Customer Reviews

Peter Criss

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I admit I did'nt really give this album a chance when I first got it, but when I listen to it now, it is really a cool album!!. I'm so sick of people acting like this is a KISS album, ITS NOT!, its a PETER CRISS solo album!!!!, and if you pulled your head out of your @ss you might like it.

some of the stand out songs are "Tossin n Turning", "Easy Thing", "Kinda suga pa pa likes", "hooked on Rock n Roll", and "You matter to me".

well done Peter, this album rocks.

Here are the facts for the people who wish to see Peter Criss in a sympathetic light or just can't tell if someone is musically capable.
Peter Criss is a lousy drummer who can hardly keep time.
Just listen to "Alive" and you will hear sloppy fills and a lack of precision in many moments of that recording.

Peter Criss never belonged in KISS to begin with because he is total mediocrity.
I admit that when i was 8 years old and i heard the live "100,000 years" drum solo i thought, wow what a great drummer.
Then i grew up and heard John Bonham and realized that Peter Criss was a joke.
The only time Peter Criss was TRULY CREATIVE as a drummer was when he had the great producer Bob Ezrin on his tail during the "Destroyer" sessions.
Kiss would have been a much better band if they had Eric Singer to begin with.
Thankfully the rest of the band (especially Ace Frehley) had the talent to make Kiss some memorable rock n' roll.
Anyway, Peter Criss decides to tackle some pop and rhythm+blues on this solo effort and it turns out to be a fatal mistake.
In the first place the material such as "that's the kind of sugar papa likes" is just plain stupid and Peter Criss sounds like a moron singing this kind of tripe.
He can hardly handle rock n' roll vocally so when you add the task of interpreting a idiotic song like this there's no other outcome than that of disaster.
Maybe if the material had been better than maybe this gamble would have turned out to be a winner but highly unlikely because Peter CRISS IS A second rate singer and drummer.
I will give him a big round of applause for having the guts to tackle this second rate material and then i will throw this cd in the garbage disposal where it deserves to be.
Take my advice and pick up Ace's blistering tour de force 1979 solo album and pass this one up unless you're a masochist....

What is wrong with you people? TRASH? CRAP? Give me a break! You wouldn't know trash if you stuck your head inside garbage can! So I suggest you remove your heads from another odorous place and try to be a little more open-minded instead of so closed-minded. Let me explain why you are WRONG! I'll talk slow so you can keep up, ok?

Here we go:

Yes, I know...Peter should have done the standard rock drummer thing and just re-made a bunch of "Black Diamond/Strange Ways/Baby Driver"-style songs and stayed within the limits of what the KISS "fans" expected of him. Who the hell is he anyway thinking he can record something other than the basic KISS song everyone knows and loves? Yes, it IS his solo album...but he shouldn't try to do something (God forbid) different!

I never heard such narrow-minded blithering idiots sound so inanely simplistic in their "reviews." I don't care if you like what Peter did or not. I give him credit for having the guts to stretch out and follow his passion for R&B, dance, pop, jazz...whatever...and do something he wanted to do. I guess he should have consulted all the KISS fans out there and see if it was ok to do something original.

If you just plain don't like the songs, fine...but give the guy credit for doing what HE wanted. He stretched farther than Ace, Gene, or Paul did. That was their choice and this was his. Nobody said to the band prior to the project "each of you make an album...but ONLY make it sound like KISS or at least 'hard rock.' Or else you'll have morons from all over the world giving you crap about it for the next 30 years!"

And, I hate to break it to the incredibly creative-with-their-words "reviewers" who trash this album...but these songs are pretty well done from a guy who everyone loves claiming is so one-dimensional. No, he doesn't have the voice Paul Stanley does, but that even gives him MORE credability because he has to work harder to get results. It's not a natural strength so he has to work harder. Yeah, he doesn't deserve credit for THAT does he!

I've had problems with Peter and some of his troubles involving his tenure in KISS over the years. But, I can't fault him for being original enough to follow his heart and soul and do whatever the hell he wanted on HIS solo album!

By far the worst blemish of all the Kiss records. Peter's solo album is horrid. I first picked this album up at a flea market back in the early 80's and I probably paid a buck for it and I still feel like I was ripped off. This could be the best dust collector you could ever get!

PETER CRISS is not a jazz album, it's not a country album, it's not an R&B album and it's not a rock album. If it's a failure in the eyes of Kiss fans, it's only because it's not a rock album. It falls under that dreaded catagory of "easy listening": just enough of each genre to make it classified as "lite rock".

In all honesty PETER CRISS is not a bad album, but it's not for everybody. When I was a kid I used to play it to my mom, saying, "See you'd like Kiss music too." That's what it is: music you can play for your mom so you don't scare her away.

Peter himself plays drums on most of the album, Allan Schwartzberg plays on the rest. The rest of the instruments are handled by studio musicians with Steve Lukather taking a solo. You can hear quite clearly that Peter loves playing this kind of music, and it suits his voice too. Peter has co-writing credits with his Lips bandmate Stan Pendridge on most songs.

The album kicks off with "I'm Gonna Love You", a R&B flavoured rock number with a nice horn section and lush backing vocals. This is about as uptempo as it gets. "You Matter To Me" is rendered hard to listen to due to a fat synthesizer riff before the verses. Very outdated and distracting. "Tossin' and Turnin'" is the old rock and roll standard and similar in tempo and arrangement to "I'm Gonna Love You". Peter does a great job vocally. "Don't You Let Me Down" is the first ballad of the album, very 70's, with more outdated keyboard sounds. I don't know if you can relate to this analogy or not, but most of these songs sound like things I used to hear on my parents' clock radio on those 70's easy listening stations. Side 1 ends with "That's The Kind Of Sugar Papa Likes", a nondescript underwhelming uptempo song.

Side 2 begins with one of the best tunes on the album, the acoustic ballad "Easy Thing" which goes into a string laden chorus. It's quiet yet epic at the same time. "Rock Me, Baby" is another R&B song, uptempo with lots of female backing vocals but otherwise filler. "Kiss The Girl Goodbye" is another acoustic ballad, a little too quiet and laid back, very folk sounding, and there are no drums on this track at all. "Hooked On Rock N' Roll" brings the tempo back up before we go to the last and very best song on the album, Sean Delaney's "I Can't Stop The Rain". It's a piano and strings ballad, even more epic than "Easy Thing" and even as a rocker kid I loved the epic ballads on PETER CRISS.

It's a shame in a way that Peter Criss was so out of touch with Kiss' core audience, and had such an inflated ego, that he thought making this album was a good idea at the time. Albums such as this and the later disco albums turned off Kiss fans in droves, although many have rediscovered them in the warm light of nostalgia.

I think the bottom line is this is a nostalgia CD. I can't imagine new young Kiss fans getting into this at all, but they may want to play it for mom.

If you don't like the record, fine, but I can't believe some of the dumb remarks i've been reading here. Some people apparently get off giving a low rating to a record that they don't WANT to appreciate. I believe this album deserves better than that.

Look, at least Peter Criss seized this opportunity to do HIS OWN THING. While his voice sounds great on raunchy KISS tunes like "Black Diamond", "Strange Ways" or "Baby Driver", at least he had the guts to follow his heart and come up with a heartfelt, honest record that was closer to his musical roots : anything from r&b ballads to mellow or even danceable rock tunes. And guess what, he did a great job. "Peter Criss" is a *great* album from a great drummer / songwriter.

The 1978 KISS solo albums gave each member in the band the opportunity to record their OWN album - it's only natural the results of these individual efforts didn't come out sounding like the earlier 1974-1977 KISS studio albums. Ace's album is far heavier than KISS's early albums (as if KISS could have recorded something like "Rip It Out" ?!? - I don't think so !), Paul's album is much more refined in terms of songwriting / production (think "Take Me Away", for example), and Gene's album heavily relies on all sorts of guest star appearances and lacks sense of direction - to the point where it gets completely delusional and clueless (an emotional falsetto rendition of the Disney tune "When Wish Upon A Star", anyone ?). Mind you - NONE of these are "full blooded KISS albums". So why say Peter's record is "crap", just because it's the most "mellow" of the four ?

Sure, if you only like your rock hard, this is *not* the record for you. It's got horn sections, for crying out loud. So of it's not your cup of tea - cool. But the writing, performance and singing is GREAT.

It's downright sad that, a quarter of a century later, so many short-sighted people still describe Peter's offering as "the worst KISS record ever" - sure, it may have the logo in the upper left corner but it's pretty obvious it's NOT a KISS record, dammit - it's a PETER CRISS record, and an excellent one at that ... so start to judge it for what it is, will you ...

to Mr. Criss : RESPECT !

(Everyone is free to dislike the record, but to the people who think Peter is "full of it" just for doing what he felt like doing on this record - get a clue, and maybe listen to the recent interview on www.eddietrunk.com - it shows you what kind of person Peter really is - genuinly honest, friendly, and caring about his music and fans. The contrast with Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons couldn't be bigger ... in hindsight, just who are the insincere a$$holes / corportate [prostitutes] anyway ?)

In 1978 rock group KISS then at the top of their popularity did something that surprised many. The band members each released their own studio album on the exact same day which has never been done since or before. Each member did their own musical thing as they wished. The record company, Cassablanca, released the albums each with the KISS logo on the top left corner and the albums were named quite simply after each individual member: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, each member with a different color (Red, purple, blue and green respectively). Out of the four solo output this was the album that deceived KISS fans the most. Fans expected something that would rock a little more I believe but they were in for quite a surprise with Peter Criss' solo debut. Criss sang on some excellent KISS songs like 'Black Diamond' and 'Strange Ways' and I always thought he had a certain quality to his voice that made him different and stand out, his singing on KISS album was nothing short of great. The fact that Peter's album is so different shouldn't be so surprising because after all this shows his well known Jazz/R&B influences from artists he loved in the 50's and 60's which is kinda what the album sounds like. Criss is also a little older than the rest of KISS so his influences were a little different. A good portion of the material comes was written before from Criss' pre-KISS bands like Lips.

Peter show right from the first track 'I'm Gonna Love You' with its boogie/blues guitars and the colorful piano that his album is going to be very different from what he played with KISS. 'Tossin' and Turnin'' is a good song with some doo-woop back vocals and fun lyrics. 'Don't You Let Down' sees Peter doing his own musical thing, this one sounds very Soul and Jazz inspired, it's a highlight of the album. 'That's The Kind of Sugar Papa Likes' is a good, happy upbeat song that's silly but fun at the same time, I like this song very much its one of the most Rock oriented songs here. 'Kiss The Girl Goodbye' is the 'Beth' of this album. It's not 'Beth' exactly but it's a touching slow ballad that's in the vein of that song, it's a great ballad that I feel is underrated. There are times when Peter Criss' album works and shows his different side. I always like to put out this album and try to get people to guess the artist, which of course they never, ever get right (unless they're hardcore KISS fans).

This is very much for the completists only, the average KISS fan may find 2-3 songs they like but it's likely that they won't much out of the album unless they like 50's and 60's R&B music. I can appreciate an artist doing something different and displaying some of his influences but even for me Peter Criss proves to be a little too much. I respect Peter's decision of making an album unlike KISS and one where he can be himself and be more creative and express himself but this is simply not my cup of tea. This is the solo album that puzzled a lot of fans and I can see why. Out of each member's solo record this is the one I play the least, although every once in while I take it out for a spin, it's not as bad as everyone says its just different. If you're a fan of mostly 50's and 60's music and less KISS then maybe this could hold appeal to you, otherwise it'll only complete your collection. I respect Peter's musical direction here and I like a few songs myself but I guess I'm just not a big fan of The Catman in solo. For me this is 2/5 stars.

I am a huge KISS fan, I have nothing against Peter, but no matter how many times I listen to this... I wonder what was he thinking. All the success and drugs must have really gone to his head. Now I love Jazz, Blues and Rock, but this album doesn't come close to being good in any of those. It has nothing to do with his drumming or voice, just plain bad writing, its too poppy and overdone, no good melodies or lyrics. Not even good music... when peter said he wanted to do an album not like a KISS album... he did it... but making a bad album... its no wonder why his solo album went on to do the worse of the 4. Its also no surprise that his later solo albums went on to do virtually nothing.

This is one of the worst albums ever made. Peter does songs that are pure moronic delights from the ridiculous "that's the kind of sugar papa love" to his pathetic cover of "Tossin ' and turnin".
The song selections are just pure crap for peter criss's voice. Why didn't he perform songs like "Black Diamond" and "Beth".
These songs suit his voice perfectly and though they have that Kiss sound it still is the only fit for his voice.
This album is equal to a day on the toilet with diarrhea.
It adds up to a long day of endless chunky dumps!!!!!!
It is just pure crap and Peter would've known better if he hadn't been busy boozing and drugging it up..Oh well.
If you're into torture or into smelly poop then scoop this one up.
It's sure to stink up your crib!!!!!!!

Yeah, yeah, yeah....listen with an open mind. This is still the worst of the 4 Kiss solo albums by far (Ace's is the only one worth a dang). Even if you can appreciate the varied musical stylings, Criss is still a very weak drummer; and by his own admission tone deaf! I would bet my life savings most people who bought this album gave it only one listen, if that. In the days of vinyl, most Kiss fans never even turn the disc over to side 2...back into the paper sleeve it went! A one star for the music with an extra star for Peter to have the b@lls to put his name on this.