Since the early years of KISS, the band won a big reputation as a live act, making larger than life tours all over the world. So, why don’t you expect to have many people out there taping their shows or want to have souvenirs from the shows they saw? Fans wanted to have more recordings than those the band released and, voila!, here come the bootleg albums. Vinyl was the format at the late 70's when the first recordings of unreleased live concerts showed up in the public.

Most KISS fans are not just normal fans, there are big collectors too. That became completely exposed when people wasted mountains of money to buy all the merchandise and memorabilia the band began to sell in the 70s. There was everything available to buy... but not more albums than those the band released... until somebody made them available.

When the fans tasted a bit of rare live recordings with lower sound quality and cheap covers, they didn’t care about those „minimum" details and wanted more! It’s the sweet taste of the forbidden. It is like being a voyeur, because you are listening something the band, the record company and the establishment surely don’t want you to.

The big explosion was during the 80's when fans were able to get not just different concerts from the same tour, there were also different editions of the same show! But when live recordings weren’t enough, the rare studio recordings came to light, showing the fans unedited songs, different versions of known material and diverse kind of rarities.

With all that variety of stuff being released, it can be analyzed taking care of the sound quality, the kind of the recording, the material included, the colour of the vinyl, the cover, and some other details about the edition of each album. Records that are limited editions became rare items, hard to find and expensive. If also the material recorded on the album is of high quality and rarity, and finally if it’s a great Japanese edition, you’ll be in front of one of the most desired LPs.

Like in every activity, not all the editions were done for the likeness of everybody. And surely the biggest part of the fans of KISS don’t like to listen or collect low quality albums. Some people would like to have only those soundboard recordings or at least excellent quality audience tapings. Others would like to have albums from a certain period of the bands career. But the die hard collectors want to have them all, including the different editions of the same album just because of small differences between the pressings.

Here we tried to make a kind of technical guide of all the Bootlegs of KISS we’ve had knowledge of.

The Bootlegs are devided in two sections: the live recordings and the studio albums. Everything is also in chronological order according to the date of the concert or the demos on the album.

There’s something that has to be clear: these albums are not recommended in any way who is not a die hard fan, because we also know that not all the people would like them. It’s basically a research about the world of the Bootleg-vinyls of KISS.

After 25 years there are still new Bootleg LPs coming out. Not in the quantity and diversity as in the 80's, but if you like them, just keep an eye open...