Ace Frehley-Ace Frehley (1978)

 

 

For many a KISS fan, the Ace Frehley solo album is the best of the four! I’m in that boat as well. Ace considering he was boozed up back in the 70’s Ace did the unimaginable!

The Spaceman composed 8 Stellar (original) tracks (the 9th track is a cover tune) that quickly made him my favorite KISS guy, as the Spaceman was the one who brought the Rock element to KISS!

This album shows that in spades! When the chips were down Ace stepped up basically taking drum guru Anton Fig to his home studio back in Connecticut and along with KISS producer Eddie Kramer hit one out the park!

Ace showed the world what he had up his sleeve and that he could when push came to shove deliver the goods which resulted in him becoming a substantial creative thorn in the side of Gene and Paul.

Ace could sing Lead Vocals and write ass-kicking street rock songs which irked the two founding members!

I reviewed this album about 4-5 years ago so I won’t go through track by track, but opening number Rip It Out set’s the bar very high for this album and by the time the albums finishes up with the musical only Fractured Mirror the bar is dry!

There is no dip in the productivity of any of these songs on here. I love Ace’s ax solo’s on this album. How about that ripping one on Speeding Back To My Baby!

We can’t leave out Anton Figs contribution to this album as well! Anton drums his ass off on these 9 tracks. What a dynamic duo on here.  As KISS fans we all know that Anton drummed on all but one song on Dynasty, as well as Anton, did all the drumming on 1980’s Unmasked release! Not that I knew any different back in 1979-1980 as Peter Criss was still featured on the covers of both studio albums!

I love the fact that Ace being all snapped up on Party Treats(pick your vice) still plows through tracks like Snowblind/Ozone/Wiped Out!

This album today still places easily in my all-time Top 5 KISS studio releases! It’s that good!

deKe’s 1978 score- 10

deKe’s 2019 score-9.5^

^-.5 was deducted from the album just for the fact that Ace cheaped out and did a cover tune(New York Groove). Even when I caught KISS Live on the Dynasty Tour Ace played this tune which now looking back at it there were way better songs off of Ace’s album to play live.

But I think since New York Groove was the highest-charting single of the 4 solo albums that probably had something to do with it to irk Gene and Paul once more.

Now that I think about it Ace’s album sold the most of the 4 solo albums which you could add another ‘irked’ Gene and Paul moment!

All hail a Boozed-up 1978  Rock Soldier!