You Wanted The Best, You Got The Best!!

Kiss’s You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best!! was released June 25, 1996, to coincide with the original lineup’s reunion and Alive/Worldwide Tour. Rather than documenting the reunited band onstage, it assembles performances primarily drawn from Alive! (1975) and Alive II (1977), alongside four previously unreleased recordings presented as outtakes from those periods. Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss are therefore heard chiefly through the recordings that helped establish their reputation: loud guitars, forceful rhythms, theatrical vocals, and choruses designed for audience participation. The compilation’s central purpose is celebration and reintroduction, reconnecting the reunion’s excitement with the band’s 1970s hard-rock identity rather than offering new material.

“Room Service,” “Two Timer,” and “Let Me Know” open the collection with its principal archival attractions, while the previously unreleased “Take Me” appears later among the familiar selections. “Rock Bottom” and “Parasite” emphasize the band’s riff-driven attack, and “Firehouse,” “I Stole Your Love,” and “Calling Dr. Love” supply contrasting examples of Stanley’s and Simmons’s commanding stage personas. “Shout It Out Loud” and “Rock and Roll All Nite” deliver the communal anthems, with Peter Criss’s “Beth” providing a softer interlude. The standard edition concludes with “Kiss Tells All,” a lengthy Jay Leno interview with the reunited quartet, making the package as much a reunion souvenir as a live compilation. Its appeal rests on that combination of familiar performances and archival extras, though listeners who already own both Alive! albums will recognize much of the musical content.