allthingsmusicplus

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October 14, 1977 – KISS: Alive II is released. #KISS # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4/5 # Allmusic 4/5 stars # Rolling Stone (see original review below) Alive II is the eighth album and second live album from Kiss, released on October 14, 1977. It reached #7 on the Billboard 200 Top LP’s chart. The origins of Alive II go back to early 1977 when the band’s manager Bill Aucoin, had the idea to have Eddie Kramer record a live album during the evening show at Budokan Hall in Tokyo on April 2, 1977. The plan was to release a live album to give KISS some much deserved time off before recording the album that would become Love Gun later that Fall. Kramer finished work on the album, but Casablanca Records and KISS deemed it unusable, and the band forged ahead with the Love Gun sessions. Most of the live tracks on Alive II were recorded during the band’s August 26–28 residency at the Los Angeles Forum while on the Love Gun tour. The 3:00 PM soundchecks at the August 26 & 27 shows were recorded, and later used on the album (i.e. “Tomorrow And Tonight”) with crowd noise being dubbed in later. “Beth” and “I Want You” were lifted from the aborted Japanese live album and used on the finished Alive II. As the band did not want to duplicate songs included on Alive!, the songs chosen for the three live sides of the album were all drawn from Kiss’ three preceding studio albums - Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun. Alive II, captures one of the most bombastic displays in rock’s history–every ounce of Kiss’ blood-spitting, fire-breathing energy is here. After this thunderous document’s historic introduction (“You wanted the best, you got the best!”), the band launches straight into “Detroit Rock City,” just one of the many classics whose dramatic power is multiplied in this setting. “Love Gun” takes on even more swagger than its studio version, and Ace Frehley’s “Shock Me” is perhaps his definitive performance. “Beth” is delivered by Peter Criss atop an almost terrifying backdrop of teenage screams. In between spitting blood and fire, Simmons contributes the lascivious “Calling Dr. Love” and the prehistoric stomp of “God of Thunder.” The requisite anthem “Shout It Out Loud” is here too, along with a quintet of studio cuts, rounding out one of hard rock’s most important statements. ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW One of the perennial saving graces of rock & roll is its accessibility to the true believer. In a sort of Horatio Alger formula, if you need it badly enough and have the right attitude, eventually you’ll become an adequate rocker. Kiss, a band built almost entirely around an image, offers the latest proof of this maxim. Kiss has improved dramatically during its recording career, first to the high point of raw efficiency achieved on “I Wanna Rock & Roll All Night,” more recently to improved instrumental technique. The group has brought a lot of listening and a lot more outright thievery to Alive II, resulting in a textbook demonstration of how to play Stones/Who hard rock. The guitar solos on “King of the Night Time World” and “Shock Me” are note-for-note duplications of sections from Pete Townshend’s long improvisation (“My Generation”) on side two of Live at Leeds. Even more startling is the way the screams over sustained guitar codas on those two songs and on “Makin’ Love” sound exactly like Roger Daltrey finishing off Townshend’s pyrotechnics. It’s open to question how much credit to give a band for using such well-proven formulas, and it’s also true that a wan reflection of the original, no matter how sincere, is still not the real thing. But it remains that Alive II captures the essence of live rock & roll very well—perhaps even a little better than the recent Stones set. ~ John Swenson (January 12, 1978) TRACKS: Side one “Detroit Rock City” (Paul Stanley, Bob Ezrin) – 3:58 “King of the Night Time World” (Stanley, Ezrin, Fowley,Anthony) “Ladies Room” (Gene Simmons) – 3:11 “Makin’ Love” (Stanley, Sean Delaney) – 3:13 “Love Gun” (Stanley) – 3:34 Side two “Calling Dr. Love” (Simmons) – 3:32 “Christine Sixteen” (Simmons) – 2:45 “Shock Me” (Ace Frehley) – 5:51 “Hard Luck Woman” (Stanley) – 3:06 “Tomorrow and Tonight” (Stanley) – 3:20 Side three “I Stole Your Love” (Stanley) – 3:36 “Beth” (Peter Criss, Ezrin, Stan Penridge) – 2:24 “God of Thunder” (Stanley) – 5:16 “I Want You” (Stanley) – 4:14 “Shout It Out Loud” (Stanley, Simmons, Ezrin) – 3:37 Side four - New studio tracks “All American Man” (Stanley, Sean Delaney) – 3:13 “Rockin’ in the U.S.A.” (Simmons) – 2:44 “Larger Than Life” (Simmons) – 3:55 “Rocket Ride” (Frehley, Delaney) – 4:07 “Anyway You Want It” (Dave Clark) – 2:33

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OCTOBER 1976 - Stanley Clarke: School Days is released. # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5 # Allmusic 4.5/5 stars School Days is the fourth album by Stanley Clarke, released in October, 1976. It reached #34 on the Billboard 200 Top LP’s chart, and #2 on the Billboard Top Jazz LP’s chart. School Days was a game changer for the legendary Stanley Clarke in many ways. Not only did it forever etch the title superstar musician to his name all over the world, it also crossed his incredible music over to a whole new level of listeners, which to this day continue to flock to this album for the solid funk, rock, jazz and fusion release that only this master jam could achieve. After a very successful run with Chick Corea’s Return To Forever, world class bassist and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Clarke branched out on his own and made some very credible solo albums. When School Days hit in late 1976, it was not uncommon to hear tracks like “Hot Fun” and “School Days” being played on all formats of radio. Whether it be urban, rock, or jazz, the School Days album was the go to album of choice for many radio stations, as its rhythms and cosmic funk/rock/jazz energy would truly enhance the listening experience to a whole new realm. For this star studded affair, Stanley Clarke reached out to some of the greatest musicians of all time like John McLauglin, George Duke, Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Steve Gadd, Icarus Johnson and many others. Not only do you get the wonderful songs previously mentioned, but there are even more classics like “Quiet Afternoon” with some very solid drumming by Steve Gadd, “Desert Song” featuring a stunning duet with John McLauglin on guitar, as well as the apocalyptic album closer “Life Is Just A Game,” which features some very powerful bass and drum fireworks between Stanley Clarke and Billy Cobham, with George Duke’s amazing keyboard expertise. REVIEW Richard S. Ginell, allmusic Every pro electric-bass player and their mothers wore out the grooves of this record when it first came out, trying to cop Clarke’s speedy, thundering, slapped-thumb bass licks. Yet ultimately, it was Clarke’s rapidly developing compositional skills that made this album so listenable and so much fun for the rest of us, then and now. The title track not only contributed a killer riff to the bass vocabulary; it is a cunningly organized piece of music with a well-defined structure. Moreover, Clarke follows his calling card with two tunes that are even more memorable – the sauntering ballad “Quiet Afternoon” and an ebullient, Brazilian percussion-laced number with a good string arrangement and a terrific groove, “The Dancer.” Clarke also brings out the standup bass for a soulful acoustic dialogue with John McLaughlin on “Desert Song.” Evidently enthused by their leader’s material, David Sancious (keyboards) and Raymond Gomez (guitars) deliver some of their best solos on records – and with George Duke on hand on one cut, you hear some preliminary flickerings of Clarke’s ventures into the commercial sphere. But at this point in time, Clarke was triumphantly proving that it was possible to be both good and commercial at the same time. TRACKS All songs composed by Stanley Clarke Side one 1. “School Days” – 7:51 2. “Quiet Afternoon” – 5:09 3. “The Dancer” – 5:27 Side two 1. “Desert Song” – 6:56 2. “Hot Fun” – 2:55 3. “Life Is Just a Game” – 9:00

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October 14, 1977 – David Bowie: “Heroes” is released. # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5 (MUST-HAVE!) # Allmusic 5/5 stars # Rolling Stone (see original review below) "Heroes" is an album by David Bowie, released on October 14, 1977. It reached #35 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart, and #3 on the UK Albums chart. "Heroes" was marketed by RCA with the catch phrase, "There’s Old Wave. There’s New Wave. And there's David Bowie..." The second installment of his 'Berlin Trilogy' with Brian Eno (the other releases being Low and Lodger) "Heroes" developed the sound of Low in a more positive direction. Of the three albums, it was the most befitting of the appellation "Berlin", being the only one wholly recorded there. The title track remains one of Bowie's best known, a classic story of two lovers who meet at the Berlin Wall. The album is considered one of his best by critics, notably for the contributions of guitarist Robert Fripp who flew in from the U.S. to record his parts in one day. John Lennon was quoted as saying that when making his album Double Fantasy in 1980, his ambition was to "do something as good as "Heroes"." Recorded at Hansa Tonstudio in what was then West Berlin, "Heroes" reflected the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city. Co-producer Tony Visconti considered it "one of my last great adventures in making albums. The studio was about 500 yards from the wall. Red Guards would look into our control-room window with powerful binoculars." Bowie again paid tribute to his Krautrock influences: the title is a nod to the track "Hero" on the album NEU! '75 by the German band Neu!, while "V-2 Schneider" is inspired by and named after Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider. Earlier in 1977, Kraftwerk had name-checked Bowie on the title track of Trans-Europe Express. The cover photo was inspired by German artist Erich Heckel's Roquairol, as was that of The Idiot, one of Bowie's collaborations with Iggy Pop that was released the same year. ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW Heroes is the second album in what we can now hope will be a series of David Bowie-Brian Eno collaborations, because this album answers the question of whether Bowie can be a real collaborator. Like his work with Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople and Iggy Pop, Low, Bowie's first album with Eno, seemed to be just another auteurist exploitation, this time of the Eno-Kraftwerk avant-garde. Heroes, though, prompts a much more enthusiastic reading of the collaboration, which here takes the form of a union of Bowie's dramatic instincts and Eno's unshakable sonic serenity. Even more importantly, Bowie shows himself for the first time as a willing, even anxious, student rather than a simple cribber. As rock's Zen master, Eno is fully prepared to show him the way. Like Low, Heroes is divided into a cyclic instrumental side and a song-set side. "V-2 Schneider" is an ingeniously robotic recasting of Booker T. and the M.G.'s -- at once typical of Bowie's obsession with pop dance music and a spectacular instance of an Eno R&B "study" (a going concern of Eno's own records). "Sense of Doubt" lines up an ominously deep piano figure with Eno synthesizer washes, blending them into "Moss Garden," an exquisitely static cut featuring Bowie on koto, a Japanese string instrument. Low had no such moments of easy exchange; Bowie either submitted his voice as another instrument for Eno to play the part of art-rock keyboard player. The most spectacular moments on this record occur on the vocal side's crazed rock & roll. Working inside the new style Bowie forged for Iggy Pop, "Beauty and the Beast" makes very weird but probable connections between the fairy tale, Iggy's angel-beast identity and Jean Cocteau's Surrealist Catholicism, a crucial source for Cocteau's film of the tale. For the finale, Heroes explodes into a trilogy of dark prophecy: "Sons of the Silent Age," "Heroes" and "Black Out." It's a Diamond Dogs set that, this time, makes it into the back pages of Samuel Delaney's post-apocalypse fiction, pushed by a brilliant cerebral nova among the players. Bowie sings in a paradoxical (or is it schizo?) style at once unhinged and wholly self-controlled. With a chill, the listener can hear clearly through Bowie's compressed lyrics and the dense sound. We'll have to wait to see if Bowie has found in the austere Eno a long-term collaborator who can draw out the substantial words and music that have lurked beneath the surface of Bowie's clever games for so long. But Eno clearly has effected a nearly miraculous change in Bowie already. ~ Bart Testa (January 12, 1978) TRACKS: All lyrics written by David Bowie; all music composed by David Bowie except where noted. Side one "Beauty and the Beast" – 3:32 "Joe the Lion" – 3:05 "Heroes" (Bowie, Brian Eno) – 6:07 "Sons of the Silent Age" – 3:15 "Blackout" – 3:50 Side two "V-2 Schneider" – 3:10 "Sense of Doubt" – 3:57 "Moss Garden" (Bowie, Eno) – 5:03 "Neuköln" (Bowie, Eno) – 4:34 "The Secret Life of Arabia" (Bowie, Eno, Carlos Alomar) – 3:46