I was flipping through channels on the TV recently [how did we ever live with just four channels and (gasp!) tuning KNOBS?] and caught a few seconds of an infomercial for one of those compilation records. Number one songs from the ’70s or something like that. One of the songs they played a snippet from [before I clicked away] was Kiss You All Over by Exile.
This is another song that was controversial in its time though I never understood why. The most provocative lines are in the chorus:
I wanna kiss you all over
And over again
I wanna kiss you all over
Till the night closes in
Pretty tame stuff really even compared to what was out at the same time. But it was a big hit.
I saw Exile in concert once. I think they were the opening act for Journey. In the late ’70s, that was pretty hot stuff. [As much as I love music, I hate big crowds even more. So I haven't been to a huge number of concerts. But even so they tend to blur in my memory. And I wasn't drugged up at any of them. Go figure.] A few years later I saw them playing in the lounge at a bowling alley in Lexington, KY. The music business has its ups and downs, after all.
But the band had started as a group of high school kids in the early 60′s in the town where I would later go to college, Richmond, KY. They played with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars in the late 60′s and were a big regional band in central and eastern Kentucky. After their precipitous rise and fall they morphed into a country band. There have been myriad changes in the band membership, but they’ve enjoyed pretty consistent if less conspicuous success over the years.
So anyway, in the late ’70s I was going to school in Richmond, KY and saw a local band hitting it big opening for Journey [I think] in Lexington, KY. And a few days ago I heard a few bars of a song that transported me back there. That was a cold winter… but that’s another story….
5 Responses to “Kiss You All Over”
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Let's do Something Cheap and Superficial 
I am so jealous that you saw Journey in concert. I always wanted to go, but being in fifth grade or whatever I couldn’t go without a parental unit, and they were more into Perry Como. No fun for me of any kind. (This would probably be a good moment to mention that my first concert, seventh grade, was Duran Duran. And I STILL like them.)
That Exile song makes me laugh, though, since it reminds me so piquantly of the roller-rink near my house so many years ago. That song would play, or stuff from the Xanadu soundtrack, or funkadelic music from the Gap Band, and the lights were all crazy and we just thought it was the height of sophistication. And I do remember, not that it’s relevant or even meaningful, thinking how gross it would be to have someone kiss you “all over.” Ewwwwww!
How stupid I was.
Thanks for the opportunity to reminisce.
We all thought we knew the height of sophistication when we were 13. And you’re welcome. ~Tim
P.S. Easy fix on the italics.
that’s funny about the Kiss You All Over lyrics. Now the radio is playing songs like Smack That and Just a Lil Bit which COMPLETELY ooze with sex….lol it’s funny when 7 year olds call in to request songs like Smack That….
that cold winter was ’77; right? I was one year old that year, but I heard it was really freakin cold. 
’77 and ’78 were both extraordinarily cold. And I walked to and from school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways…. But after giving it more thought, this concert might really have been in ’79. Good thing this blog is all fiction! ~Tim
I, too, am bamboozled as to why “kiss you all over” should be controversial. Surely there were more racy lyrics being written at the time?
Depression-era people are so prudish.
Hey, my parents are depression-era people… so, um, you’re absolutely right. ~Tim
Tim VanSant:
You must be my age (old). I saw Journey a bunch of times at the Seattle Center Colosseum, along with Bruce Springstein, Lover Boy, Styx, The Police, Queen, and Fleetwood Mac.
I always get that “Kiss You All Over” song mixed up with “If I Could Fly,” which is just as cheesy:
“She’s just sixteen years old
leave her alone, they say.
Separated by fools
who don’t know what love is yet,
but i want you to know
If i could fly
I’d pick you up
I’d take you into the night
and show you a love
like you’ve never seen – ever seen…
It’s like having a dream
where nobody has a heart.
It’s like having it all
and watching it fall apart
and I would wait till the end
of time for you
and do it again, it’s true…
I can’t measure my love
there’s nothing to compare it to
but I want you to know……………………………. ”
Eesh.
I’m as old as Barbie [we both entered the world in '59]. Is that old? And you’re right about the cheesy lyrics. Thanks for sharing. I’ll call you when I get that tune out of my head…. ~Tim
Ha! What about all the heavy breathing on that song by Donna Summer!?!?!?!? They wouldn’t even play it on the radio.
It’s pretty hard to guess what the radio will play. They seems to be pretty inconsistent. ~Tim