Any interest in a 60's spec Thunderbird ?

[FrankieTbird]

I'm actually seeing him play with Michael Schenker on Friday, he and Hermann Rarebell are in the current line up.

 

Nice!  Please be sure to let us know how you liked the show!

 

[uwe]

It's been a while. Last time I saw him play in a hall/club that small was in 1976 or '77 when ze Scörps were touring their new Virgin Killer album and on the verge of breaking Germany (they were initially more popular in France and the Benelux countries than in Germany). Unshaven, skinny as a rake and with a natural Ripper (I always thought it was a Grabber, but this pic proves me wrong) ...

[amptech]

Cool pic!
Why grab  it when you can rip it? Every bassist I thought played a grabber (like me) turned out to be ripper players
when I found out they were not the same instrument.

The only known player I now know for sure did use the grabber, was mr. Simmons - guess he saved a few bucks not buying
the ripper

[uwe]

I could never hold them apart either! Gene got his Grabbers just as free from Gibson as his Rippers, but preferred the Grabbers - to Gibson's chagrin - for their nastier sound and the fresher attack.

That Ripper didn't last long with Francis either, I believe he only used it on that 1976 tour and then reverted back to P-Basses (he used TBirds then and now and became a Warwickster in the end, call it a German fate!). In 1976, he would have probably been happier with a Grabber (if you consider the Ripper to be more in the Jazz Bass mold and the Grabber more a poor man's P-Bass). I saw him with the Ripper and his sound was fine though nothing he couldn't have done with a Jazz Bass. Back then he was still a much more melodic and busy player. When the Scorps hit the arenas and stadiums, he reduced his bass playing to a functional and sparse minimum.

[planetgaffnet]

The only known player I now know for sure did use the grabber, was mr. Simmons - guess he saved a few bucks not buying
the ripper

I think you'll find that Gibson were throwing guitars at Kiss in the 1970s.  I read somewhere that Ace Frehley would take delivery of a dozen Les Pauls, pick out the best/better ones and sell the rest.  I very much doubt Gene Simmons had his pocket felt for any of the Grabbers/Rippers that he used.
P

[uwe]

Given the exposure Kiss had as a popular concert draw (they were selling out arenas long before anybody bought their records), I believe Gibson cut a good advertisement deal. "Kiss plays Gibson Guitars" was on every album sleeve and dutifully they did play a wide array of Gibson guitars live in their early days: Firebirds, Flying Vs, Marauders, Les Pauls, Grabbers, Rippers and EBs. Even I noticed at the time (this was before I played bass) that Kiss was a "Gibson-Band".

Coincidentally I am listening to Kiss - Alive in the car right now and marvel after all these years how rough and abrasive they sounded with then top-of-the-line Gibson instruments, I mean you really have to work at it hard to make a Les Paul NOT SING when you solo!  Or make a Firebird sound like a broken Mosrite when you play rhythm. It's good that they did not decide to become a Southern Rock band, making an instrument sound sweet was certainly beyond them, I fear they would have had a hard time emulating Jessica.  They sure were a garage band (with make-up) at the time.

[planetgaffnet]

Uwe...there's a very interesting documentary about Alive! here:


- it's pretty much a studio album with an awful lot of overdubbed cheering.  (I actually like the rhythm guitar tone BTW...I always have.)

They simply weren't good enough [live] to put out an unfettered live album; I mean fine, it's OK to jump around, spit blood/fire and put on a great visual show, but musically they weren't up to the task in hand.  The handful of bootlegs I've heard from that period seem to support that. 
P

[uwe]

I didn't think it was a live album! Haven't seen the above vid yet, but my knowledge was that it was basically recorded at soundchecks to get that arena sound plus later studio overdubs and of course the crowd noise. Even when it came out, people had doubts, I remember a NME scribe who wrote "At the Kiss concerts I saw, Frehley played nowhere near as well as you hear him on Alive". Not that I would describe his trademark stop-start-st(r)utter soloing as anything near "well", but it is at least rhythmically idiosyncratic.

But the pantheon of great rock "live" albums is filled to the brim with albums that weren't really live. Kiss were neither the first nor the last.

Now I have to watch that vid!

[slinkp]

Yep. I remember being in denial right here on this very forum a couple years ago about Live at Leeds.  But it turns out to be pretty well documented that there are at least partial vocal overdubs and bass overdubs on at least some songs.  I got over caring about it

I still remember this bit of liner notes from Peter Gabriel Plays Live, which I listened to obsessively in my teen years:

"Although this recording was compiled from four concerts in the mid-west of the United States, some additional recording took place not a thousand miles away from the home of the artist. The generic term of this process is "cheating." Care has been taken to keep the essence of the gigs intact including "human imperfection."' The Producers."

[gearHed289]

Thanks for the PG quote. I always think about that when these types of discussions come up. It is what it is. A concert goes by in real time, and is immediately gone forever. An album OTOH is here for eternity, and will be listened to again and again. I don't mind some fixes. According to most accounts, Peter Criss' drums are completely live, and the majority of everything else was re-done in the studio. Which is a shame because Gene's live tone was so much better. And to their credit, they weren't all THAT bad live. Plenty of bootleg vids out there to prove it. Cobo Arena, Jan 1976 is a good one. I like Paul's tone just for the fact that it works good against Ace. Kinda crap on its own, but for his Keef thing against Ace's power chords, it was good.

[uwe]

Saw it now, they are at least honest about it, especially Gene ("At that time, live, I made tons of mistakes."). But his best quip is at 11:22 when talking about the Nothing to Lose lyric  ... "But(t?) what poetry!".

Whether they invented the live double album is another matter though. I remember the early and mid-seventies as the age of the live double album. Grand Funk's Live Album, Humble Pie's Rockin' the Fillmore, DP's Made in Japan, Allman Brothers' Live at Fillmore Eat, Rare Earth's In Concert, Uriah Heep's Live '73, ELP's Welcome Back my Friends to the Show That Never Ends and Yes' Yessongs were all double (or more) albums, million sellers and pretty much in every household, years before Kiss Alive. Matter of fact back then having a live album in a gatefold sleeve out was considered de rigueur if you were worth your salt as a live band. Kiss with their Alive album weren't so much leading the way but, in a last ditch effort to make it, hopping the bandwagon.

I never thought that Kiss Alive sounded that much like a live experience ... I think they got the big arena sound down nicely, but the performance didn't quite have the frantic intensity you might expect with an act like Kiss. Kiss bootlegs from the era sound, bum notes aside, more frantic and "falling over one another in excitement". Alive sounded not so much of the moment, but a bit calculated. Which we now know from the vid it was!  Doesn't matter, it put them on the map and is a fun album to hear, especially Peter's (over-)phased drum solo! I sure liked my copy (with the SS-runes on Peter's kick drum airbrushed out as was mandatory in Germany where showing Nazi insignia outside of their historical context is a criminal offense). No wonder I couldn't recognize that Gene played a Grabber and not a Ripper!  Us poor Krauts also didn't get the booklet, probably because it had the SS-runes all over it.

German cover as it came out in 75:




German cover in later years, Kiss had money to pay for proper photo doctoring:



US cover:

[OldManC]

My inner 15 year old is coming out here, but I think it's called for...

While I am certainly aware that Alive was cleaned up considerably, the idea that KISS couldn't deliver the goods live simply not true. Plenty of bootlegs from the Wildwood, Cleveland, and Davenport shows (the ones Alive was actually taken from) don't sound all that different from the album. And considering the energy they exuded on stage in that era, bum notes are far less prevalent than one might expect, especially if you bought the spin that they couldn't play. Eddie Kramer's story has gone back and forth over the years as to how much work was done, but unless someone went in and also cleaned up all these bootlegs too (but made sure not to make them too perfect), I don't buy that Alive is a studio album with the audience dubbed in.





And for your KISS nerd pleasure:

[Denis]

Hmm, a hint might have been the maple fingerboard and the black body. On the Ripper I think that combination wasn't available normally (although Greg Lake had one like that).

Shame about the retreating "SS" markings. Must have been a superior Russian force causing the reversal. 

Saw it now, they are at least honest about it, especially Gene ("At that time, live, I made tons of mistakes."). But his best quip is at 11:22 when talking about the Nothing to Lose lyric  ... "But(t?) what poetry!".

Whether they invented the live double album is another matter though. I remember the early and mid-seventies as the age of the live double album. Grand Funk's Live Album, Humble Pie's Rockin' the Fillmore, DP's Made in Japan, Allman Brothers' Live at Fillmore Eat, Rare Earth's In Concert, Uriah Heep's Live '73, ELP's Welcome Back my Friends to the Show That Never Ends and Yes' Yessongs were all double (or more) albums, million sellers and pretty much in every household, years before Kiss Alive. Matter of fact back then having a live album in a gatefold sleeve out was considered de rigueur if you were worth your salt as a live band. Kiss with their Alive album weren't so much leading the way but, in a last ditch effort to make it, hopping the bandwagon.

I never thought that Kiss Alive sounded that much like a live experience ... I think they got the big arena sound down nicely, but the performance didn't quite have the frantic intensity you might expect with an act like Kiss. Kiss bootlegs from the era sound, bum notes aside, more frantic and "falling over one another in excitement". Alive sounded not so much of the moment, but a bit calculated. Which we now know from the vid it was!  Doesn't matter, it put them on the map and is a fun album to hear, especially Peter's (over-)phased drum solo! I sure liked my copy (with the SS-runes on Peter's kick drum airbrushed out as was mandatory in Germany where showing Nazi insignia outside of their historical context is a criminal offense). No wonder I couldn't recognize that Gene played a Grabber and not a Ripper!  Us poor Krauts also didn't get the booklet, probably because it had the SS-runes all over it.

German cover as it came out in 75:




German cover in later years, Kiss had money to pay for proper photo doctoring:



US cover:

[uwe]

I'd say the really live stuff sounds less tight than the Alive! recording, but I don't hear a huge sonic difference. Alive! certainly caught them how they probably sounded on a good night. As for the "couldn't play-aspect": Both Stanley and Simmons had been playing since their teens in various bands and were in their early or  mid-twenties when Alive! was recorded with hundreds of gigs as Kiss on their back, I'm sure they could do their set in their sleep especially as they had little issue replicating their rather simple studio arrangements live. It wasn't exactly a Gentle Giant, Kansas or Jethro Tull concert you know and Bob (Ezrin) hadn't yet been around with them either! 

I remember being stunned when I first heard Destroyer on a tape - it sounded nothing like the Kiss I knew from Alive! and Dressed to Kill, they all of the sudden sounded as good as the Alice Cooper Band, dramatic cinemascope sound, sound effects, keyboards, violins, kids choirs and even harmony guitars! And then I later on saw the sleeve and read Bob Ezrin's familiar name ...

[uwe]

"Shame about the retreating "SS" markings. Must have been a superior Russian force causing the reversal."

Their logo actually harmed them initially in Germany. It took a while to get over the "that Nazi-make-up-band dressed in black with the SS-sign"-image. Teen mags had articles along the lines of "Are Kiss really Nazis?!". It bugged me too. I only bought a Kiss record again after I had found out about the insignia (on the first Kiss albums I bought, the SS-runes had been censored off and I had not yet seen uncensored pictures of them) when I read about Paul's and Gene's jewish backgrounds. To this day they are not allowed to use the logo here. No idea how Gene ever explained it to his Auschwitz-survivor mom either. Or maybe her eyesight was compassionate with her.