KISS - music from Fridays 1982 (franKENstein Redux)

I consider myself a "charter Elder fan", meaning I got the album on release day back in 1981 and loved it from the beginning. I had been a fan since 1977 and after I watched most of my friends jump ship after Dynasty (and the rest long gone by Unmasked) I felt like the only KISS fan left in the world.

I had seen photos of the band in 16 Magazines showing their new makeup and costumes and wondering what to expect. I went to the local Music Vision and got the new single "A World Without Heroes". For me, anything new from KISS was beyond exciting and I liked what I heard. Even better, the B-side was a new song by my hero Ace. This music was fresh to my ears and even though I was only 12-going-on-13 I personally liked this more "musical" version of the band. Eric's drummer was really cool on "Dark Light" and Ace's solo was great. I also liked Gene's "mellow" voice which reminded me of some of my favorite songs from his '78 solo album.

Shortly after that, the album was released. I remember going to the store 2 or 3 days in a row asking about it, but it seemed to be a couple days late in arriving. Finally, I got it and instantly fell in love with the music. Having discovered stuff like Pink Floyd's the Wall (still my favorite album of all time) I though it was great to hear something a bit "deeper" from the guys than "Shout It Out Loud". I had even formed my first band that same year which I called "ODYSSEY" because of the song. I should also mention I was one of those unfortunate fans who got the LP with the clear sleeve, but NO lyric sheet. I still didn't know some of the words until the Internet was born many years later.

I also can remember like it was yesterday watching Fridays when it aired and being beyond thrilled to see KISS on TV (not that common back then). Plus...three new songs played! The perfect "Elder sandwich" of the opener ("the Oath"), closer ("I") and the middle track "A World Without Heroes". I don't care what anyone says, I agree with the record label and the album MUST have the 1981 US running order. The "original" Japanese release is horrible. It sounds like climbing up a very long hill to find nothing at the top. As for the "story line", for me "The Oath" sets the stage and gives a great overview of what's to come (as told through the rest of the songs). The musical balance is perfect in that order. It flows great and begins and ends with a bang. I consider "The Oath" to be proto-power-metal with its riffing, drumming and lyrical content. Musically speaking, the album overall was incredibly influential on my own writing throughout the years.

So, here is my version of the Fridays appearance, upscaled to 1080p.

For the audio, I wanted to remix and recreate the sound for a stereo mix. To do this I had to borrow a bit of Paul's guitar from the album. Ace's guitar dominates the original mix, so it was isolated and used for his parts. Paul's rhythm parts on "The Oath" and "I" are taken from the album, but edited to match his playing as he does a few things differently live (mostly due to his over-the-top theatrics, ha). Ace was also badly out of tune (or bending the stings) on a lot of parts, so I did some cut-and-paste work replacing the rougher spots with better parts where the same things are played.

Gene's bass is 100% from the show as are Eric's drums, which I have augmented using kick, snare, tom and cymbal samples I created rather than using "modern" samples. These are blended with his original drums.

For "A World Without Heroes" a stereo guitar/keyboard mix was created using the parts from the show mixed with some from the album to get separation (the show actually did have keyboards). I tweaked Paul's solo slightly just to fix up a couple bum notes and also blended his album solo very low to give a bit of the same ambiance since his tone is very dry on the show.

Even in 1982, as I watched the show I could tell the singing was a bit "off" in places. Particularly Paul, who comes out of the gate hot, singing uncharacteristically sharp all over "The Oath" with Ace's very loud and out of tune guitar not helping. So, for this version, I borrowed a few words from the 3rd verse where he re-sings the same lyrics and blended it with the rest to make the first verse a little more on-key. Gene also gets the same treatment for his 2nd "and you don't know why you don't know". I also used very small bit the album vocal tracks for a few words that were missing or very low in the mix due to the guys not being on-mic at time. I also blended a VERY small bit of the background vocals from the album on "I" just to fill them out a bit.

As I always say, these videos are NOT for the purists. This performance is MOSTLY true to the original, but approached the same way KISS might approach an official release, with just a bit of "clean-up" for a more enjoyable experience. The original is readily available, so this in no way is intended to replace it or re-write "kisstory".

Enjoy!