Mercury / Universal
2005
Kiss Gold
About This Album
Besides arguing over which B+ or A- tracks are missing ("Why did they include "'Talk to Me'" instead of "'Charisma'"?") the only thing bad you can say about the two-disc Gold is that its cover art is too much in the style of Universal's Millennium Collection series. The near-perfect track listing deserves a better face than this generic, part-of-a-series artwork, but chuck that and the short, hyperbole-filled essay and you're left with make-up era as good as it gets. Think of a big hit and it's here -- in its live version if that's what's called for -- while the filler is so well chosen you just know the compilers have a Kiss Army membership patch somewhere in their dresser drawers. Laid out chronologically, Gold snaps up three or four key tracks from each golden-age album, gives the mighty Destroyer a little extra attention, gets more picky from Dynasty on, and breezes through the solo albums with only one song each from the four of them (which is being really kind to Peter Criss). You get to follow the band from their gutsy beginnings to their bombastic, arena rock-middle while getting a taste of the later iffy years and stopping short of when they became just another band.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 3,4,9 and 10)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 6,12 and 16)

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