As you may already be aware, Kiss released their 19th studio album, Sonic Boom—there first in more than a decade (their previous record, the somewhat ill-conceived “reunion” of the band's original line-up Psycho Circus, was released way back in 1998)--is being sold in the U.S. exclusively through Wal-Mart (I'm generally not a fan of the concept of exclusive albums, but that's a topic for another day). It's a pretty good record, but more interesting to me has been the mega-retailers strategy to rouse additional interest in the album by making the heart of the band's back catalog—remastered version of the studio albums the band recorded for Casablanca Records between 1974-1977—available for either $5.00 or $7.00 depending on title. I've been a Kiss fan since I first heard them on the radio as a youngster during that period during which they were at the height of their popularity, but I'd somehow never bought these albums on CD. In the past few months, I've purchased Kiss (1974), Hotter than Hell (1974), Dressed to Kill (1975), Destroyer (1976), Rock and Roll Over (1976), and Love Gun (1977).
