KISS 1979: The End of a Dynasty (franKENstein Live Redux)

When I started getting bootleg shows back in the '90s, Largo '79 was one of my favorite concerts, warts and all. The copy I had sounded awful and looked even worse. The stage often looks dark, the band was not having a great night, but it's all we had. It still is. Unfortunately, no other multi-camera (pro-shot) '79 shows have ever circulated (if any even exist) and I feel like this has led to the Dynasty Tour getting a particularly bad reputation.

My goal with this video was to try and put together a "cleaned up" version of the 1979 Tour which fans can hopefully enjoy more than what we've had. This is NOT a 100% historic representation of that single Largo show, but more like what I think the band might have released for public consumption. I didn't try and make it studio-perfect, but I did fix the major mistakes and botched lyrics.

VIDEO: The video has been upscaled to 1080p and I have done a virtual shot-by-shot adjustment to try and get the best possible quality. I did a few things to try and minimize the lines in the worst places. Sometimes the stage looks very dark, and I wanted to try and even out the lighting throughout the show. I also did a few minor editing changes to sometimes break up long shots or to cover for missing or incorrect lyrics. I also trimmed a bit of the in-between song dead air to make the flow more like an official release.

AUDIO: At this stage audio isolating software is still in its infancy and the better the source thew better the results. The Largo audio is mono and pretty poor quality, so rather than trying to "clean it up" I decided to "re-create" it. The main sources were Knoxville '79, Atlanta '79, Syndey '80 and various other shows which sometimes just supplied a few notes of a solo or a missing word or two. It's way too much to mention here, but everything was done in a way to represent the 1979 version of these songs.

DRUMS: The drums were done using Peter's isolated drums from the Knoxville soundboard recording. These were perfectly synced to the Largo show with a few minor changes here and there sometimes due to a "mistake' or sometimes just because I liked what he played better. I then blended them with custom-made samples I created using Peter's drums from various sources. Radioactive was not played in Knoxville so Atlanta soundboard was used for that one. "Tossin' and Turnin'" was not played at either show so those drums were created piece by piece using other songs with the same drum patterns and with other pieces put together using my sampling sources. I also re-created the crowd, bombs, etc.

BASS: The bass was taken from various recordings including Largo, the Lakeland rehearsal, Alive II, Sydney and more. I would basically create a main synced version for the "body" of his parts and then run that through an amp modeler to give it distortion closer to what he sounded like live.

GUITARS: This was the biggest challenge. I decided to use almost exclusively the guitars from the Largo show. The biggest problem was that the recording is mono. Some people use the delay-trick to "simulate" stereo, but this usually results in a tin-can, out of phase hollow sound since it is just the same track, slightly delayed and hard-panned to the opposite speaker. I didn't want to do that, so I did a cut and paste job where I would take the same riffs and parts to create Ace's parts and then swap them around for Paul's track, so it is more like a true stereo mix. I would take the rhythms that Paul plays under the solos and use those for his side in those parts, etc., so it is much closer to a stereo mix. I did fix major screw-ups, bum notes and replaced out-of-tune sections with better parts. A few bits of solos come from a couple other sources just because the sound was just too buried under the rhythm to get good isolation.

VOCALS: The vast majority of the vocals come from Knoxville, mainly because the audio quality on Largo is so poor. I synced everything to Largo for the most part though there are some variations in the phrasing throughout the show. Sometimes I did use pieces of Largo if I liked the part better or where they sang something too differently. Radioactive vocals come mostly from Atlanta with a bit of Lakeland and a bit of Largo. "Tossin' and Turnin'" vocals were taken from Largo.

I decided to correct the forgotten lyrics in "Move On" and completely re-edited "God of Thunder" which Gene sand all out of order but decided to leave "Beth" alone. We know he screwed those lyrics up in at least one other show and like I said his reaction has a certain charm to it and demonstrates how, by that point, the band was often flying on autopilot.

As I always say, this is NOT for the purists. It is my attempt to make a more enjoyable Dynasty concert for other fans. The original Largo video is readily available, and this is in no way intended to replace or erase that show from KISStory. This one took months to put together, working almost daily, so I hope you all enjoy it.