Kiss – ‘Live in Australia 1980’ – Album Review (The Kiss Bootleg Series)

I have been doing a Kiss Bootleg Series for years. You get a review every time I add a new one to the collection. Well, after buying 38 Bootleg CDs from John Humphrey’s personal collection,… More

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Kiss – ‘Live in Australia 1980’ – Album Review (The Kiss Bootleg Series)

I have been doing a Kiss Bootleg Series for years. You get a review every time I add a new one to the collection. Well, after buying 38 Bootleg CDs from John Humphrey’s personal collection, I figured let’s jump right back in and do a whole lot of reviews on the Bootlegs. Oh, if you don’t know who John Humphrey is, you need to know he is a massive Kiss collector. And he is the drummer of the band Seether. John decided to sell off his entire collection…sort of…he kept all the vinyl (like 4,000 of them). He did it through an auction at Backstage Auctions and I had to have a piece of it…and I did wind up with some things.

The next one in the collection I bought is ‘Live in Australia 1980’. It isn’t really a live show per se. It is actually a Australian documentary show that talks about Kiss and interspersed between the narrator, we get live songs and tidbits from band members, Doc Mchee and even their road manager. It sounds like the show was recorded on VHS and they transferred it to be put on CD (more on that later). You get about 11 live songs from their tour in Australia that hit Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane I believe. Most songs I’ve read come from Sydney, but I hear the announcer and Paul calling out Adelaide I believe.

As I said, it is a documentary type show as there is a narrator and the dialogue written is quite comical at times. The narrator delivers it so seriously, but it is so cheesy and at times so inaccurate. Quite enjoyable for the humor of it that wasn’t intentional. It all kicks off with a TV promo that has each member introducing themselves and then Ace introducing the band’s new drummer Eric Carr. The band gets introduced and they go in to “Detroit Rock City” but it is not listed on the track listing. That song is usually a great song to kick off the show, but because this recorded on tape, the tape was rather warped or whatever because we get a lot of tape drag and Ace’s playing sounds simply atrocious. Luckily, this is the only song that is that way.

Being Australia, you know you are going to get “Shandi” and it sounds great. Then we get a ton of Ace Frehley as he sings “Talk to Me”, gets a solo and then with a bad edit, he sings “New York Groove” all with interruptions for the narrator and interviews of course. Then it is listed we will get “Dr. Love” which is the first mistake as it is “Calling Dr. Love”, but really, we don’t get either version. It goes into another ‘Unmasked’ song with “Is That You” which I think might be the first time I have a live clip of it. Then from ‘Dynasty’ we get “I Was Made For Loving You” and it seems to be sped up even faster than it normally is. The crowd loves it, even though we know Gene doesn’t.

The narrator talks about Gene (the ex-school teacher) and the next thing you know we get Gene’s bass solo which last all of like 15 seconds and the edit out the blood spitting. “God of Thunder” will follow naturally, but not a full song…most of these seem to be cut a little short. In that short time, Gene tears it up. We get the ending of the main show with “Rock And Roll All Nite” and you don’t need me talking about it. To end the TV show part of this disc, we get “Black Diamond which was their third encore song (the other two aren’t on here). Always a favorite of mine even if they only do like 3 minutes of it. Then there are a bunch of TV interviews tidbits.

The second half of this disc includes a bunch of demos from another bootleg called Fancy Fair. It was a collection of demos from the early 80’s. The first is “The Council of the Elder” which is a 1983 demo including the riff to Gimme More from the Lick It Up album and this is an instrumental only. Next is “Gimme Everything” and it is a demo of Gene Simmons where he is working on a song idea that became “Fits Like a Glove” from Lick It Up. It is a really low-grade demo and might’ve been recorded on a cheap tape recorder. Speaking of a rough recording…”Don’t Run” is an early version of Ace Frehley’s song “Dark Light” on the album ‘(Music From) The Elder’. It sounds a little hollow and mono, not stereo.

“You/It Was You Who Left Me” is a early recording of Kiss as they are writing the song that would become “Exciter” from ‘Lick It Up’. It is bare bones, with the guys chatting about what to play, a lot of scatting…kinda cool but I don’t really hear “Exciter” as it is laid back compared to the final version. Next, a demo for “A Million to One” from ‘Lick It Up’. Poor quality, well…quiet quality. Not very loud. Sounds like a drum mix as that is real prominent.

The final two tracks are “Kix are for Kids” which is a Kiss instrumental demo from the 1981 pre-Elder sessions in Toronto. I found that it was confirmed, real title of the song is “Silly Girl” and it may be written or co-written by Ace Frehley. Lastly, we get “Boys Wanna Rock” which is a pre-Kiss 1982 demo by Vinnie Vincent. Parts were later re-used both for “And On the 8th Day” by Kiss, and “Boyz Are Gonna Rock” from Vinnie Vincent Invasion – Vinnie Vincent Invasion. This demo was eventually released on Warrior Featuring Vinnie Vincent.

And that is all. Lots of stuff on here. The demos were the coolest thing on here even if the quality of the demos wasn’t very good. They weren’t horrible either, just not the best quality. I do love getting live cuts of “Shandi” and “Is That You”, however, the narrator during the show part of the disc was really bad…comically bad. Not a full live show which was disappointing, but the demos made up for it. This probably isn’t one of the best ones in the collection I bought, but I am sure it won’t be the worst either. My Overall Score is a 3.0 out of 5.0 Stars which might be a little generous.