Customer Reviews

Black Diamond: Unauthorized Biography of Kiss with CD (Audio)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I thought the book was very good. It's information was unparalleled, and the background on each member of the band was a real bonus for the reader. For a big KISS fan like myself, it made for a great read, and developed well, wasn't slow and boring. Good job Dale.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book--it's written from a fan's perspective, but it's still well-balanced; it would have been easy for it to have gone the other way (adulation).

Essentially it's the history of the band as told by various members of the group at various points in time via various interview (tired of the word 'various yet?) sources. It may bother some that Sherman never bothered to index the pages, but that's a minor complaint. My only real complaint is the lack of input from Vinnie Vincent, Mark St. John, Eric Singer, and Bruce Kulick; all off whom had valid opinions about the band, but were given little or no emphasis at all.

Much better than Kiss & Tell, and as good as Kiss & Sell (however different), and well worth the money you spend on it. Especially for an unauthorised biography. I especially liked the massive amounts of contradiction amongst the band members concerning specific albums and tunes.

I seriously doubt that Gene Simmons' upcoming book will be as honest as this one. Maybe the whole truth will never be discovered, but this book is a step in the right direction.

Dale Sherman has written an engaging biography chock full of fascinating, little-known trivia, which succeeds in answering many questions fans such as myself may have had about the band. Many times I was caught thinking "Ah-haaa! So that's why..." This is in fact Sherman's intention, as stated in the Introduction. In fact, his dedication to trivia minutae is on occasion distracting and sometimes leads the reader onto unnecessary tangents.

The main problem I have with the book, besides the cheesy cover (Where's the band??) is the weakness in writing style. This may be the fault of the book's editor. There are countless instances of run-on sentences, dangling particles, awkward syntax and sentence structure, grammatical errors, words used out of context or with wrong meaning, and other frustrating language snafus. I do not claim to be an English professor, but there were many occasions when I had to read a sentence over again, shake my head, and think, "Why didn't he write that sentence this way, or use this word instead, or use this verb tense/form?", etc. It often distracted me from the narrative, making for a sometimes uncomfortable read where I was fearing the next grammatical flub, which always eventually came. Luckily, he uses quotes liberally from the band and others, and it is in fact these quotes which lack the syntax errors and are easiest to read!

Otherwise, this is definitely a decent edition to the Kiss library and hopefully future editions will be better edited and thus easier to read.

Great book. Read a lot about KISS in Black Diamond I did not know about the band. I have read other books about KISS,but they were not as informative or went in to such detail as Black Diamond did. If Black Diamond 3 is as informative as Black Diamond 1,2 it should be a great book. The CD on Eric Carr that came with Black Diamond 1 was great,but I read the same thing in the book. The CD should have been different then the book.

Mr. Dale wrote a fine book. It covers all aspects of Kiss career, including business deals, musicians, recording sales, always remembering that they were dedicated professional musicians with ambition, since the start, and not only a bunch of fakes. It's much better than authorized Kiss biographies.

This is a superb book with a lot of details in the history of the greatest rock group ever. The covering of Kiss in the 70's is extremly informative and gives the impression of good research from the author. The only thing which prevents me from giving the book a maximum rate is the lack of the author's covering of the critical phases in the history of Kiss: When members of the group left, when Kiss decided to drop the make-up, the leading to the reunion and and the decission to put on the make-up again. These are the fractions of the story which the die hard Kiss fans want as much as possible information about. ...but let there be no doubt: This IS (by far) the best unauthorized biography of Kiss

Good information included in this book, however, there are a number of grammatical errors which slow down reading. Also, some of the updates (between the original book and this updated version 10 yrs later) seem to consist of hastily added afterthoughts; for example, one paragraph states that Stan Penridge "now does" production work, and the next sentence states that he "passed away" [since the original book]. One would think the preceeding sentence would have been revised, but it wasn't. It's the little details that make this less enjoyable than it would have been otherwise.

Also, many of the quotes are identical in content to those included in interviews by Ken Sharp for "KISS: Behind the Mask" (by David Leaf and Ken Sharp), which is "the official authorized biography" of the band. I read these books back-to-back, which really highlighted the extensive repetition of certain quotes originally included in the authorized biography.

Nevertheless, there is new info in this book and it would probably be interesting to the moderate to rabid KISS fan, although less interesting to the casual fan.

Excellent book! It's like sitting & talking to a fan. Gets to the point & avoids fluff! Dig it.

Well researched and very insightful. I could not put this book down

I picked up Black Diamond after just reading KISS & Tell by Gordon Gebert and Bob McAdams.

Black Diamond was more biographical as was KISS & Tell was pure entertaining reading. I couldn't put K & T down. Black Diamond is for pure KISS fans. K & T is just hilarious reading and for anyone.

I recommend BD but I had also just read K&T and I was just blown away by that book. Get them both if you can.