Artist: KISS Title: “KISSWORLD – The Best Of KISS” Label: Universal Music Release Date: 1/26/2019 Genre: Hard Rock Rating: 4/5
Lo and behold my friends, there is yet another “Greatest Hits” compilation for the legendary masked men of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal – The Hottest Band In The World KISS!!!! This one is entitled “KISSWORLD – The Best Of KISS” and it hit the streets in late January and I’ve finally got a copy of this in my hands. As a lifer in terms of KISS releases, I will be most likely purchasing another 50 hits packages if they come out and my main interest in this one was to see what sort of booklet might be included in the packaging. I’ll return to that topic later on but first let’s take a quick glance at the “20” tracks included on the release. From top to bottom there doesn’t seem to be a single track of “filler” and instead are all go to songs in the now massive KISS catalog. I found it interesting that the release began with “Crazy Crazy Nights” because when that song first hit I was aghast but now so many years later have found it to be enjoyable Rock and Roll.
There aren’t any omissions in terms of the necessary staples as “Love Gun”, “Detroit Rock City”, “Shout It Out Loud” and of course the seminal “Rock and Roll All Nite” are included. The latter one being the original studio track as opposed to the one that we often find on such a release that hails from the essential “Alive” album. There are NO live tracks on this compilation. The post-makeup years are well represented with the most notable tracks from the era such as “Tears Are Falling”, “Lick It Up” and “Heaven’s On Fire” in addition to the album opening “Crazy Crazy Nights”. I think I would have liked to see “Who Wants To Be Lonely” here but it is not. Continue reading “KISSWORLD – The Best Of KISS” by KISS→
A few months ago I did a “Music Milestone” piece for The Eagles “Their Greatest Hits: 1971-1975” album and while it was not the typical type of milestone item that I would normally reflect on, the album was of a very special nature to me and their founding guitarist Glen Frey had just passed away the previous month. It seemed “right” based on the timing to me and that brings me to this latest Music Milestone which raises a glass to the fact that David Bowie’s “ChangesOneBowie” Greatest Hits LP is officially forty years old today. The world lost the great David Bowie very early in 2016 and with his loss still resonating profoundly in a lot of us, I wanted to add this album anniversary to our narratives.
This album would be Bowie’s first ever hits collection and it spanned about nine of his albums offering up tracks from his earliest recordings in 1969 up until 1976. I’ve left the names of the actual albums noted on the individual tracks for better reference if you were curious. I’ve owned this album for many, many years now but don’t think that I purchased it during its actual release year since I was not yet at the album buying age. That was coming soon enough based on my vintage but I was not there yet. I knew all of the tunes of course since I would listen to my parent’s stereo and focus on the Classic Rock stations of the day. WNEW FM and WPLJ FM were among my favorites back in the day. You would hear no less than three or four Bowie tracks across the regular rotation and of course these songs are resident on this first compilation. Let’s take a look at the individual tracks on the release and then we can talk about them a little more afterward. Continue reading Raising A Glass To Four Decades Of David Bowie’s “ChangesOneBowie”→
This inclusion to our “Milestones” might surprise you a little bit because not only is it an album by The Eagles, which is not a band that I normally speak of here, but it’s also a greatest hits compilation release. With the passing of the bands founding guitarist Glenn Frey last month I think that it’s great to raise a glass of whatever in the honor of this great compilation. On this day in music history some forty years ago, the music buying world saw copies of “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) by The Eagles on the shelves. The album came care of Asylum Records and the text below comes from the albums official Wiki entry to quickly fill you all in on this one.
“Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) comprises nine singles released between 1972 and 1975, plus the album track “Desperado.” All of these singles except “Tequila Sunrise” charted in the top 40, with five in the top ten, and “One of These Nights” and “Best of My Love” both topping the singles chart. With such airplay success in the span of a little over four years, the band became a formidable presence on American commercial radio in the 1970s, and Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 album chart upon its release and later reached number one”.
Artist: Savatage Title: “Return To Wacken” Label: Ear Music Release Date: 6/30/2015 Genre: Heavy Metal Rating: 4/5
It’s been far too long since the Metal world has had new music from the great Savatage and their last recorded work together was on “Poets and Madmen” which hit us hard back in 2001 care of Nuclear Blast Records. Since that time, Savatage has been on a bit of a lengthy hiatus while numerous members focused their creative energies on the holiday touring juggernaut known as the Trans-Siberian Orchestra while others continued on into projects of their own. Now in celebration of the bands return to the live stage for the Wacken Open Air Festival, a rather sound compilation of some of the bands classics has been issued and for the foreseeable future this is as close to “new” as we shall get from the legendary band. My notes on the release come from my relatively long association with their material (since 1988 if memory serves me correctly) and a deep knowledge of their back catalog. I didn’t have a copy of my own and was listening to a digital stream of it online. As a collection, this serves up well as a grouping of very necessary tracks for the listeners who might not be all that up on the bands historic game. Let’s consider this to be “Savatage Primer” since its all expected numbers as opposed to any sort of deep tracks. Perhaps if this was a double CD edition but alas this is only a single disc. Continue reading “Return To Wacken” by Savatage→
Amazon.com says “30 Trips Around The Sun: The Definitive Live Story features one unreleased live song from each year of the band’s career plus one special re-released track from the band’s earliest recordings, under the name The Emergency Crew. Every year from 1965 1995 is represented. Also featured is an essay by Dead aficionado Jesse Jarnow dissecting every track in the collection. “. It comes care of Rhino Records.
