Live Albums???

When I was a wee lad, my brother and I begged our folks for a stereo for the rec room.  Pleaded, badgered really until they finally took pity on us and got one to replace the lame excuses for music delivery systems we had until then.  It was one of those all in one silver Citizen numbers.  You remember the type.  It had a cassette deck, 8-track deck, tuner and phono all rolled into one.  We were over the moon.  We couldn't wait to blast the tunes, and back then what we blasted more often than not was Kiss.  My aunt used to buy me 8-tracks of them and a friend of mine gave me a bunch of albums that he had inherited from his brother.  We would get dressed up, paint our faces and rock out to Kiss Alive 1 and 2.  I even made a little Kiss sign with my Lite-Brite.  Listening to the crowds we would pretend we were in Detroit, playing all the songs.  My bro' was the Space-Ace, my friend was the Demon and I was the Star-Child.


Fast forward a decade or two and my son was digging through grandpa's garage and found my old Kiss albums.  Let me tell you they were thrashed.  Played out.  Fallen soldiers who had served the Kiss Army well.


Today I managed to score a pretty good copy of Kiss Alive 1 to replace it's fallen comrade, but it got me thinking about the 'Live' part of Kiss Alive.  See the truth of it is it's not live.  They overdubbed and replaced a lot of what was considered live at the time.  It has slowly, over time, come to light that not a lot of what is left on the album is live.  Rumour is they even added the crowds later.  Not live, memorex.  So can you really call it a 'live' album, can you include it in the lists of great live rock statements.  No I don't think you can, but then again it's called Kiss Alive not Kiss Live.