Gene Simmons - Alter Ego (1978)

In 2017 Gene Simmons released 'The Vault', which was a collection of his musical 'Alter-Ego', and contained 50 years of unreleased solo recordings created between 1966 and 2016 on 11 CDs, packaged in a hardcover coffee table book featuring 50,000 words and 160 pages of unseen photos, all housed in a 40lb deluxe safe made of metal and wood. It also features collectables available exclusively to the box set, including the first ever non-makeup Gene Simmons action figure and a two sided gold medallion. If you have a spare $1,500.00 then go for it, or you could choose to have have Simmons personally make the delivery to your home, for just $50,000.00. For those of us who don't have that kind of cash, I decided to extract some of the songs to make up an album which could have followed his 'Gene Simmons' release from 1978, where all four members of Kiss issued a solo album at the same time. There were a number of songs in 'The Vault' which dated from 1978 and which weren't on that album, so they were either recorded during, or just after, the sessions for 'Gene Simmons', and with the addition of three tracks recorded with Eddie and Alex Van Halen in 1977 (which I particularly wanted to include) there was exactly enough material for a 40-minute album. The sound quality is variable, but I've tried to make all the songs sound like they were recorded together, and listening to this collection you can't help but admit that the man knows a good hook when he hears it.   

Track listing

01 Got Love For Sale (with Eddie and Alex Van Halen)
02 Love By Invitation
03 Eat Your Heart Out
04 X Ray Eyes
05 Obnoxious
06 Tunnel Of Love (with Eddie and Alex Van Halen)
07 Just Begun To Fight
08 Mongoloid Man (with Joe Perry and Michael Desbarres)
09 Gypsy Eyes
10 Bad Bad Lovin'
11 Fourever
12 Christine Sixteen (with Eddie and Alex Van Halen)
13 It's Funny, But It Ain't No Joke


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