Customer Reviews

Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This tribute album is quite a disappointment, yet it made me discover one of the most talented musician I've ever heard : Yoshiki HAYASHI (leader, drummer and pianist of X-Japan !!). If you liked black diamond, buy hide's tribute album !!

okay...i've never heard this cd before, but i just think it's cool that one of the hottest greatest artists is on it.....i'm talkin bout yoshiki, but you've proly never heard of him....kiss kicks ass, and it's cool that yoshiki is on the cd....hey! if you like him, check out the greatest japanese rock band (who are unfortunately disbanded now -_-)...X-Japan!

Another tribute...another mixed bag. This one starts off strong with Lenny Kravitz doing "Deuce" with Stevie Wonder on harp followed by a surprisingly good version of "Hard Luck Woman" by Garth Brooks which sounds an awful lot like "You Wear It Well" by Rod Stewart. The next three songs are also strong with Anthrax doing a real rocking version of "She", one of my favorite guilty pleasures "Christine Sixteen" is nicely covered by the Gin Blossoms and Toad The Wet Sprocket doing a very laid version of "Rock and Roll All Nite" that needs to be heard to be believed. Then this tribute takes a nosedive with mediocre performances by Shandi's Addiction, Dinosaur Jr., Extreme and The Lemonheads. Then it makes a nice comeback with "Detroit Rock City" by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones who totally made it their own. It finishes off with a very well done orchestral cover of "Black Diamond" by a fellow named Yoshiki.

I give this album a 2 *BUT* it's worth a listen. The hands down best cover (and surprisingly so) is Garth Brooks doing Hard Luck Woman. I'll keep this just for that. Good job done by Garth. Two more songs stand out. Yoshiki's Black Diamond and Anthrax's She. Toss the rest out with the garbage. Interesting enough for discussion but no other listeners here.

What a concept...produce a tribute album to yourselves! KISS My Ass is the most self-absorbed piece of piffle I've ever heard; yet, it is oddly compelling. When I heard that this was coming out, I thought, "Oh my God, what are they doing?!". Garth Brooks, GARTH BROOKS!! I was prepared for true sacrilege as the fiddle and lap steel replaced Ace's sizzling licks. What a surprise I got when I gave the album a listen! The majority of the versions are not desecrated or butchered, at all; in fact, the 10-gallon hat man himself, Garth Brooks, does a fine version of Hard Luck Woman. Deuce gets funked-up by Lenny and Stevie and is great; Anthrax pulls off a thrashy version of She with the end riff of Let Me Know tacked on for good measure; the Gin Blossoms' Christine Sixteen and The Lemonheads' Plaster Caster are nothing special; Toad The Wet Sprocket slows Rock and Roll All Nite down to a dirge; Calling Dr. Love is the kind of crap I was expecting to hear; J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.) does a fine version of Goin' Blind with all of the sleaziness remaining intact; and Extreme does a bang-up job on Strutter with Gary Cherone doing his best Paul Stanley imitation. The last 2 songs though are among the most original; The Mighty Mighty Bosstones ska-tinged version of Detroit Rock City and Yoshiki's strings-only rendition of Black Diamond are what a tribute album is all about--an artist's reworking of the original. Only Lenny Kravitz, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Yoshiki, and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are able to pull this off here. The rest of the songs are, for the most part, carbon copies of the original songs. I was really disappointed when I bought KISS My Ass because I felt ripped off. Only 11 songs totaling barely 45 minutes! Here's a news flash: LP's are gone and you can get 78 minutes worth of material on a CD! When I look at the list of all of the artists who wanted to do this project but didn't appear for whatever reason, I wonder why KISS My Ass is so b! loody short! With Public Enemy, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Cypress Hill, and Ozzy Osbourne among the list of those "Missing In Action", who knows what special and unique sounds could have been transformed from a KISS song. I guess we'll have to hope for a KISS My Ass Volume 2: The Lost Tapes to find out! The tattoos from the fans on the inside cover are great! Too bad I couldn't get in on the action! Though it is questionable whether KISS My Ass is a true KISS release, I felt that, like Killers, it holds a special place among the KISS albums so that is why I have chosen to include it in my reviews.