Ace Frehley ~ New York Groove 1978 Disco Purrfection Version

This is for my friends in New York City, the greatest city in North America, dare say the world. We all need to get into their groove!
KISS helped keep Casablanca Records in the black during its early years pre Donna Summer when the label first started off in 1974. One of the points in KISS's contract was that they could each record and release a solo album. As Casablanca Records Executive Larry Harris was running the day to day operations under Neil Bogart relates that at the time when KISS was beginning to splinter around 1977.

Simmons and Stanley had been the creative talents with Frehley and Criss more or less going along with them. Sensing this disparity Frehley and Criss began to grumble about their lack of input so their manager Bill Aucoin began to campaign for the four solo albums KISS noted in their contract. The company was not really on board with the albums as they were a commercial gamble as solo artists. In order to soothe the band's ennui the label agreed to the releases in order to preserve the Band/Label relationship. Those releases were considered to be half an album under their contract which meant that they would have completed two more albums of their contract.

The label tried to find a way to market the half million LP's they were contractually obligated to print on vinyl.There was a sudden change of management right after that as it was sold to Polygram Records and the true financial dealings came out. Larry Harris has a book of very compelling inside information during his reign from the start of the label called "And Party Every Day", a fascinating must read.

Back to the real story here, under the contract Casablanca had to issue one million units per member and PolyGram, now Casablanca's parent company balked. Neil took a gamble and pressed 5.3 million albums on September 18, 1978 and was the largest release in the history of the industry. The only hit to come out the debacle was Ace Frehley's "New York Groove" written by Russ Ballard which peaked at #13. Each LP did sell a half million units, which meant they went gold, but the extra half million units for each member meant that Casablanca had to swallow the cost of two million returns.

It was devastating to the financial bottom line, and then PolyGram added insult to injury by directing (and not telling anyone) the the returns were sold to discount retailers and flea markets as cut outs in order to make some money. When albums got cut out, it was signalling the end of an artists career. Since PolyGram had contravened the band's contract by dumping their albums into the cutout bins too soon after their release, KISS sued the company and were successful. Casablanca on the other hand became financially strapped and that with the downturn in the record industry in 1979 contributed to their demise.

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