Kiss - The Very Best of Kiss
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CD Details
Artist: KissBrand: KiSS
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
CD Release Date: 2002-08-27
Music Label: Island / Mercury
Product features:
- KISS THE VERY BEST OF KISS
- Strutter
- Deuce
- Got To Choose
- Hotter Than Hell
- C'Mon And Love Me
- Rock And Roll All Nite (live)
- Detroit Rock City
- Shout It Out Loud
- Beth
- I Want You
- Calling Dr. Love
- Hard Luck Woman
- I Stole Your Love
- Christine Sixteen
- Love Gun
- New York Groove
- I Was Made For Loving You
- I Love It Loud
- Lick It Up
- Forever
- God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You II
Music reviews of The Very Best of Kiss
Music Review: Another pointless review...
Rating: 4 Stars
We need another review of this CD like we need another KISS compilation, i.e. a hole in the head. However, I'll put my two cents worth in (and I'm probably being generous in my monetary evaluation...)
I'm not a "KISS Army" sized KISS fan but I think they have a lot of great songs in their catalog and to compile the best onto a single CD is a task that is certain to miss the mark by most fans' standards. I can see where most of these KISS comps serve a purpose though. DOUBLE PLATINUM is the original KISS "best of" and will never be duplicated or bettered simply because it contains the best loved songs from the band's original incarnation. It's pre-disco, pre-Elder, pre-band member changes, pre-taking off the make-up, pre-Michael Bolton power ballads.
SMASHES, THRASHES & HITS is in another (lower) class all by itself. It attempted to cover the band's entire career by including DOUBLE PLATINUM-era classics, more recent material, some remixes, a re-recording, and some new material. It crashed and burned in all of these areas leaving everyone who was showing any interest completely unsatisfied. The experience of listening to SMASHES, THRASHES & HITS was akin to a groupie making her way to Gene Simmons' dressing room for some serious oral action, only to find Christopher Cross waiting for her inside.
YOU WANTED THE BEST, YOU GOT THE BEST was a collection of their best live recordings.
GOLD and the MILLENIUM COLLECTION are just further entries into the record company's ongoing marketing campaign to put visually identical "best of's" in the stores of virtually every artist that ever produced a hit record of any consequence.
So THE VERY BEST OF KISS is the first level headed attempt at a single disc career spanning compilation of KISS' most popular material (including studio and live cuts) and not containing any weird edits, remixes or rerecordings.
Okay, so we've got 21 cuts of hot KISS action.
Does it hit all the high marks? Everyone can probably agree that it doesn't. Seriously, how could it?
What's on here that doesn't belong? What's not on here that is indespensable? Everyone will have their own answers to those last two questions, but I think the compilers did a fairly decent job of cramming one disc chock full of KISS classics.
What's not on here that I would like to see? "ROCKET RIDE"!!!, "Do You Love Me", "Shandi", "Sure Know Something", "A World Without Heroes", "I", "Heaven's On Fire", "Tears Are Falling", "Unholy", Ace's "Rip It Out" and Gene's "Radioactive". But my list has two songs from THE ELDER so I probably deserve to have the KISS Army give me a serious beating.
As far as the greed argument goes, any record company is going to throw out compilations like this (particularly around Christmas time) to capitalize once again on a hit artists' ongoing popularity. It's usually the record company's greed that's evident, not the recording artists'.
So what exactly is the purpose that is being served by THE VERY BEST OF KISS? It replaces SMASHES, THRASHES & HITS which contained an inferior rerecording of "Beth", some awful remixes (whose lame idea was it to tone down the drums on "I Love It Loud"??!!) and new material that should have gone unreleased at the time. (The reviewers here that are bemoaning this compilation's lack of any new material might want to be reminded of "Let's Put The X In Sex", one of the worst songs ever recorded by anyone.) The original hits that weren't remixed for that collection are hampered by inferior remastering (probably not from the original tapes) resulting in poor sound quality.
At any rate, I think there's room for one more KISS collection and this is a pretty darn good one.
Oh, wait. I forgot about GREATEST KISS. So we really didn't need this collection after all, huh?
Oh well, never mind.
Description of The Very Best of Kiss
Japan exclusive 'Memorial Edition' of 2002 compilation featuring 21 tracks. Details TBA. Mercury. 2004.Sure, Detroit had the MC5 and the Stooges, but Long Island's Kiss threw down their own gauntlet. Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss cleaved a spot between glam, punk, waning Woodstock rock, and adult-oriented pop and became a phenomenon in the process. Kiss kept their music simple and, of course, sexual, with the likes of "Hotter than Hell," "Love Gun," and "Calling Dr. Love," paving the way for the waves of pop-metal sexpot wannabes and winning fans in such quantities that they launched the so-called Kiss Army. Their magnetism permeates this 21-song set, with Criss sounding so lonesome he could cry on "Beth," and the fire-breathing, blood-spitting Simmons unfailingly serving up a comical mix of menace and lasciviousness. The version of "Rock & Roll All Nite" comes from 1975's crowd-noise drenched Alive!, cut at the time when live albums were de rigueur. This collection was made smartly enough that only four songs come from the band's post-Dynasty period, making The Very Best of Kiss an essential primer on 1970s rock grandeur. --Andrew Bartlett
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