Black and Blue-Nasty, Nasty, 1986

Long before guitarist Tommy Thayer was in KISS painted up as Ace Frehley and long before singer Jaime St. James was singing in Warrant, they were both in this band. The band's self titled debut came out in 84 and got some notice and it was a good album. Their 1985 follow-up "Without Love" was more commercial sounding and it didn't really propel the band any higher. So for their third album they decided to bring in Gene Simmons to produce it. I bought this on cassette like the month it came out and I loved it. I actually wore the tape out by about 1991. I bought an import copy on CD a few years ago hoping it would be as good as I remembered it being all those years ago. Truth be told the good songs are just as good as they were 20 years ago. These include the title track, the awesome "Kiss of death", "Rules" and "Best in the west". Unfortunately there are a few songs that are just okay on the album as well. The bottom line is that it's overall a decent album, but far from great. It may not have been worth what I paid for it, but I listen to quite often. This re-release includes lyrics (which were not in the original lp) and notes about the album which explained something I had wondered about for years. The cassette listed keyboard credits for a song called "Promise the moon" yet the song is not on the album. The booklet explains that this song was recorded but that Geffen made them remove it in order to put "I'll be there for you" in it's place. Black and Blue don't exactly sound like anyone else. Although I would say that if you like Ratt and Kix that you would probably like this album. I also give credit to Gene Simmons because the album sounds sharp all the way around.