#alive 2

November 9, 1977 (Most likely. Date not confirmed)

Alive II Tour Dress Rehearsal

Land Of Hype and Glory Taping

Stewart Air Force Base Hanger E - Newburgh, New York

November 9, 1977 (Most likely. Date not confirmed)

Alive II Tour Dress Rehearsal

Land Of Hype and Glory Taping

Stewart Air Force Base Hanger E - Newburgh, New York

January 13, 1978

Alive II Tour

Civic Arena - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

📸 Mike Wilks

Peter was noted passing out midway through the show: “After a 15-minute intermission, Criss was revived, and continued without problem during the rest of the show. Perhaps what best sums up KISS is what Stanley told the crowd after Criss’s unfortunate swoon: ‘Peter may have passed out on you, but he’s revived now and is ready to give his all. And if there’s one thing about us you’ve known from the beginning, we always give it all we got, and will never let you down!’… KISS knows what its fan wants and never ceases to give it to them” (The Pitt News, 1/16/78).

At this show someone in the audience threw a lighter and hit Peter under the eye. (Though there is a debate that this actually happened at the January 20th show in Detroit) This photo was taken at a later date:

From a local review: "Four New York boys -- in drag and wearing whiteface makeup such as Marcel Marceau might devise on LSD -- lured 17,000 cheerful fanatics into the Civic Arena Friday night for a mixed media performance featuring fireworks, 10-foot flames, lasers, exploding guitars, instant fog, the throwing-up of artificial blood and allegedly 'more amplifiers than have ever been assembled on one stage in Pittsburgh... Their canny combination of hard-rock music plays Barnum-&-Bailey-meets-Dracula has propelled them in just four years to the top of the rock 'n' roll heap, thanks to a massive public relations campaign which modestly bills them as the embodiment of the new rock and the Symbol of the Seventies here to fulfill all our fantasies once and for all... KIϟϟ -- public relations aside -- is a talented and professional rock group which specializes in entertainment as opposed to plain old-fashioned music. Or even new-fashioned music. The group's dazzling road show operates on a magic formula in which music is but one of several equally vital elements: costumes, makeup, sets, lights, choreography, dialogue and -- most of all -- special effects" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/16/78).

October 14, 1977

Recorded: April 2 and August 26–28, 1977 (live); September 13–16, 1977 (studio)

Venue: The Forum, Los Angeles, CA; Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ; Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Studio: Electric Lady Studios, New York City

The origins of Alive II go back to early 1977 when the band's manager Bill Aucoin suggested that Kramer record a live album during the evening show at Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan on April 2, 1977. The plan was to release a live album to give Kiss some much-deserved time off before recording the album that would become Love Gun later that autumn. Kramer finished work on the album, but Casablanca and Kiss deemed it unusable, and the band forged ahead with their Love Gun sessions.

Most of the live tracks on Alive II were recorded during the band's August 26–28 shows at the Forum while on their Love Gun Tour. The 3 p.m. soundchecks at the August 26 and 27 shows were recorded and later used on the album (i.e. "I Stole Your Love" with crowd noise being dubbed in later). "Beth" and "I Want You" were lifted from the aborted Japanese live album and used on the finished Alive II. As the band did not want to duplicate songs included on Alive!, the songs chosen for the three live sides of the album were all drawn from Kiss' three preceding studio albums: Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun.

On the original double album, the songs on side 4 (tracks 6–10 on the second CD) are tracks recorded live without the audience at Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, and overdubbed and mixed at Electric Lady Studios in New York City in September 13–16, 1977. Although Ace Frehley was originally credited for lead guitar on the studio tracks, the remastered version released in 1997 confirmed what had been speculated by Kiss fans for years: Bob Kulick played lead guitar on the tracks "All American Man", "Rockin' in the U.S.A." and "Larger Than Life". Frehley's sole involvement for the studio songs was Rocket Ride (originally written for a solo album), on which he sang lead vocals and played both guitar and bass guitar. 

Coming off of a period of extensive touring, Alive II received a huge fan response and critical acclaim, reaching the No. 7 spot on the Billboard 200 chart.

December 30, 1977

Alive II Tour

The Omni - Atlanta, Georgia

📸 Tom Hill