1987 - Crazy nights

Released 18 september 1987

I would like to tell you that I immediately dismissed it as too pop, too cheesy,
too keyboard-heavy to be a good KISS record, but that would be a lie.  
Truth is, I liked it a lot …in some ways BECAUSE of all those things.  
The thing is, when I was in first grade or so, KISS was the biggest band on the planet.  
But by 1987, they were all but irrelevant, especially as far as radio was concerned.  
Even the so-called rock stations rarely played them.  
So my big hope for them when they released an album was that they would have a hit single.  
This album seemed like it had two candidates for a hit (Reason To Live and Turn On The Night),
which certainly sounded comparable to me to what bands like Poison or Bon Jovi were doing.  
Also, it features Paul Stanley in just about his prime as a singer.  
Say what you want about the guy, but he had some pipes,
and was one of the few guys whose vocals sounded just as good live as they did on the recordings.  
Obviously, the album hasn’t really stood the test of time, but in 1987, I had pretty high hopes for it.
Crazy Nights brings back some good times for me as well.  
I remember me and my buddy listening to this tape over and over.  
Plus, there are three gems of the “hair” era in Crazy Crazy Nights, Reason To Live, and Turn On The Night.  
In fact, they sound even better today than I remember, mostly because NO ONE makes music like this anymore.  
I’m not even going to call them guilty pleasure because I ain’t ashamed to say they KICK ASS!  
They get me pumped, they make me sing along, and they bring me back to ’87.  
What more do I need?