Wicked Lester (Self-Titled) 1972 - Pre-KISS
Front Cover
Wicked Lester. This was the band that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were in for a couple of years in which they recorded their Self-Titled debut, before dissolving it and then morphing into KISS soon after. The album to this day has never been released. It's a must sought-after bootleg within' the KISS circuit. Well, it was till YouTube came along. The first time I ever actually heard the album was maybe 20 years ago. A friend of mine, who was way into bootleg this and bootleg that, somehow got his hands on this. I think he paid somehwhere in the neighborhood of $45 for a copy on an audio cassette.
So, needless to say, I begged him to make me a duplicate. He did. When I got my copy and gave it a whirl, the quality was so piss poor you couldn't really make anything out of it with all the hissing and noise. He was saying that his copy was no worse than a 2nd generation loss. Mine sounded like it was 20 Gens. He let me listen to his copy at his house, and the quality was only slightly better. I gave him back my shitty copy. And that was the last I ever heard anything from the album.
But I remember liking some of the songs, especially She and Shout It Out Loud. The version of She was pretty much intact when it made it's way onto Dressed To Kill. But the version of Shout It Out Loud is nowhere near the same as what eventually made it's way onto Destroyer. The version on here is a hippie, flower power song. And for some strange reason, I like this version of it as well. This album is trippy to say the least when it comes to this very uneven and un-KISS-like project, even though technically there wasn't a KISS yet to make it "un-KISS-like".
Fave Songs: She and Shout It Out Loud
Rating: 3 Stars out of 5
Review By Chiprocks1
How many songs are on the Wicked Lester demo?
ReplyDeleteI saw that the album cover art was owned by CBS and was used years later for another band call The Laughing Dogs/
http://fredpopdom.free.fr/images/The-Laughing-Dogs/The-Laughing-Dogs-Front.jpg
kinda weird
the kid looks like Gene to me
This is 20 some years ago. So I'm going strictly by memory here, but it was something like 10 or 11 songs on the Demo.
ReplyDeleteah...you don't have it anymore?
ReplyDeletesite looks great by the way
:)
I gave it back to him right after. The quality was so horrible that you couldn't even listen to it all and make sense of what was on it anyway. It was pointless to keep it.
ReplyDeletehahaha awesome I love it....because you GOTTA lose your mind to Detroit Rock City.
ReplyDeletemakes me want to listen to it right now.....and I agree the whole thing is just perfect.....
you could almost argue "this one goes to 11.."
but you pushed your scale way further anyway!
The cover art will forever be burned into my brain as well
:)
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ReplyDeleteseeing all that KISS stuff is great....man so many memories....love all the swag you posted from alive 2.....(and all the records for that matter)
ReplyDeleteagain just takes me right back to having that stuff....looking at it over and over...and listening to KISS non-stop.
:)
had a typo...didn't realize it would leave the post "hanging" like that.
so at what point did the band start having major problems with Ace? I know people state him as the strongest musician in the band....was he that messed up on drugs or drink before Alive 2...or do you think that Gene and Paul started to want to control more of the band at that point and the drinking etc...was just part of it.
not sure I ever heard Psycho Circus...will have to check it out.
ReplyDeletesounds pretty cool beyond the "lies"
damn you KISS
:)
Well, Ace didn't just decide one day to pick up a bottle and start drinking once he was in KISS. I'm pretty sure that the teat that he drank from the Alien Mothership was in fact Cold Gin.
ReplyDeleteBut in keeping with the question you asked, he was having issues with both Gene and Paul who were always running the ship in spite of it appearing to be a 4 man democracy that they promoted to the fans.
But the whole thing came to a head back in 1982 when Ace's drinking and drugging finally caught up to him, impacting the band when he crashed his car.
As for Peter, from what I remembering hearing, he spun out of control drug-wise back during the making of KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park days, if not before that.
If you do give Psycho Circus a spin, try to keep an open mind when listening to it. I was just so judgmental and biased when it first came out. I think I was of the mindset that I would hate it no matter what came out of the speakers.
ReplyDelete