Never let it be said that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees and Kennedy Center honorees KISS don’t love showering their fans with product. Recently celebrating their half-decade of existence, and what they claim was their final tour, the group’s third full-length album, gets the full-to-the-brim roll out in this 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Dressed To Kill.
As with most collections of this sort, we get a remastered version of the album taken from the original 1975 stereo analog master tapes. The tracks sound absolutely pristine, even if some of the tunes present Peter Criss, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, and Ace Frehley at some of their most rock and roll sophomoric. But KISS is a band that never really managed rarified heights with lyrics or layered production, just good rockin songs like 10 here.
From the hotel story opener “Room Service,” the nearly commercial sing-along chorus of “Two Timer,” the double acoustic picked instrumental opening to “Rock Bottom,” (one of the better nuanced musical moments here) to the unabashed, surely non-#METOO lyrics of “C’mon And Love Me,” (still a fun rocker, truth be told), this is fun stuff. Less we forget, this is the album that does contain the quintennial KISS rocker “She,” with Ace Frehley leading at his best, and harmony vocals to the fore, and the anthemic “Rock And Roll All Nite.”
Yes, this updated Dressed To Kill sounds great, but what comes across most on the mix for me is Peter Criss’ drumming and the bands, at times, rather stellar, backing vocals. Beyond the album, as stated, KISS presents quite the treasure trove across the 107 songs in total here, including nearly 80 unreleased tracks.
These include stuff like outtakes from studio sessions, never before heard songs like “Mistake” and “Burning Up With Fever,” from the album’s master tapes, promo videos and two full concerts from the Dressed To Kill tour, one from the Cobo Arena in Detroit, the ‘rock city’ always a fan stronghold for the band and the other from the RKO Orpheum Theatre in Davenport.
In addition to all the music, the deluxe edition of this set includes a 100-page hardcover book and “Kollectibles” like a reprint of the Dressed To Kill 1975 Press Kit, a T-shirt iron-on, a magnet sheet, an embossed metal New York license plate, white-pearled guitar picks, a “Gotham Rock City News Volume 3” newspaper…and more. We’ve all certainly seen and heard the rest when it comes to Deluxe Box set collections, now you get the best with the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Dressed To Kill.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
