Review taken from www.collectorsmusicreviews.com
Running time: (corrected) 61:48
Tracklist: Deuce, Strutter, Hotter Than Hell, Fire House, She, C’Mon And Love Me, Solo Gene Simmons, 100,000 Years, Solo Peter Criss / 100,000 Years cont., Black Diamond, Cold Gin, Rock And Roll All Nite
Flash back to 1975 and KISS was in the final stages of being an opening band, on this night Black Sabbath was the headliners. They had just finishes work on the Alive ! record and were on the final dates of the Dressed To Kill tour. The set list had been pretty much standard and as an opening act were dangerous.
The concert was recorded by Dan Lampinski who’s vault of audience recordings began to appear on various torrent sites a couple years back, the Sabbath set is also in circulation and is worth seeking out. (*Included here and treated with the same dedication and effort as the KISS show)
Superb three dimensional audience recording recorded close to the stage with minimal audience interference with the band in phenomenal form. I downloaded this and the Sabbath set when it first appeared and it deserves a silver release and is a perfect representation of the band at this point.
Dan Lampinski recorded over 100 concerts in the Providence/Boston area, mostly between 1974 and 1978. His earliest recordings were made with an internal microphone deck, and though they are somewhat lo-fi compared to his later work, some very great moments in rock history were captured for posterity. In late 1974 he bought a Sony TC-152SD tape recorder, a Sony ECM-99 stereo microphone, and began using Maxell cassettes. He was also fortunate enough to have a friend who provided excellent taping seats for many shows, resulting in high quality recordings. In 1977, he switched over to a Nakamichi 550 tape recorder, two Nakamichi CM-300 microphones, and continued using Maxell cassettes.
The band storms the stage with the classic opening of Deuce and Strutter to get things rolling. Paul acknowledges the audience as this is the bands first appearance in Providence and they slow the set down with something slow and heavy with She. I love the middle section where it starts of with Bass and Drums then the guitars break into the riff and Ace plays a great solo and leads them into the fast pace section….so heavy ! The song is also a solo spot for Ace and he sets the place ablaze..afterward Paul states “Ace Frehely….Smokin !”
100,000 Years, is another set highlight, Gene begins to spit blood and some people close to Dan say “Grosse” upon the sight of fresh blood, not for the weak hearted. I would imagine that some of the crowd were not prepared for what they were seeing. If there was one KISS song to be label epic this one is it, its inherent in the riff and the way Ace plays the leads over it is just so great. Vintage Peter Criss, that is all need be spoken about his solo. Well not all. He kills it from the first beat, he is in his prime as a player and it shows and the crowd in return show their appreciation.
Paul does a great rap and has the audience completely on his side, it leads into the drinking rap that always garners hoots and hollers. The band know what’s next and Paul gets them to scream it “COLD GIN”. and the party atmosphere is in full swing, it is a crowd favorite and by the time the song is over, the crowd isn’t’, they demand more and they band finish with their philosophy, Rock And Roll All Nite. The recording keeps going after the band finishes with comments being picked up like “I didn’t like them till the end”, It is a brilliant end to a great show that has the band winning over some of the crowd on their way to world domination.
Notes on this new 2016 Corrected Remaster:
Although indeed a near perfect recording, the original High Resolution Tape transfers had problems. Though minor I wanted to correct them the best way I could because this is legendary stuff and why not perfect it when you have the chance.
- The tape-transfers had a mismatch in speed. This was pretty far off and this is a problem with analog recording mostly when tapes are recorded and then re-transferred using a different machine. These masters are now on the correct pitch/speed.
I also have tried to correct most of the tape-drop-outs in a way that it's not annoying and barely noticeable that they were there. I also beefed up the sound a bit, it has more balls now and crystal clear sound while retaining the original characteristics of the recording.
Original infosheets:
Providence Civic Center
Providence, RI, U.S.A.
3 August 1975
Kiss
01 Deuce
02 Strutter
03 Hotter Than Hell
04 Firehouse
05 She
06 C'Mon and Love Me
07 100,000 Years
08 Drums/Paul Stanley Rap
09 100,000 Years
10 Black Diamond
11 Cold Gin
12 Rock and Roll All Nite
Black Sabbath
CD1
01 Intro
02 Killing Yourself To Live
03 Hole In The Sky
04 Snowblind
05 Symptom Of The Universe
06 War Pigs
07 Megalomania
CD2
01 Sabra Cadabra
02 Jam
03 Sometimes I'm Happy
04 Drums
05 Supernaut
06 Iron Man
07 Jam
08 Black Sabbath (spliced)
09 Spiral Architect
10 Embryo/Children Of The Grave
11 E: Paranoid
Master audience recording taped by Dan Lampinski
Sony TC-152SD Tape Recorder
Sony ECM-99 Stereo Microphone
Maxell cassettes
Mastered and FLAC'ed by Carl Morstadt (dantalion8@yahoo.com)
Lineage:
Master Cassette ->
Nakamichi CR-3A cassette deck with azimuth correction ->
M-Audio Firewire Audiophile 2496 ->
CDWAV 24-bit/96-KHz wav files ->
Goldwave (normalizing and crossfades) ->
CDWAV (track breaks) ->
dBpowerAMP Audio Converter (24-bit/96-KHz wav files converted to
16-bit/44.1 KHz wav files) ->
FLAC Front End (FLAC 8 with sector boundary alignment)
FLAC files tagged with Foobar2000 Live Show Tagger
No EQ'ing.
2016 Corrected Remaster in 24/96 resolution by Eddy Lite for hoerejong MultiMedia Design.
No EQ'ing used either...
