Kiss Nai Br.xx

Love Gun was Kiss' fifth studio album in three years (and seventh release overall, peaking at number four on Billboard), and proved to be the last release that the original lineup played on. By 1977, Kiss merchandise was flooding the marketplace (lunch boxes, makeup kits, comic books, etc.), and it would ultimately lead to a Kiss backlash in the '80s. But the band was still focused on their music for Love Gun, similar in sound and approach to Rock & Roll Over, their previous straight-ahead rock release. It included Ace Frehley's lead vocals on "Shock Me," as well as one of Kiss' best and most renowned hard rockers in the thunderous title track. The album's opener, "I Stole Your Love," also served as the opening number on Kiss' ensuing tour, while "Christine Sixteen" is one of the few Kiss tracks to contain piano prominently…

Realizing that their last albums weren't even close to being in league with their output from the '70s, Kiss made a conscious effort to get back on track with 1989's Hot in the Shade…

On June 11, KISS will launch their new official live bootleg series, KISS – Off The Soundboard, with Tokyo 2001, recorded by the band at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan on March 13, 2001.

As Kiss approach 40 years of ridiculously dumb rock & roll fun, it makes sense that their 20th studio album, Monster, is more self-referential than anything. Following 2009's Sonic Boom, the album marks the second set of tunes by a revamped "original" Kiss lineup, with Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons joined by new guitarist Tommy Thayer and re-emerging drummer Eric Singer donning the makeup and personas originated by Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, respectively. Dressing up these semi-random players in the classic comic book costumes is just step one in re-creating the feel of Kiss' 1970s over the top heyday.

English composer and violinist William Brade was a significant transitional figure in instrumental music between the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Brade is credited with transplanting English musical practices most readily associated with William Byrd, Peter Philips, and John Dowland to North German and Scandinavian soil, and in aiding the transformation from the Renaissance notion of the English consort to the more continental Baroque idea of a string orchestra.

Due to the underachievement of their exceptional 1982 comeback album, Creatures of the Night, Kiss knew the time was right to drop the makeup, so in September 1983 the band shocked their fans by unmasking on MTV…

John Dowland was no less famous for his misfortunes than for his works. This subtle, elusive and strangely-behaved character led rather an adventurous life. Hailed as an Anglorum Orpheus (or “Orpheus of the English”) of almost divine powers, he inspired more comments and praise than most great musicians of his generation. To comply with legend, we were to associate him only with tears, sleep and gloom, in the gallery of Shakespearian heroes he could be placed somewhere between Hamlet and Jaques in As You like It. Although the legend may be partly based on truth, the musician himself contributed a great deal to it in his various writings; these are the confessions of a man full of dissonances, at once vulnerable and ambitious, ingenuous and haughty – an egocentric ever at odds with a world by which he felt himself rejected.

Paul Stanley's 1978 solo album was the most Kiss-like of the four, sounding more like an official band release rather than a solo outing…

There is a certain attraction to music of the viola da gamba, but usually, a few tunes are enough. Not that the gamba is not a beautiful instrument: round and rich-toned, supremely sensitive to the touch, and sublimely evocative of the human voice, the gamba is arguably one of the most soulful instruments ever devised. But the repertoire for the gamba makes extended listening emotionally fatiguing. The French music veers from the sentimental to the suicidal, the German repertoire ranges from the dour to the dismal, and the English repertoire is so fatalistic as to hardly exist in this world. Thus, getting through a whole disc of the gamba is like playing Russian roulette: the more you play, the more likely it is that you'll come to grief. But not on this disc by Jordi Savall.