KISS - Love Gun

1977

Three awesome songs. I Stole Your Love, Shock Me and Love Gun.

Christine Sixteen works pretty well as a pop song made for the radio.

Almost Human has a cool riff and cool sounds.

Tomorrow and Tonight is an anthem along the line of Rock and Roll All Night.

Got Love For Sale is uptempo and kind of catchy.

Hooligan. Almost Human, Plaster Caster and Then She Kissed Me are all pretty much pure filler.

A lot of Gene song on here and none of the best ones are his.

KISS - Alive II

1977

     I'm pretty sure this is the first Kiss album I ever got. I had them all not long after getting this one. I guess I was around 10 or 11 when this came out.

     Kiss we're bigger than life. They we're rock/metal and they we're catchy. So if your're a 13 year old with no prior experience with "Metal" and something that comes along that's catchy enough to turn you to the "Metal" side...I assume everybody reading this understands what it's like to be a hardcore music fan, a "Metalhead" or whatever. I think Kiss let millions of kids know there was a musical alternative to Barry Manilow, KC and the Sunshine Band, or John Denver or the Carpenters or whatever...KISS was super popular because they were accessible. They we're a gateway band for a lot of people to go discover more "serious" music or whatever, and if you were 12,13,14, years old when that happened, you're never gonna forget it.

     Before Kiss, I had Beatles and Beach Boys records. After Kiss I had Van Halen.

Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick

1977

Sweet - Off The Record

1977

Somewhere between Queen and King Diamond, but not as good as either. Those really high harmonies don't even sound human. I suppose this is a bit more rocking than their more popular stuff. Plus there's a James Brown type funk tune on here.

Cheap Trick - In Color

1977

This album and Cheap Trick have been a part of my life so long they're impossible to separate. You could not have been my girlfriend if you didn't like Cheap Trick. I guess that's no big deal 'cuz for a while there you couldn't be my girlfriend if you didn't like Big Block Chevelles.
One of my favorite albums of all time and probably my second favorite Cheap Trick album if I had to put them in order.

Produced by Tom Werman.

UFO - Lights Out

Couple good songs and some nice soloing. This doesn't do much for me. You know, it's kinda crappy.

Foreigner - Foreigner

Late 70's hard rock that is closer to light rock. Sorta like Bad Company, but Bad Company is cooler. This album starts out pretty strong but by the time your into the second side it just starts getting too lightweight for my taste.

Lynyrd Skynryd - Street Survivors

Not my favorite Skynyrd album, but still real strong.

They included their tour dates in with the record. The album didn't even come out till two days after the tour started. Seems like an odd thing to include in the album since it would be relevant for only a short while. I guess it could looked back on as something to commemorate the tour. Well, as it turned out they only did the first five dates of this tour and then their plane crashed.

Queen - News Of The World

This album starts with We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions. I would think anybody over six years old is familiar with these songs. Then it heads into the rippin' smoker Sheer Heart Attack stops abruptly and starts into a slow piano ballad, All Dead, All Dead. Followed by a bigger ballad rocker Spread You Wings.

He knew it was time

He made up his mind

To leave his dead life behind

His boss said to him

Boy you'd better begin

To get those crazy notions

Right out of your head

Sammy who do you think that you are

You should have been sweeping

Up the emerald bar

Spread Your Wings is the first Queen song with no vocal harmonies. This is their sixth album.

Side one ends with Fight From The Inside a nice rocker (and apparently Slash's all time favorite riff...or something like that).

Side two opens with the full on Led Zeppelin dazed and Confused styled Get Down Make Love. Sleeping On The Sidewalk recorded in one take. Inspired by ZZ Top and it sounds like ZZ Top.

Who Needs You has Spanish guitar and maracas and reminds me of something that Paul McCartney and Wings would do. It's Late sounds like a song you might expect from Queen. It was released as a single in the US and reached #74. My Melancholy Blues sounds like Ella Fitzgerald or some Jazz diva from a different era.

Stylistically this album is all over the place, but all the songs are good/great. All the band members wrote songs and played various instruments that you don't associate them with that particular player. Brian May and Roger Taylor sing a couple songs each with Freddie Mercury doing most of the vocals of course. This album has a timeless quality to it.

Foghat - Live

A harder rockin' Doobie Brothers. You Know, like Grand Funk Railroad rockin' the blues. This album is in the Ted Nuget/Aerosmith neighborhood of full on rockin' 70's style.

AC/DC - Let There Be Rock

Still solid after all these years. Not a bad song on the album.

Aerosmith - Draw The Line

Good rockin' album. On side two they start to lose the aggresivness and harder rockin that side one has. Still a solid rockin' album. Things are probably starting to drop off right here for Aerosmith. Not as good as ones that came before it, but still solid. Kings And Queens is probably my favorite Aerosmith song and it comes from this album.

Fun Facts: Joe Perry calls this the "Blackout Album" because he and Steven Tyler were so wasted during the time they recorded this that they would frequently blackout.

The Beach Boys - Love You

One of my favorite Beach Boys albums. The first few songs start out normal enough, but by the time they get to Johnny Carson things take a turn for the weird and only get more bizarre from there. This was going to be a solo album called Brian Wilson Loves You but the Beach Boys appropriated it. It seems like he may have collaborated with a 10 year old on the lyrics. The music is mostly simple and a bit cartoony. The songs where Brian Wilson sings lead sound like a cross between a homeless bum and the guy who gets way too drunk at the company Christmas party and takes over the karaoke machine. The usual Beach Boys harmonies are there on most of the songs.