Melting Winterland, KISS Alive in San Francisco 1975 (franKENstein Redux)

Video: The video has been upscaled to 1080p. The source was the KISSology version. I did a shot-by-shot adjustment to the entire show. Since this was taped in B&W, I decided to approach as if it had been lit for B&W, with a more even brightness on the entire band. In order to correct for this, I used layers and masking throughout the entire show in order to even out the lighting. In the original, Peter especially often appeared very dark (and also members not directly in the spotlight). I made my best effort to bring him and the other guys out more without simply brightening the entire shot. I also decided to go with a more high-contrast overall look rather than the washed-out grey seen on most of the original concert. It’s always a tradeoff between keeping as much detail as possible while making it look good as a whole. This show is a fan favorite and was always one of the very best, IMO. basically, in this era KISS “was“ black and white, so the look of this show combined with the powerful performances by all of the members, makes for a great presentation of the young, hungry band in their pre-superhero years. They were darker, more sinister and this show demonstrates what a really great and evenly matched rock and roll band they really were in the beginning. That early chemistry is on full display in this concert. As much as I’d love to see a full-color multi-cam HTH show, for this era B&W totally works. I also did a bit of “creative“ editing, mostly to remove all of the videotape/camera glitches seen throughout the concert. Many songs would be dark for the first several bars of the song, so I tried to use what I could to eliminate all of that black space. I also split shots to make the pacing (hopefully) more enjoyable. For instance, if the camera was on Gene for the entire 1st chorus and then only on Ace & Paul for the entire 2nd chorus, I would split and swap pieces to make it appear that the camera was switching back and forth. AUDIO: The audio was created using isolated tracks from KISS Alive! along the actual Winterland concert. My attempt was to bring the sound of Alive! (but totally remixed) to the show while maintaining every aspect and nuance of the original performance. My goal was not to change or necessarily “improve“ the playing, but rather to re-create it with much better quality. Drums: Along with the original Alive! tracks, I replaced Peter’s kick and snare drum with polyphonic samples I crated from Pater’s actual kit. I did not re-create Peter’s performance note-for-note, but edited everything to match any time you can see him play something different (even when he drops a stick midway through Ace’s solo in “NTL“). His entire solo in “100,000 Years“ was done using his original Winterland drums combined with my samples to give it the same sound as the rest of the show. Bass: All of Gene’s parts come from Alive! with some added distortion to better match his live sound. I did use his Winterland bass for some things like in the blood-spitting bit before “100,000 Years“ and the intro to “NTL“ along with a few other bits. Guitars: Most of the guitars come directly from Alive! with a few exceptions. Paul’s guitar on “100,000 Years“ comes from the “alternate“ version which has better left/right separation than the album version. For Ace’s solo’s I kept him panned more to the right, replacing Paul’s rhythm from other spots in the song. For Ace’s guitar, is also comes from Alive! with the exception of any solos where he strays from the album version. For those songs, the solos are taken directly from the isolated Winterland track. His solo spot and the jam before it also come from the actual show. Vocals: 99% of the vocals come directly from the Winterland show. The only exceptions are a few words here and there that do not come through clearly either due to the isolation software limitations or (mostly Paul) singing a bit off-mic. I also perfectly synced either the live album version or studio version of the vocals under the video and blend in only the high frequencies to bring good sibilance to the vocals to make them clearer. I corrected Gene’s vocal flub in “Cold Gin“ (sorry purists). I also blended a little bit of the Alive! vocals under the choruses of Parasite and Cold Gin because the audio wasn’t very clear. This concert cuts off mid-song during LMG,RnR, but there was enough to get all three verses with a bit of creative editing (since much of the parts repeat throughout the song). I used some of the middle jam for the credits and pieces together the ending just so we have a semi-cohesive full song. As I always say, these shows are NOT for the purists. We will always have the originals for that. My goal is to make these shows as true to the original, but with much improved audio that is a realistic representation of the actual performance. These shows have taken many months and countless hours to assemble, so I do hope other KISS fans like myself enjoy them.