Garage Sale Vinyl: KISS
Rock and Roll Over / Casablanca Records / November 1976
by Christopher Long
There was a hilarious Saturday Night Live bit back in 1978 called “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.” In the sketch, cast member John Belushi plays “The Thing,” an obnoxious party guest who overstays his welcome. Days later, the party hosts, played by Bill Murray and Laraine Newman, are horrified to discover “The Thing” still holed up in their apartment, eating them out of house and home, and refusing to leave. So, it’s not that I dislike KISS. They’re just the real-life “Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.” They stayed at the party too long. In the process, they lost their mystique, and their street cred was irreversibly compromised.
Truth be told, for decades, I was an annoyingly overzealous KISS super-geeker. In fact, in junior high, the jocks mockingly nicknamed me, “Kiss” Long. The name would stick ‘til long after graduation. I also once beat a kid’s head in with a cafeteria chair as a result of a KISS-related high school conflict. In my defense, it should be known that I warned him repeatedly not to fuck with me. While I definitely did NOT instigate the situation, I gleefully resolved it. And if not for our shared over-the-top affection for the kabuki-faced Fab Four, I probably wouldn’t have married that girl from school. Hence, it’s likely that my son wouldn’t have been born, either.
Back in those days, KISS was a dangerous band, one worth fighting for. Decades later, they’d become a bloated brand, boasting a half-scab lineup that aligned itself more closely to KFC and Coca-Cola than to Led Zeppelin and The Who. But their first six studio records featuring the original lineup reflected a hard-working, hard-hitting rock and roll band with nothin’ to lose and everything to gain. And of those six sets, it was album #5, Rock and Roll Over, that clobbered me most convincingly.
Straight out of the box, Rock and Roll Over just looked cool, with the vibrant cover art, the sleek and shiny inner sleeve, and the “Cracker Jack prize” sticker set, cool, cool, cool. Overseen by legendary producer Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix, Foghat, Anthrax), the album sounded cool too — gritty and raw, like a record created by a still-hungry brigade that hadn’t yet lost touch with the streets.
Rock and Roll Over also found KISS at their songwriting apex — a ten-track cavalcade of catchy, fat-free, down-and-dirty nut busters, from back in the stone age when writing chest-pounding songs about banging your groupies with your massive dick was not only condoned, but encouraged. Ugh!
The crisp acoustic strings pinned to Paul Stanley’s breathy falsetto in the intro to the opening track, “I Want You,” made for an initial 14-second “What the heck?” moment. Wait for it… Then at 0:15 came that glorious, heart-stopping collision of Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley’s raucous guitar riffs and Gene Simmons’ skull-thumbing bass lines, crashing into Peter Criss’ beefy, phaser-fueled drums and walls of wailing vocals. “You can lie and deny, but you know you’re gonna pay,” baby!
Very much a guitar-driven record, Rock and Roll Over went for the throat in short order, and it never let up. With decent headphones (even on 8-track), I could discern guitar sounds like I’d never heard before. And it was a beautiful thing. While “Take Me,” “Ladies Room,” and “Mr. Speed” offered prime examples of that exciting, raw guitar sound, it was when I first heard “Calling Dr. Love,” with my head buried between a great pair of speakers, that I was truly thwacked.
But the record did stretch, here and there. The Simmons-penned “See You in Your Dreams” had something of a Revolver-inspired flair, while Stanley’s radio-friendly “Hard Luck Woman” was an (almost) instant Top 20 smash and a soon-to-be Yacht Rock staple.
In the last few years, I’d become so fatigued and disenchanted by what KISS had become, I found myself no longer owning any of their records. Say it ain’t so! However, perhaps as a result of the recent, tragic, untimely passing of Ace Frehley, I’d been feeling a bit nostalgic. So when I spotted a reasonably well-cared-for vinyl copy of Rock and Roll Over last week at my preferred Florida record joint, I reasoned that maybe it was time to kiss and make up with my former heroes by rebuilding my KISS vinyl collection. And for me, there was no better place to start than with Rock and Roll Over — even if it did cost me $30. GASP!
5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rock and Roll Over Track List
SIDE ONE
1. I Want You (P. Stanley) – 3:04
2. Take Me (P. Stanley, S. Delaney) – 2:56
3. Calling Dr. Love (G. Simmons) – 3:44
4. Ladies Room (G. Simmons) – 3:27
5. Baby Driver (P. Criss, S. Penridge) – 3:40
SIDE TWO
1. Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (G. Simmons) – 3:47
2. Mr. Speed (P. Stanley, S. Delaney) – 3:18
3. See You in Your Dreams (G. Simmons) – 2:34
4. Hard Luck Woman (P. Stanley) – 3:35
5. Makin’ Love (P. Stanley, S. Delaney) – 3:14
