The Godfather is one of those labels that gives us daring releases. Their monthly line up always includes one or two surprises by artists not commonly bootlegged. The March line up is a stunner that included an all new Iron Maiden show, a vintage Deep Purple Coverdale era show and another excellent unreleased KISS show. After the January 30th Anniversary Release of Egos At The Stake this time we welcome an excellent unreleased audience recording from the beginning of their 10th Anniversary Tour back in 1983.
This is besides the vinyl releases of Ottawa 1983 (Unmasked) and Los Angeles 1983 (10th Anniversary Tour a Japan Only LP set) the only release of this era in KISSTORY. Kiss truely re-invented themselves on this tour in this amazing line up with guitar wizzard Vinnie Vincent in tow.
The new songs come over excellent and KISS is truely on fire. The audience goes nuts and is nicely audible though never disturbing. The recording is clear and clean and truely shos the power of KISS on this tour that was only recaputered on their Lick It Up Tour in 1983 and 1984.
Allthough the setlist on this tour was nearly indentical every night. Sometimes the order was changed and sometimes Strutter was added as a first encore early on in the tour. That one is added as a bonus track from an excellent audience tape from the New Years show on 31 December 1982 in Rockford Illinois. From that same show comes the rarely played Rock And Roll Hell and I Love It Loud in an incarnation with all verses that was only played once EVER in KISSTORY. Later on the band decided to drop one verse to make it more appropriate as a live staple ever since that first performance back in 1982. From a nice audience tape comes the barely played Keep Me Coming that was dropped from the set after 2 shows. To top this release come the excellent Creatures Of The Night outtakes It's My life (not the one released on the official KISS boxset which included the version recorded for Psycho Circus in 1998) and the great Not For The Innocent (of which another version was released on Godfather's Not For The Innocent KISS demo collection and totally different to the one later released on Lick It Up late 1983).
Godfather becomes THE label for KISS recordings with the already excellent Egos At The Stake, Electric Magic, First KISS First Licks, Not For The Innocent, In Your Face and now If They Are Too Loud You Are Too Old. And it appears it's only the beginning as Godfather seems to have its sources and another unreleased vintage KISS show is slated for later this year with more klassic KISS line up shows that never saw the light of day for the year end!
