Vinnie Vincent - Guitars From Hell (1991)

Vincent John Cusano, better known by his stage name Vinnie Vincent, was born on 6 August 1952, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he picked up the guitar at an early age, being inspired by bluegrass and rock and roll. In 1980 he moved to Los Angeles, California where he became a staff songwriter for the television series 'Happy Days' and 'Joanie Loves Chachi', with many of the series songs being written on his acoustic guitar while sitting at the Cunninghams' kitchen table on the 'Happy Days' set. After being introduced to the band KISS by songwriter Adam Mitchell, Vincent was brought in as the replacement for guitarist Ace Frehley when he left the group, as his personality meshed well with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, thus enabling him to play lead guitar on six of the nine tracks on the 'Creatures Of The Night' album, as well as co-writing three. After a commercially disappointing Tenth Anniversary tour, that finished on a high at what ended up being the last "makeup" show in Brasil, Vincent returned to the studio with KISS to record the 'Lick It Up' album. His work was productive, yielding eight co-writes out of the ten songs on the album, but although he performed well live with KISS, he refused to sign an employment contract, which strained the relationship with Simmons/Stanley. This arose because of disputes over his role in the band and pay, and so consequently Vincent never formally became a member of the band. This ultimately led to him leaving after the North American leg of the 'Lick It Up' tour, where he was replaced by Mark St. John. Despite parting on bad terms, Vincent was later used by KISS as a songwriter on the 1992 album 'Revenge', but he soon fell out of favour with Simmons and Stanley, as they claimed that he again began pulling the same kind of crazy stuff that led to him leaving the band in the first place. After he left KISS, Vincent formed the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and released a self-titled solo album in 1986 with Robert Fleischman on vocals, then followed it up in 1988 with 'All Systems Go', featuring Mark Slaughter on vocals and Dana Strum on bass. Demos for a third album were recorded, but this was never released due to the Enigma record label going bankrupt, but the eleven tracks saw Robert Fleischman return to the band in place of Mark Slaughter, who had gone on to form his own band Slaughter, taking bassist Dana Strum with him, and they were joined by Chris Lee on bass and Andre Labelle on drums. The album was originally to be titled 'Revenge', but Gene Simmons like the title and convinced Vincent to let him have it for the next KISS album, so it was renamed as 'Guitars From Hell', and with nine of the tracks having since surfaced, that's just enough for a storming 43-minute glam-metal shred-fest.  

Track listing

01 Rocks On Fire 
02 Nuke It
03 Shocker 
04 Invincible
05 Truth
06 Full Shredd 
07 Wild Child
08 Youngblood
09 Genesis

KISS - Nine Lives (1987)

In 1983, after nearly a decade of performing in their trademark make-up, KISS decided that it was time for a change,and they made the decision to abandon their make-up and costumes. The band officially appeared in public without make-up for the first time since its very early days on 18 September 1983, on an appearance on MTV, which coincided with the release of their 'Lick It Up' album. The tour to promote the new album and the unmasked band members began in Portugal, and it paid off as 'Lick It Up' became their first Gold record in three years, even though the tour was actually more sparsely attended than the previous one. Guitarist Vinnie Vincent had not got on with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley for a while, and so he left the band at the conclusion of the tour in March 1984, and was replaced by Mark St. John, a session player and guitar tutor. With St. John on board, KISS released the album 'Animalize' in 1984, resulting in their best-selling record in America during the decade, with over two million copies sold. However, St. John came down with reactive arthritis during rehearsals for the 'Animalize' tour, and only performed at a handful of shows before being dismissed from the band in December 1984, and being replaced by Bruce Kulick, the band's fourth lead guitarist in less than three years. With their most stable line-up for a while, the band released a series of Platinum albums, including 1985's 'Asylum', and 1987's 'Crazy Nights', with the latter being one of the band's most successful albums overseas. The single 'Crazy Crazy Nights' reached No. 4 on the UK singles chart, and was the band's highest-charting single in that country. While preparing songs for 'Crazy Nights', Simmons, Stanley and the band recorded demos of a number of songs which were eventually turned down for inclusion on the finished album, but these have subsequently leaked online, with there being enough of them from around 1987 to compile a companion album to 'Crazy Nights', which could have been issued the same year.  

Track listing

01 Sword And Stone ('Crazy Nights' out-take 1987)
02 Suspicious (demo 1987)
03 Time Traveler (demo 1987)
04 Dial L For Love (demo 1987)
05 Best Man For You (Paul Stanley demo 1987)
06 Promise The Moon (demo 1986)
07 Hunger For Love (Gene Simmons demo 1987)
08 Don't Let Go (Paul Stanley demo 1987)
09 Have Mercy  (demo 1987)
10 When Two Hearts Collide (Paul Stanley demo 1987)
11 Nine Lives (demo 1987)
12 Are You Always This Hot ('Crazy Nights' out-take 1987)

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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Wicked Lester - Wicked Lester (1971)

Wicked Lester was a New York-based rock band, formed (as Rainbow) in 1970, and is most notable for including in their lineup bassist Gene Klein (later Gene Simmons) and rhythm guitarist Stanley Eisen (later Paul Stanley). In 1971 they changed their name to Wicked Lester, and after a chance meeting with Electric Lady Studios engineer Ron Johnsen, they were given the opportunity to record some demos. Johnsen, who produced the demo tape, shopped it around to a few labels with no success, but eventually the tape was screened by Epic Records, who purchased the masters and agreed to fund the recording of a full album. The entire recording process, which adhered to a haphazard schedule, took nearly a year to complete, not helped when Epic demanded the group fire guitarist Steve Coronel and replace him with Ron Leejack. When the finished album was presented to Epic's A&R director Don Ellis, he said that he hated it and was not going to release it, and the next day Wicked Lester manager Lew Linet requested and received the group's release from Epic Records. It was at this time that Klein and Eisen (now using the stage names Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley) decided that one of the reasons for Wicked Lester's lack of success was that they didn't have a singular musical vision, incorporating rock and roll, folk rock and pop, so they made the decision to start a new version of the group, and began auditioning for a drummer in the fall of 1972. After recruiting Peter Criss, they decided to concentrate more of the straightforward rock and roll, as well as theatrics, and after another name change, KISS was born. The Wicked Lester album was a mixture of original material and covers, showcasing the group's eclectic style, and three of the songs would later resurface on KISS albums with varying degrees of similarity. The only part of Wicked Lester's album to actually be released was the cover art, which was re-used for The Laughing Dogs' debut album in 1979. CBS Records, who owned the rights to the album, remixed it and planned to release it in late 1976 to capitalize on KISS's commercial popularity, but the band and Neil Bogart, the president of Casablanca Records, purchased the album from CBS for $137,500 and locked it in their vaults. Bootlegs have since leaked online and so we are now able to hear it and make up our own minds if we agree with Paul Stanley's opinion that it's 'eclectic crap'.  

Track listing

01 Love Her All I Can (Stanley)
02 Sweet Ophelia (Barry Mann/Gerry Goffin)
03 Keep Me Waiting (Stanley)
04 Simple Type (Simmons)
05 She (Coronel/Simmon)
06 Too Many Mondays (Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil)
07 What Happens in the Darkness (Tamy Lester Smith)
08 When the Bell Rings (Austin Roberts/Christopher Welch)
09 Molly (aka Some Other Guy) (Stanley)
10 (We Want To) Shout It Out Loud (The Hollies)
11 Long, Long Road (Stanley)

Wicked Lester was:
Paul Stanley - lead vocals, guitar
Gene Simmons - lead vocals, bass guitar
Ron Leejack - lead guitar, banjo
Brooke Ostrander - piano, horns
Tony Zarrella - drums & percussion

Suggested by 'The Greatest Albums You'll Never Hear' by Bruno MacDonald


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KISS - Snow Blind (1978)

In 1978, each of the individual members of KISS decided that they would record a solo album. Off they went and made their records, and they were then all released on the same day. KISS fans must have been estatic - it was just like the band had recorded a quadrupal album........until they listened to them. It was inevitable that the quality of the songs would be variable, and the general opinion is that the order they should be listened to is Ace, Paul, Gene, and lastly Peter (if at all)
This album is what Album Fixer imagined an actual 1978 KISS record might have sounded like if the band had brought their best songs to the table instead of recording them on their own, and if, like me, you haven't actually heard the solo albums, then as a KISS album it hangs together pretty well.

Track listing

01 Move On
02 Radioactive
03 New York Groove 
04 See You Tonite 
05 Ozone 
06 Tonight You Belong to Me 
07 Rip It Out 
08 Don't You Let Me Down 
09 Tunnel of Love 
10 Snow Blind 
11 Living in Sin 
12 It's Alright

This post is a requiem for the Album Fixer site, as I had managed to access some pages using the webcache option, and I'd saved them for future reference, but it appears that if they're not viewed after a certain period then they are deleted for good, and they've now all gone. Hopefully I've posted most of his better efforts. 

R.I.P.