costume and make-up. And here’s a blunder within a blunder: during the scene where the "evil" Kiss faced off with the real Kiss, Ace’s double was a black guy in full make-up and identical costume, but Frehley had to point out to the director that the guy’s hands were still black, so they outfitted him with a pair of flesh-colored gloves. There’s another scene that supposed to be the real Ace, but you can easily tell it’s the black guy just by the size of his lips (no racism intended here). Must’ve been the day Ace drove off...
1) Carnival of Souls This is the one Kiss album I absolutely abhor. Of everything they’ve ever released, this is the ONLY Kiss CD I ever seriously wanted my money back for. Even Music From The Elder blows this piece of crap away. You’d think Elder would’ve taught Gene and Paul a lesson, but once again, Kiss decided to try and impress the critics instead of the fans by not remaining true to themselves and by making a record they had no business making. I’ve had this CD for ten years now, and I think I’ve maybe played it from start-to-finish four times, at most. It was recorded sometime around 1994 as the follow-up to the somewhat overlooked Revenge CD from ’92, but sat on the shelf for three years while the whole reunion thing happened with Ace and Peter returning, and thank goodness they did, because if this pile of excrement was the direction the band was heading musically, I might’ve disowned them. In a nutshell, it was Kiss trying to sound like Soundgarden and all those other crappy Seattle grunge bands that were hot at that time, and the result was beyond pathetic. Revenge was a heavy album, yes, but it was bright and had a positive vibe to it—not dark and depressing like Carnival, which was just a lame attempt at aimless, boring, gloom-and-doom slacker music for all those Gen X-ers to commiserate to. There’s a world of difference between "I’m a War Machine," with all its cartoonish macho bravado and "Hate—that’s what I am," with its dark and foreboding tone. I could just picture the accompanying tour for the album, if it had ever happened: Gene and Paul wearing flannel shirts and ugly green sweaters with stocking caps looking like a couple Mountain Dew adrenaline junkies on skateboards. COS was the only Kiss album that got zero stars from me...
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