special introductory paragraph
Pretties For You The Freak Out Song Easy Action Love It To Death Killer School's Out Billion Dollar Babies Love It 'Til The End Muscle Of Love Welcome To My Nightmare Alice Cooper Goes To Hell Lace And Whiskey Battle Axe (by Billion Dollar Babies)The Alice Cooper Show From The InsideFlush The Fashion Special Forces Zipper Catches Skin DaDa Constrictor Raise Your Fist And Yell Trash Hey Stoopid The Last Temptation A Fistful Of Alice The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper Brutal Planet DragonTown The Eyes Of Alice Cooper Dirty Diamonds Along Came A Spider
Republican. Avid golfer. Alcoholic. Dundering Old Man. Yes, Gerald Ford is all these things and more. But even more appropriately to the subject at hand: through every phase of Alice Cooper's 35+-year career -- from psychedelic vomit manufacturer to hard rock God to Broadway showtunesmith to New Wave zany zapper to '80s hair metallist to modern heavy rock kingpin -- he never stopped applying make-up to his face, hanging himself on stage or writing some of the most wonderfully sick rock songs that man has ever deserved to enjoy. Don't ever stop rockin', Mr. Furnier! (For your real name is Vincent Furnier!) (Unless you had it legally changed!)
Long before Alice Cooper donned his scary facepaint and flew around in a balloon with a skull and crossbones on it, his band was a bunch of Mothers Of Invention-stylized freaks with hippie clothes and really long hair. But not just the visuals were different from the Alice Cooper you have on your wall -- the MUSIC was completely different too. This may be the same line-up that would later bash your head in with a rock on hit singles like "I'm Eighteen," "Is It My Body?" and "Under My Wheels," but at this point their music was essentially a multi-personalitied split between 1966y British pop/psych rock and fucking AWFUL experimentation with unnatural note and chord progressions. And by "Fucking Awful," I do in fact mean that the songs are poor lovemakers. At first, "Changing Arranging" was very sensitive in bed, tickling my special tickly places and calling me its 'cherished pussycat,' but after about a month I was lucky if its dick went in the right hole. You see, when you let in a song from a
This music is UGLY music. The guitar tones are messy, scraggly and unpleasant, the production is flatter than a waffle, and regardless of the bright pink album sleeve, most of the songs revolve around dark, unpleasant, brown minor-key skrank. Songs that are weird for the sake of being weird, without being memorable or enjoyable in any way. Plus, what's up with all those really short songs interspersed with all those epics that drag on for far too long? What's up with that? Man, that ain't right!
But still - there are some splendidly great songs on here, once you trollop through the shit and trash. The best tracks find Alice singing like a young fey British hipster (though he's originally from Arizona, and at the time of recording lived in Los Angeles) over some wonderful pop rock melodies and/or brilliant song constructions. In this context, the strange production and uncuddly guitar tones sound less like a bad drug "trip" (or "experience") than an old Who record!
No no, THE Who. As far as I know, the "Who" that Horton found in that Dr. Seuss book never recorded a solo album.
Well yeah I know, but he had Art Garfunkel backing him up on that one, so I hesitate to call it a "solo" album.
In the subjective mind of Mark D. Prindle, the most enjoyable tracks to be found on this LP, aside from the dramatic organ intro (which RULES!) include:
(1) "Living" - A catchy major-chord mid-60s hit single! Harmony vox and catchiness! Great lil' guitar rock and gorgeous harmony vox, especially in the chorus. You'd NEVER guess this was Alice Cooper. It sounds like a Nugget! A BUTT Nugget!
(2) "Fields of Regret" - This minor-key rambler at first threatens to suck but soon wheels its way into a workable depressing bluesy hard rocker. There's a cool middle part built around a repeated guitar string noise too!
(3) "Levity Ball" - The Flaming Lips totally ripped this one off. I can't remember the name of the song, but it was on either Telepathic Surgery or Oh My Gawd!. It's not on the album where they ripped off Can's "Mushroom" though, so don't check there. Great Doppler-style volume pick-up and settle in the intro: bass, catchy and psychedelic! Creepy goth middle part too, so if Robert Smith of The Cure comes over, this might be a good song to play for him.
(o'clock) "B.B. on Mars" - Like an inverted fucked-up early Who song! Great bass/guitar slides at end too! And at barely one minute long, it's perfect background music for a little of the old 'in-out-squirt'!
(4 o'clock rock) "Reflected" - Borrowing another bit of inspiration from the Who, not only does "Reflected" feature a crazy crash-smash Moon-style drum line, but remember how the Who back in the 60s kept recycling old music to make better songs? Like "Rael"'s themes were later worked into Tommy and crap like that? Weeeeeelll, THIS song ("Reflected") was later sped up and converted into the hit single "Elected"! This early version is much more subdued and druggy, but still worth a chin and a grin.
Most of the other tracks are either disappointing attempts at mainstreamity or, more often, assaultingly atrocious attempts (or "AAA" - call us if you need an atrocious attempt at a car repair!) to emulate Frank Zappa's "freak music" without the musical training. Thank God they got better! Otherwise, nobody would even know who Alice Cooper IS, let alone that he flew around in a balloon with a skull and crossbones on it.
Even just a few minor changes could have
made this album a lot better than it turned out. For example, why is "Levity
Ball" here the live version, which sounds absolutely horrendous, when they
recorded a far better studio version (which wasn't released until the box
set came out 30 years later)?? And the biggest mistake of all is that for
some strange reason they didn't include the best song they recorded during
that time, "Nobody Likes Me", which is very much in the style of what Alice
Cooper became once Bob Ezrin came on board a few years later. When I first
heard that song on the box set, I was flabbergasted as to why it was left
off Pretties For You! It's so much better than anything on the album , and
should certainly be a live staple to this day.
I'll be generous and give it a three.
Verse One
(guitar solo)
Verse Two
(han solo)
Verse Three
(convex lens of 6.0-cm focal length solo) (16 hours later)
I don't support or approve of bootleggers. What they're doing is wrong and I go out of my way to avoid purchasing their ill-begotten wares. Besides, it's easy as hell to steal tons of music off the Internet so why pay the high prices? However, somehow, about five billion companies either bought the rights or stole the rights to release a shitty little recording of an early Alice Cooper concert at the Toronto Rock Festival (or something like that). It was a famous show where Alice picked up a chicken and threw it up in the air thinking it would fly away. It didn't - it fell into the crowd and died a tragic death in the slam dancing pit. But you can't even HEAR that exciting Faces Of Death moment on this CD so what's the use?
Don't be fooled! This one single show can be found on CDs bearing many different titles, including The Freak Out Song, Freak Out, Snorting Anthrax, Nobody Likes Me, Science Fiction and probably other things as well. Don't be had! Although it appears to include a whole bunch of rare, unreleased material, that's how they SCREW ya! "Painting A Picture" and "Science Fiction" are actually "No Longer Umpire" and "Fields Of Regret" from Pretties For You, "I've Written Home To Mother" and "Instrumental" are in fact two different parts of "Lie Down And Die Goodbye" from Easy Action, and "Goin' To The River" and "Ain't It Just Like A Woman" are NOT BY ALICE COOPER AT ALL!!!! Stories vary on this one -- some say that the Alice Cooper Band (or one or two members of it) actually do play on these songs; others say the tape compiler simply fuct up and put two rockabilly songs on there by a completely different artist that performed at the festival. Either way, that's how they DICK ya!
So once you scrape through all of these lies and malarkey and having them PLOW ya, you're left with two rare tracks: the catchy driving rocker "Freak Out Song" and the cute shady waltz-timed nursery rhyme "Nobody Likes Me" (it's not that "Think I'll Go Eat Worms" song; it's one where Alice keeps accusing the band members of not liking him, while they all in unison sing back to him that they do; it's adorable!; how many semi-colons is one grammatically allowed to use in one parenthetical phrase?; does anybody know?;) HEY! By placing a hilarious comedy semi-colon next to the close parenthese, I've inadvertantly created a winking smiley face!!! Do today's top graphic artists know about this time-saving shortcut???!?!?
But just when you think the bootleggers are done BALLIN' ya, listen here as I tell you how they really truly royally NAIL ya!!!! You know those songs I mentioned? The ones on the CD? Well, they're all pulled directly from a WARPED, SLOWED-DOWN cassette tape!!!! The band is out of tune and wavering in and out, Alice sounds raspy, awful and much more bassy than he actually is, and the entire recording sounds like somebody's idea of a joke (or limerick). If you're a huge Alice "Donut In Chains" Cooper fan, it might be worth getting cheap just for a lousy copy of one rare song ("Nobody Likes Me" is now available on Alice's box set). Otherwise, leave this stinker in the bin, osama laden!
Genuinely illegal bootlegs that are actually pretty good:
One is called, "Trashes the World" which is pretty much the audio
ripped from the "Trashes the World" DVD. It makes for a good live
album, as it happens.
There is a bootleg floating around called "Alice Cooper Goes to Chile"
which was a live performance in Santiago in 1996. This one is actually
quite well produced as far as bootlegs go.
But enough about the album cover. Easy Action nudges Alice and his glam-dressed group of filthy hippies another step closer towards the macabre/rock and roll hybrid that would propel them to superstardom in the early '70s. This one dumps the exterior ugly aspects of the debut, boasting stronger production, normal hard rock guitar tones and tons of wild dual-axe interplay. Unfortunately, it's still hindered by plenty of unutterably BAD 'experimental' passages and pseudo-philosophical bullshit lyrics.
Lyrics! I didn't mention those in my review of the first album because I hadn't read them yet. Man, they SUCKED! Just a bunch of acid-soaked nonsense about "becoming one" and how living is just one part of life and all this weirdo religio-psychological mumbojumbo. This one's a little lighter on that front, but the words are still completely bland -- devoid of the sick humor and intriguing subject matter that would characterize Alice's best work. Only one song shows us where his head was REALLY at, and it's an instant classic -- "Refrigerator Heaven," a bizarre proto-metal 'workout' (as they say in them fancy big-city record reviews) whose protagonist is having himself cryogenically frozen until a cure for cancer is discovered. Since we're talking about music in this paragraph, how about that creepy guitar noise the one guy's making in the left speaker? THAT'S no note or chord! (Incidentally, please let me know if the weird noise is actually coming out of your RIGHT speaker. My speakers might be hooked up wrong since I did it in the dark and mostly with my testicles.)
Music! The fuller, louder and more traditional mix definitely makes this an easier record to listen to than the debut, but they unfortunately still haven't given up on their goal to impress Frank Zappa (their label owner and earliest industry champion) with grating weirdness and constant tempo shifts designed to drive listeners up the wall and out of the auditorium. They DO find some great hooks on here, but far too often they lurch and shift into something ugly almost immediately. The brain likes to be impressed by songs with lots of changes, but when half of the parts are cool and the other half suck dicks, the brain gets a bit agitated. Plus it doesn't exactly coat the pill with cherry topping that the two longest songs on here (7 minutes each) are also by far the WORST songs on here. "Below Your Means" drags on and on and on with this boring jazz rock crap before turning into an unlistenably noisy guitar jam halfway through (and continuing to drag on and on and on), and "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" might be the least interesting collage of noise, riffs, jams and samples I've encountered this side of everything John Cage ever recorded (if I can -- and WILL -- judge his entire career by the one cheapy used CD I bought six years ago and listened to once). Fuckin' John Cage! Yeah, he BELONGED in a John Cage!!! (a cage with a toilet in it). John Cage? More like "TRAPPER John Cage, MD," if you ask me!!!!! (Because he sucks, like that show did) Mix up the letters in his name and you get "Go Jac Hen." Don't you get it!?!? He's MASTURBATING CHICKENS in all those "songs"!!!! And now you sit back and call him a GENIUS!!!! Who's the fool now???? Who's "Been Fooled Again" now, as Roger Dalton once sang!???? I'll tell you who -- YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!th. That's right, Youth, the former bass player of Killing Joke. I'll give him a call and correct him though, so don't worry about it.
Another thing of note on this release is that Alice is starting to develop his trademark American vocal style -- slightly raspy/gruff and snide, but extremely likeable and rockin'. Especially in "Mr. And Misdemeanor," he just sounds like a funny, sarcastic guy that would be fun to hang out with. That's a big part of his appeal actually. No matter how macabre his lyrics get, he always sounds like 'one of us.' Just a normal guy with a normal range, singing like a human being sings. This wasn't the case on the debut, and he's strayed from it on occasion throughout the years, but for the majority of his lengthy career, he's had one of the most naturally charismatic (and whiskey-scraggled) singing voices in major-label rock. A bit rough around the edges, but that makes it all the more real! Who the hell would want to hear some power metal jackhole wailing "Dead Babies" across 8 octaves? Roger Ebert? Is that who? Well, FUCK YOU, Roger Ebert!!! Fuck you right on up the ASS!!!!
Oh, you didn't actually say "Roger Ebert"?
I guess I just wanted so strongly to believe that you were going to say Roger Ebert that I convinced myself that you actually HAD said it. But I won't cry. I WON'T cry. I understand your feelings and I would never ask you to say something that you don't really feel. Please go -- I need to be alone for a while. . . . . . . . . . . Alright - the coast is clear, Roger! Crawl on out from under the bed so I can fuck you right on up the ASS!!!!! And then when I'm done, how about you fuck ME right on up the ass???? And after that, we can
Oh hell, I'm sorry. Customer research findings indicated that my record review readers would quite enjoy the addition of occasional gay porn scenarios. That's the last time I use Tool's fan base as a focus group!
In conclusion, Easy Action has a beautiful Paul McCartney-style bouncy piano tune called "Beautiful Flyaway" that'll leave your ears cheering for more. And dig that propulsive drum line in "Return Of The Spiders"!!!
There. That was my conclusion. My ultimate, definitive summary of this record was brief descriptions of two songs, neither of which were mentioned anywhere else in the review.
The End
If i'm not mistaken, the producer on this album was David Briggs who
produced Neil Young for years.But I may be wrong.
I give this one a five, because you can see the band heading in a
somewhat right direction, but still abstract.
Years later I found out you could buy the first two Alice Cooper disc
together, packaged as one, for a discount price. I think it was entitled
"Schooldays".
Conservatives and businessmen will be pleased to see that they've given up on the hippy nonsense. They're still a bunch of long hairs, but now they look like a vampire motorcycle gang! I'd describe them as looking "like early Aerosmith" but Aerosmith's first record didn't come out for another couple of years so instead I'll say that they look "like early Dave Clark Five" but with long creepy hair and gypsy clothes like Aerosmith. On the makeup tip, Alice isn't quite Mr. Skary Klown yet, but he HAS started putting creepy eye mascara around his eyes, making each one look like a little tarantula. Oh wait -- those ARE TARANTULAS!!!! OH MY GOD, SOMEBODY WARN ALICE COOPER!!!! THEY'RE GONNA CHEW HIS PUPILS OUT!!!!!! Oh, pupils are holes? THEN WE'RE TOO LATE!!!!!! OH GOGOGGGDDDD WWHYYAYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Basically this is an album full of unforgettable guitar-driven hard rock, but boy oh boy does it get shadowy as it goes. Things start off on a happy Rolling Stones choogle-rock vibe (granted, this was before the Stones became a choogle-rock band -- damn you Alice Cooper for pioneering looks and sounds that I can only compare to that which came afterwards!), but by song 2, they're already hardening and darkening up the riffery to somehow make it sound threatening that some guy is 18 years old (oh no! Ahh!), then there's a little more upbeatery and crunchiness, but from track 4 through track 8, it's just sinister, dark, blackness! Not heavy metal - just really pissed-off-sounding and creepy guitar lines, bass hooks, piano/organ licks and drum... things. You've heard Van Halen's Fair Warning, right? It's THAT kind of darkness. ASS-KICKING no-sugar no-light tough streets hard rock (though Alice Cooper's guitar tone was much less metallic than Van Halen's, understand. So don't buy this expecting Fair Warning II: The Prequel!)
I've never been smart enough to figure out what a poem or lyric is about, but as far as I can tell, these five tracks find Alice portraying (a) a zombie, (b) a sleazy sex guy, (c) God, (d) Jesus Christ and (e) a man who has gone insane. If these interpretations are wrong, please let me know - I'm just reading into them as much as I can! At any rate, the words are as threatening and freaky as the music (which is mighty much of both). Hilariously, the record then comes to a close with a really happy Rolf Harris song called "Sun Arise." After all that darkness, can you believe those guys? Those nuts? Those silly American people? Ha! Mood aside, an album is only as good as its hooks, and every track on here is full of great, nightmarish hooks. And faster than a man can sing, "Zippity-doo-doo! Zippity-doo! My oh my what a wonderful shoe!," these very same hooks sent the Alice Cooper band rocketing up the charts of stardom. "I'm Eighteen" and "Is It My Body" lit up rock radio ("Is It My Body" is that one that goes "Have you got the time to find out who I really a-a-a-a-a-am?"), but the most powerful track on the record is probably the heartbreaking "Ballad Of Dwight Fry," a cyberrealistic portrayal of a poor man whose stress has pushed his sanity to the brink of the edge and into the ether of the netherworld. Actually, that's another question I have for all you Cooper fanatics out there -- does Dwight STRANGLE the guy in the street at the end? Is that what's happening? At any rate, if you've ever feared that your sanity was hanging by a shoestring, this might be a song to avoid. On the other hand, if you've ever feared that your shoestring was hanging by a sanitary napkin, this song doesn't touch on that topic but why the hell are you hanging your shoestring by a sanitary napkin? Are you afraid your foot's gonna have its period? HA HA! FOOT PERIOD!!!! HA HAHA!!! In later news, every s- HA HA HAH! FOOT PERIOD!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE??? HA HA!!! Every song on here rules until I hear otherwise. And that's the key. No blues licks, no folk rock, nothing corny, no novelty tunes, no Broadway show tunes - just gritty, dirty trips through Rock and Roll City and Haunted House Plantation. BUY IT! Oh no, my heel is bleeding! I hope my FOOT isn't having its PERIOD!!! HA HA HAH AH HA!!!! FOOT PERIOD!!!! HA HA HA HA!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE??? YOUR FOOT WOULD HAVE TO SUCK POLE FOR A WEEK!
But for some reason, "Love It To Death" stayed with me. Even as I got older, such lyrics as "Oh I like it, love it, like it, love it, 18, 18, 18, I'm 18 and I like it" were acceptable. A lot of that toleration comes from the plain fact that these guys flat out rock. As a fan of the Stooges, it would be easy to describe Alice Cooper as perhaps a hair above their incompetence, which means that they can actually play their instruments better than most people.
At this stage, Alice Cooper were still Alice Cooper the band and not Alice Cooper, the owner of the image and a sports bar in Phoenix, AZ. Why he chose to dismiss a band of this caliber is beyond me. From what I gather, he was drunk half the time, but even loaded Alice Cooper's "Love It To Death" sounds like angel wings compared to, say, "Flush The Fashion." Indeed, "Whiskey & Lace" has even been known to cause dry heaves in some listeners. Hey stoopid: call these guys out of retirement and consider a reunion tour with them.
Bob Ezrin sounds like he's finding his production legs on this one two, as the album is a nice blend of dirty Gibsons and studio gimmicktry. Thanks to his part, "Love It To Death" may be the only record Alice did that was actually scary. It certainly warped my mind enough to warrant additional listening over 30 years later. A perfect ten, or damn close to it.
Side two kicks off with "Is it my Body" and then "Hallowed Be thy
Name"mentions something about laughing at trasvestites until one picks
up her Sonny. "Second Coming" is really a great lyrical piece with lines
such as "Time is getting closer. I read it on a poster" and the fading
drum at the end is perfect with the crossfade into "The Ballad of Dwight
Frye" and its piano intro. The small voice saying"Mommy, where's Daddy"
and so on.The sound of the explosion("Blows up in my face") is an
Alka-Seltzer being dropped into a glass of water with a microphone
placed over it,while the tape is slowed down a few ips during the final
mixdown.
Bob Ezrin played a major role in molding this band as a unit.His
keyboard contribution took the band to greater heights I doubt they
would have reached without him.He taught them how to stay in tune with
each other,which was definately missing from the previous two albums.
Out of all his albums,this is the only Ten I will give, even though
"Killer is close to it.
Yep, I do think the storyteller was "Strangling the Pedestrian" as referenced in the "....I saw a man that was choking there..." lyric.
I am still looking for lyrical contect referring to the following:
Choking the Chicken
Hang on! This was all ground covered in the semen-infested tune "Muscle of Flubber".
Which reminds me, did you hear the one about the Energizer Bunny dying? Yep! Someone put his batteries in backwards so he just kept on coming and coming and coming......
(*congratulates self on EXCELLENT ending to first paragraph*)
Whether it was intended as such or not, Killer is a concept album about various sorts of killers. The negligent parent babykillers of "Dead Babies," the Old West desperado of the awkwardly and confusingly titled "Desperado," the espionage agent saboteur murderer of "Halo Of Flies," the remorseful armed robber bad seed of the title track -- (and I admit that this next part is bullshit, but I developed this "concept album" theory all by myself so I fully intend to see it through) and don't forget the, uh... the "hope killer" of "You Drive Me Nervous," who destroys his overbearing parents' dreams by ending up in prison. And how about that ladies' man -- or "lady killer" (eh? EH???) that Alice portrays in "Under My Wheels," "Be My Lover" and "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"? See? Isn't my theory as 'on-the-money' as that one about Sillystring or whatever? It's for this reason that the scientific community oft refers to me as "possessing greater motor skills than Stephen Hawking himself."
Musically speaking, Killer repeats the light/dark formula that made Love It To Death such a treat for an ear. There's no not-smiling at the goodtime Stones boogie (with horns!) of "Under My Wheels," beer-soaked lovey-dovey country-rock strumming of "Be My Lover" (for extra fun, enjoy the gigantic, bombastic and blatantly WRONG final chord!!!), flanged-drum pre-punk guitarically flammable "You Drive Me Nervous" or (if you're a KKK-loving redneck) the boisterous Southern Rock cow turd "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." However, the other half of the album will pummel the very souls of your shoes with its evil, wily grimness and blood-drenched splatter licks. It all begins with the introductory Halloween guitar notes, trembling Satanic high-pitched "vip vip vip" noise and twisted chord changes that introduce the psychotic, galloping epic "Halo Of Flies." Moments of light shine through (like Alice's vocal reference to "My Favorite Things"), but the song's about blowing up an occupied submarine so don't expect too many positive vibes! The fun continues with the death's-head spaghetti western warning of the mostly-spoken, un-Alice-sounding "Desperado," the INCREDIBLY ominous and counterintuitive bass chords driving "Dead Babies" (doesn't it just sound like he's playing it WRONG? Like the low note should hang on a little longer instead of immediately popping up higher as soon as the high note does? It sounds wrong, but BETTER than the right way of playing it would have sounded! This is just my head here - you might think it sounds perfectly right and acceptable.), and the sick grinning uptempo tippy-toe and stereo guitar trembles and vacuum noises dragging you down into the macabre, swaggering, evil, rotten title track -- complete with dramatic Bloodrock-style church organ solo! Not only is this a great album - it's a great soundtrack to Alice, Sweet Alice starring Brooke Shields as "the murdered little girl"!
This rock and roll is SMART. The pleasers and the darkers all develop logically and dramatically to their individual climaxes, as does the overall album itself. So get outside today and purchase this guitar-driven pot-smoking pentagram album with the snake on the cover and the 1972 calendar of Alice hanging himself onstage inside. I wasn't born until 1973, but I sure hope that Alice Cooper was popular as all hell after releasing back-to-back two of the greatest goddamned hard rock records the world has ever known. The filthy drunks were at the top of their game plan!
A shame, really. The other band members really deserve more attention than
they get. All of them were really creative musicians - in fact, I don't
think they were even capable of playing anything in a generic way. Dennis
Dunaway was always all over the place with that bass! He never just lazily
held the low end without any imagination the way most bassists do. Neal
Smith's drumming was incredibly inventive too, and catchy! How many drummers
are catchy???
Back to the album, the final track "Killer" rocked while Alice told of
his crime and finally his solemn sigh "someone handed me this gun and I,
I gave it everything,I gave it everything" as he is led to the gallows.
I love the effect at the end when the door opens and the siren type
noise which indicates death, is played then suddenly stops.
I believe this album made Alice Cooper, the character, and his bands
music, every parents nightmare, and in turn made the group superstars
in the world of Rock-n-Roll.
I'll give it a Nine because it just didn't have as much an effect on
me as "Love it to Death" did.
One thing that School's Out IS is it is theatrical. Although it's not quite the fakey Broadway song-and-dance material he would be doing in a few years, the fact that a full THREE of the nine tracks reference "When You're A Jet" bullcrap should tell you something about what really set Vincent Furnier's heart aglaze. He was an entertainer! Sinister hard rock? Not in the live context -- there it was all converted to harmless black humour and coumedy! Guillotining his head off, walking around with a snake around his neck going "I've got a snake around my neck, so fuck you!" -- gimmicks and thrills, that's what ALice COHOLICooper was really into.
As such, don't be surprised when this album doesn't spook you even for a heartwinkle. Wiping its hands clean of the amazing hard rock of the last two albums, School's Out is a big diverse pishposh of goodtime nostalgia, butt-humpin' rock and roll, sci-fi prog, swingin' jazz, funk bass and r'n'b soul, all presented with lots of pianos, horns and violins -- and perhaps a touch too much of Alice's "precious" ("goofy") theatrics. The title track is of course a world-famous guiter licker ass kicker, but it's also by far the hardest track on the record! "Luney Tune" has a tough little riff too, but after that it's Sunshine City (Sun City, for short) til the cows return: circus organs, Sha Na Na-styled 'street fight' horsegallops, 50s guitar licks, Doorsy organs, Stonesy Exile-style soul-rock, boring acoustic memories and bombastic organ prog. Hardly the kind of album expected or desired by a Kill It To Death or Lover fan, I'd say!
But toot sweet, the band itself is still playing dirty, raw, filthy music. They haven't forsaken their individual playing styles a bit (the bass player in particular kicks some serious butt all over this record, if you listen closely); they've just added lots of extra fancy instruments to it and placed an emphasis on lighter and more Variety Show-ready material.
Not that it's ALL light. As I said, three of the tracks are vomitous Alice at his best (even if the music isn't as intimidating as the lyrics). "Luney Tune" presents a fable of a streetwise badass who winds up in an insane asylum slashing his wrists by the end of the song ("I'm swimmin' in blood/Like a rat on a sewer floor/No longer insane/Just part of this crazy dream"). "My Stars" -- possibly the best song on the album -- combines classically dramatic up-and-rising bass/piano flourishes with lyrics about either the devil or some evil supernatural space being destroying the Earth. It's probably Satan doing it, but he keeps referring to his stars so it's possible he's some giant space being. Actually, no wait! It might be God! He talks about being banished - maybe it's God destroying the Earth for forsaking him!!! Well, whoever he is, he's a scary fictional space being and the songwriting/composition of this track is ass smart and butt powerful. And "Blue Turk" -- though I hate the song immensely, with its sub-Tom Waits crap jazz and chorus completely stolen from "Ballad of Dwight Fry" -- appears to be about nailing corpses with a dickwang! Am I wrong? Possibly so, yes! But then what IS it about? I'll tell you EXACTLY what it's about!!! Stuffing stiffs with stiffies!
I'm not spitting on a band's desire to grow and branch out into larger musical areas; I just don't see the need for Leonard Bernstein references and songs that use cats fucking as a metaphor. But dump the dumbass nostalgia crap ("Hey, remember the time - 'member the time we took that snake and put it down little Betsy's dress?/ Now I don't think Miss Axelrod was much impressed!" -- That's great, Alice. Now have you ever known a high school student who referred to a fellow student as "little"...anything? NO! That's obviously you AS AN ADULT describing a child as "Little Betsy," and it's impossible to believe that you are a high school student getting ready to graduate! Your language gives you away!!! Also the fact that you're in your late 20s.) and you get an album that's too short. As such, a 7 and desire for better hookage results next time roundabout.
These words will make you out and out. (Supposedly. Sounds like BULLSHIT to me.)
Side one starts with the title track and the song that I would
definately play every year, as a ritual, when school let out for
Christmas or summer vacation. And about a thousand times in between.
The second cut entitled 'Luney Tune"was a rocker that was also the
B-side to the single"Elected", which was later released on the album
'Billion Dollar Babies". The West Side Story inspired "Jets vs. Gutter
Cats" was another rocker that ended with the sounds of a gang fight and
police sirens.
"Blue Turk", the fourth song on the album. was another Doors inspired
song with some groovy bass lines and jazzy trumpet and trombone riffs
alongside an electric piano reminiscent of Ray Manzarek, keyboardist of
the Doors. My favorite song is "My Stars",which starts of with some
beautiful piano from producer Bob Ezrin, and moves into a hard rock
guitar riff that is soon accompanied by some driving drumming and then
settles into a patterned groove by the time Alice starts adding his
vocals. This song would remain a live concert staple through the bands
following three tours until the band broke up. "Public Animal # 9" is
another swingin' cut that has a memorable line for me that goes
something like "I'd give a thousand cigarettes for just a couple of
lousy beers", but I'm not sure since I haven't listened to this album in
over twenty years. I forgot the title of the next song, but it had
something to do with leaving town after graduation, and recalling fond
memories while in school. I'm recalling this review of School's Out from
distant memory, but I do know that the last song on the album is
entitled "Grand Finale" and it incorporates parts of the previous songs
together for a true grand finale of the record. I like this album
because of the variety,but saddly it was also the last album where
original lead guitarist Glen Buxton made any significant contribution to
the band's recordings.I'll give it an eight.
Heh heh. Ah yeah that's good stuff. The horror movie jokes are "where it's at" as far as today's teenagers are concerned, and that's where I come in. Let's look at some of the song titles on here. "Raped And Freezin'"? Yeah, like that woman in I Spit On Your Grave!
(*today's teenagers laugh and play with their Rubik's Cubes*)
"I Wanna Be Elected"? Yeah, like that guy in The Dead Zone!
(*today's teenagers fall over with laughter, shout "23-Skidoo!"*)
"Unfinished Sweet" is about a tooth cavity? Better not let Corbin Bernson of The Dentist hear that one!
(*today's teenagers roll the aisles with laughter, get boner at African boobs in National Geographic*)
Yes, we could go on like this all day, but all we'd be proving is that I'm hilarious and everybody already knows that. For example, check out this joke I just made up.
Man: "Say, what's that in your hair?"
See? There's no battling the fiery steel of my whippingly hot charity of dopamine! Move over, Red Fox!
There are those who insist that a record review should at some point actually get around to discussing a record. It's to those narrow-minded Luddites that I dedicate this next section.
Billion Dollar Babies isn't just a great album -- it's a FUN album! Fun like School's Out tried to be, but with catchier hooks, hotter guitar rock action and less of the fattogy Broadway nonsense. Fun with major chords, big guitars, bombastic choruses, witty lyrics, and all macabre elements converted into harmless '50s-style monster movie thrills. And be aware: just like "School's Out," the gritty, angry title track ("Billion Dollar Babies") sounds nothing like the rest of the album, so if that's all you've heard, don't judge this book by standing on its cover!
On the topic of covers, this one is made up to resemble a big snakeskin billfold with a giant dollar bill inside. It's not legal tender though and doesn't even look like a real dollar bill, so if you want to spend it be sure to go to a place that hires retards (ex. a retard charity thrift store).
On the topic of covers, the album begins with a gigantic anthem that defines Alice's stance and foreshadows the exciting over-the-top rock approach of the rest of the album. "Hello Hooray" may be a Rolf Kempf composition, but its majestic themes and "Please love me! I'm a star!" lyrics were made by a tailor for good old entertainment hound Axl Cooper.
On the tropic of cancer, the sun is directly overhead at noon on June 21st. Alice Cooper did this.
Hit singles? Hells yeah, and got 'em good! The huge, shiny, horn-filled "I Wanna Be Elected" both rejuvenated "Reflected" from the band's debut and influenced Joey Ramone to write his own classic "I Wanna Be Sedated," followed by "I Wanna Be Well," "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," later to became a huge hit for the Beatles in 1964. "No More Mr. Nice Guy" pairs a classic opening riff with tragicomic lyrics about how everybody hates Alice because of his image (even his minister punches him in the nose! And he's a RELIGIOUS man!)(then he ass fucks him, but Alice left that part out). Fans of the band "Sparks" often point to this song and Sparks' own "No More Mr. Nice Guys" as having influenced each other in some way, but fans of the band "Sparks" can suck a dick because the cliche "No More Mr. Nice Guy" has been around for fucking ever. It's not like Alice Cooper or The Sparks suddenly made it up in the early '70s. Also, I'm a fan of the band "Sparks" and I don't want to suck a dick, but other fans can if they want to. I offer them the freedom to do just that if they so desire.
In other news of this album, fans of drum lines will dig the daydirt out of the title track, which was written entirely around Neal's awesome, instantly recognizable "boom-chip-chip-a-bip-bip-a-dibba-dibba" rhythm. And fans of recycling will enjoy how he pretty much plays the exact same drum line in "Generation Landslide."
I'm under no obligation to describe any of the songs for you, but for the record, "Raped And Freezin'" has an enjoyable Mexican breakdown near the end that you might want to take note of. Also, if you're wondering "Goodness, with a title like that, has Alice taken his black humor too far?" Nope -- he's talking about HIMSELF! He, the narrator (a man), has been sexually used by a strong today's woman! She was so rough, he jumped out of the car and is now freezing in Mexico! She may have smelled like honey, but she swallowed like brine!
Actually no, if that were the case, she would have accused him of raping HER. That was a shitty, worthless comparison to make. FUCK! (*angrily drills hole in face with jackhammer*)
Otherwise, I don't owe you SHIT. But for the record, "Unfinished Sweet" was written solely so Alice could have a giant toothbrush chase him around during the live show, which explains the long dentist drill solo and Mission: Impossible theme they play in the middle. Also, take careful note of that crazybutt bass tone! I'm not positive how he's making it, but I think it might be run through a wah-wah pedal that he pushes down to the bass setting every time he plays a note. So it's like "WHISSSHHHoommm WHISSSHHHOooooommmm" etc. So check that out next time you listen!
Also, "Sick Things" is either from the point of view of a vampire or a Manson-like cult leader, and "I Love The Dead" is about fucking a corpse. Good night!
(*sleeps eight hours*)
Good morning! The strength of Billion Dollar Babies lies in its hookity hookity hook hook hooks. Vocally and guitarically, you can't NOT sing along to these lil' cuties! They're too cheerful and soul-affirming! Here are some lines to memorize before the record starts, so you'll be able to sing along right away:
"IIIIIII'VE BEEN WAITING SO LONG TO SING MY SONG!"
Notice to the Suicidally Depressed: If you make it through this entire album without becoming happy at some point, just give up. Nobody loves you anyway. Asshole.
Alice might have invented the underlying contradiction of punk rock; it's Alice's intelligent non-message that reminds people that, no matter what message you try to reach the kids with, as a musician, your number 1 priority is to entertain. And "Elected" is the most brilliant anti-political song ever written.
(*pops open champagne in celebration of zinger*)
This is a shitty recording of a supposed show in Seattle 1971 and a reported other one in Portland, America in 1974. You can KINDA hear everything, but it all sounds out of tune. Worser than that, the 1971 show was recorded at the wrong speed! So all the songs are faster than they're supposed to be and Alice sounds like a menacing 8-year-old (especially during the hit single "I'm Eight"). Plus these era Cooper shows were visual experiences as much as auditory, and there are several minutes -- for example, during the long dull blues-rock instrumental jam in the middle of "Is It My Body" -- that you know something exciting is happening onstage (ex. Cooper guillotining himself; Cooper inebriating himself; Cooper urinating himself), but you can't see it because you're completely blind! I'm sorry to report this to you, but whenever you put in a CD, if a bunch of visual things don't pop out and do crazy things all around the room, that means you have absolutely no visual cortex at all! I know you may THINK you 'see' things in everyday life, but that's what the rest of us call 'smelling.' We've kinda been hiding it from you out of shame. Also, if you're attracted to women, that means you're gay and black. I'm really sorry it has to all come out like this.
So in short, these 7 Love It To Death, 1 Killer, 1 School's Out and 3 Billion Dollar Babies tracks are among the greatest hard rock compositions of all time and are for the most part performed perfectly energetically. However, the sound is muffled, the first half is sped up, a couple of the songs FADE OUT (God, I LOVE those concerts where the band members all grab their equipment and run out of the room at the end of each song!), and it's evident that absolutely no care was put into this bootleg at all. Hell, everyone of us in this room here tonight could have made a better bootleg without even showing up. Check this out - "Na na nna ananannaa anan Lines form on my face and hands! Do da dee da Lines - " See? And this is just a demonstration! "BODIEEEEEEEEEEEEES bwee bwoo bwoo!" FUCK, I could make HUGE money on this! Do you realize how many fans would pay $45 a pop to read a bootleg of a classic Alice Cooper concert? "HAVE YOU GOT THE TIME TO bwooo! biddly-biddly!" I'd better open a third bank account because my first two are gonna be full of LIQUID GOLD!
Let's discuss the album as a whole though. As a unit. This is the first one since Easy Action to be produced by somebody other than Bob Ezrin, and the result is a bit less theatrical and a lot more sleazy. Dave and Stuart (or whatever the guitarists are named) have found a new MEAN distortion tone -- a bit heavier, edgier, like Nazareth's in "Hair Of The Dog" (to be referenced again later in this review). And the songs are FUNKY rock! Tough intimidating funky hard rock, like Heart's "Magic Man" or Spooky Tooth's top-selling The Mirror LP. The compositions are also a bit simpler than before, resulting in the repetition of every chorus about four hundred billion times before the song finally fades out. And that's another thing! You don't get the sense that these songs were written for onstage performance -- they're not nearly anthemic or macabre enough to play much of a role in the gigantic Alice Cooper show. But that's good! Why spin your wheels when there are so many other avenues down which to race your Creativity Car?
Still, they haven't completely forsaken the stylistic advances of their past few records. As stripped down as the verse-chorus arrangements are, many of the songs are still filled out with outside instruments (one even features a full Dixieland jazz band! The song's a piece of shit, but the music sounds great!) It's just that the emphasis is on sex-funk-tight-dirty rock rather than show-tuney, anthemic happy rock. God I miss my anemic happy rock. Why did he die so young?
That decadent '70s vibe is all over this thing, from the Deep Purple organ action of "Big Apple Dreamin'" through the pre-"Hair Of The Dog" (referenced earlier in this review and to be referenced again in this review) "Hair Of The Dog" (referenced twice earlier in this review) hook of "Never Been Sold Before" through the Led Zeppelin "Thank You" organ and slow disco funk of "Hard Hearted Alice" past the rip-roarin' Montrose-style goodtime rocker "Workin' Up A Sweat" up at the lame-o James Bond hooks of "The Man With The Golden Gun" somewhat near the Eagles shit-rock and Liza Minnelli backup vocals of "Teenage Lament '74" and crashing down into the hilariously sexist big dick rock of "Woman Machine." That was totally one sentence. But basically, in Nixon's 1974, the music world was moving towards funk, disco and cocaine. The Alice Cooper Band responded to this "Mother's Finest" landscape just as Led Zeppelin would a year later with "Trampled Underfoot" -- they went all up at the thang's ass with some up-your-ass swaggerin' beats and simmering boogie violence! But it's NOT funk, nor is it disco, so don't get all worried (Alice would save that shit for his next album). It's just hard guitar rock with a funky, dirty leer. Kinda like TV and its funky, dirty Lear! I'm gonna have to write that one down. If there's one thing my 13-year-old readers love, it's references to sitcom producers from twenty years before they were born. Hey! Maybe I could put out a whole BOOK of 'em! Check this one out:
Person A: "What has three heads, six legs and The Sanford Arms?
Lyrically there's not even a single hint of the macabre on here, but the thoughts and images expressed are surprisingly insightful and witty anyway. Let me describe a few tracks as bullet points:
- "Never Been Sold Before" chronicles the confusion of a down-and-out city girl whose boyfriend suddenly starts pimping her out
- "Hard Hearted Alice" uses some genius poetry to describe the bizarre, unnatural day-to-day life of the travelling musician: "Time/Is free as a jailbird/At least that's what I heard/When you live/In a hideout.... Noise/Seems logically right/Ringing ears in the night/When you live/In an airport"
- "Crazy Little Child" tells a Tom Waitsy tale of a New Orleans petty thief youngster who grows up, tries to enter the world of big-league crime, and is gunned down by cops during an attempted robbery
- The otherwise horrifically bad "Teenage Lament '74" is nevertheless a painfully accurate portrait of a nervous 15-year-old trying to be cool ("Well, I cut my hair weird/I read that it was in/I looked like a rooster/That was drowned and raised again"). Also, I just noticed that the phrase "horrifically bad" might be a little redundant. So change that to "horrifically good."
- "Woman Machine"... man, oh man, "Woman Machine." Is there really any excusing a song that suggests replacing your wife with a machine? Sure there is, if it's funny! "She'll do your work in half the time/Never sick and can't go blind.... She can't talk back/With no playback/But she'll listen/To all your woe/Trade your old one/For a new one/
They just don't make 'em like they used to - No!"
If you're looking for spooky Alice or Broadway Alice, go get fucked. However, if yo
I apologize. That probably came across as a rude, insensitive personal attack. All I meant is that if you're looking for anything other than kickbutt guitar hooks and clever wordisms, this may not be the Alice Cooper album for you. Also, it's a pity your parents weren't at Auschwitz.
Ha! I'm just kidding! Just telling hilarious Nazi jokes! Say, check out this new AIDS joke I just made up:
Man A: "How can you tell if a leper has AIDS?"
Mussle Of Love has a couple of stinkers and some of the songs are far too long, but you could say the same thing about an opera performed by two people with intestinal gas, and I don't hear anybody complaining about that. Unfortunately, the band broke up right after this one, never to record together again in any way, shape or form, either together or apart.
This doesn't mean these aren't good El Pees, I just think that without GB, a lot of the gritty appeal of the earlier albums is missing.
Having split from his band due to creative differences (they wanted to play stripped down hard rock; Alice wanted to be an actor), the Coop (or "The Chicken Coop," as his fans called him) holed up in a shanty with the now-returned Bob Ezrin and guitarist Dick Wagner (or "Dick Wagger, Always Out There Waggin' His Dick," as his fans called him) to put together a big Las Vegas Variety Show for the world-famous macabre Alice Cooper character. Clockful of corny '70s horns, strings and pianos, this debut solo album is much more colorful and diverse than the work of the old band (I count 1 disco funk tune, 1 sleazy blues-rock, 1 shitty broadway tough rock, 1 New Orleans piano groove, 1 ballad, 2 big simple great happy chord rockers, 1 funky hard rock, and 3 creepy tunes). Unfortunately, it's also much less raw and "full of personality" than the work of the artists formerly known as Alice Cooper. The work-a-day output of five billion studio musicans and backup vocalists, Welcome To My Shitemare is not rock and roll but overprojected "entertainment," full of large, obvious gestures for the folks in the back row. Luckily, Alice hasn't lost his knack for recognizing a killer melody when he hears one, which is what eventually saves the record after a mostly-disappointing first side.
Not to harp on the failings of the first side, but Vincent Price's monologue is as tedious as his boring played-out persona, tha cute 1930's horny piano "Some Folks" drags on about two minutes longer than necessary, thee astonishingly out-of-touch 'hard rocker' "The Black Widow" is quite literally one of the worst songs I've ever heard, and teh laughably rank funk jazz title track sounds like incidental music for a Starsky & Hutch episode. Hence my wife's summation of the first four songs on the album: "This is lame!" I may be able to stick my hand through a hole in the back of her head and make her mouth open and close while disguising my voice and pretending it's her talking, but my wife is no dummy. Lame it is indeed.
Luckily, from there on out the album fuckin' kicks ass, motherfucker.
Best,
Post-Script: "Only Women Bleed" is the first of Alice's classic "trilogy of ballads located at the end of side one," and its heartbreaking tale of a woman who is physically, verbally and emotionally abused by her husband will touch you so deeply, you'll forget the title is a lousy menstruation joke. Then flip over the record and BAM! It's all KISS-style chord rockers and eerie songs about psychotics from here on in! Like most of us, Alice is back for more corpse fucking in the hilarious James Gangy funk rocker "Cold Ethyl," then he relates an extremely disturbing (though also a bit confusing) tale of schizophrenia and death over eerie off-key children's music and Exorcist-style piano frights in "Years Ago" and "Steven," before waking up to find he's murdered his wife in the sickeningly frightening "The Awakening" (where did that heartcrushing guitar line come from!? Did Dick Wagner write that? MAN!). Finally, the album ends with the super-fun Sweet-esque chord rocker "Escape," in which Vincent Furnier explains that the Alice Cooper character is his way of defeating his real-life pain and stress. Then it's time to turn the album over and listen to human-made horseshit again!
In short, fuck side one (except for the ballad), but side two is a masterpiece. Perhaps some of the vocals suffer from Alice hamming it up ("acting") instead of singing, and sure the bass keeps pumping away at a single note with a simplicity that would have exasperated Dennis Dunaway, but during its finest moments (side two), this is EFFECTIVE, HARROWING, INTERESTING and BUTT-KICKING theatrical show tune rock and roll. Avoid the hell out of it if you hate Andrew Lloyd Weber though - this stuff is cooooooooooor-NY!
(If, like the New York, NY branch of Coors Brewing Company, you would like to discuss product placement opportunities on Clear Channel's www.markprindle.com
This review is probably the only major disagreement I have with you in the
entire Alice Cooper universe (actually Special Forces is too!).
For a long time now, Welcome To My Nightmare has been my favourite Alice
Cooper album, which I guess by default sorta makes it my favourite album of
all time, but only by a (pubic) hair! I love how insanely overblown and
ambitious it is. There is so much going on in the music at any given moment.
I also find the hokeyness to be a positive aspect! My heart just melts at
the fact that the two Vincent's worked together...so much so that I can even
forgive Mr. Price for cheapening himself by doing the same thing with
Michael Jackson a few years later. And unlike you, I've always loved
showtunes and opera and all that, so for me it's pretty much tailor made.
Still, it does have flaws - it could have used another creepy song or two,
and at least one solid fast rocking tune since "Escape" is a tad sub par if
you axe me, but I don't want to die!
In closing I suggest you go back to your country of origin and worship your homosexual-communist-six-legged-terrorist elephant god moehammed and stop planting bombs!
Matt: "With any luck he'll stay there?"
Mike Pap Rocki: "Yes, you can see pictures of me dressed as a girl." (not sure I understand this one)
Jim: That's his best solo album. And I'd talk about how "Wish You Were Here," "Didn't We Meet," and the title track are the best thing since the invention of low-riding jeans.
Nick Leu: "I've only listened to it once or twice, but I can tell you that the cover is kind of neat."
Bryan Jackson: I'd say that I've only heard a few songs from the album, about a year or two ago, and that I'm sure the rest of the album is just as good because Alice Cooper was something special back then. :7)
So there's your answer. In conclusion, Alice Cooper Goes To Hell is Alice's best solo album, the cover is kind of neat, and even though the world has only heard a few songs from it about a year or two ago, with any luck Alice will stay in Hell where he can see pictures of Mike Pap Rocki dressed as a girl.
WAIT A MINUTE! IT SAYS HERE THE ALBUM WAS RECORDED IN TORONTO, NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES -- AND NOT HELL AT ALL!!!! Fifer. Guess I actually CAN review it. That sucks. I was hoping to have the afternoon off to attend my pre-trial hearing. Oh well. Can't win a mall!
Alice is still in Vegas, doing a tappy-toe Variety Show about being sent to Hell and trying to get free. If you have little kids, this is good music to play for them -- short on loud noises, big on obvious cutesy silliness (Alice: "For Heaven's sake!" The Devil: "Watch your language." Alice: "Oh okay okay - don't get hot.") -- heck, it's even subtitled "A Bedtime Story!" The whole strings/horns/keys/dancers vibe fits in perfectly with Alice's then-showbiz persona (appearing on The Muppet Show, eating Hollywood Squares, playing flog with celebrities) - it's diverse as hell like a big exciting Revue of dancers and Frank Sinatra, but if you're a rock fan, you'd might as well pin your tail on a donkey because this hain't no rock album. Luckily, a lot of it still rules some serious ass in its catchiness! That's an important, important point I must make repeatedly. I, Mark Prindle, HATE show tunes. Their big obvious Andrew Lloyd Webby bullshit melodies drive me up the WALL. But I like most of Alice Cooper's show tunes, because they retain his solid melodic POP sense and love for a catchy hook. Plus they've got GUITAHS!!! (bwee!!! biddly-biddly-BWEE!!!)
Here's a quick summary of today's program: (1) Dumb shitty (yet so bad it's almost good) Broadway "tough guy" rocker featuring the album's best lyric: "You'd even forcefeed a diabetic a candy cane!" (2) adorable piece of corny disco funk with KC & Sunshine Band chorus, (3) low-key Steely Dan-style smooth jazz with wonderfully weird sex/death chords, (4) slow bouncy la-de-da mopey-dopey novelty song with great chorus, (5) "I Never Cry," the excellent second entry in Alice's "hit ballad at the end of side one" trilogy, (6) 50's lame-o doowop TV greaser garbage, (7) catchy happy-chord rock song! An actual ROCK song!!! Sorta John Mellencampy! Yet... GOOD!, (8) Spanish guitar into scared piano ballad with Celine Dion-weak chorus, (9) superfun catchy disco rock!, (10) Perry Como cover, (11) Grrrrrreat piano ballad - dark to light to confused to happy etc. A hell of a composition!
The lyrics aren't as interesting as the last record, as most of it is just about Alice being sent to Hell "for criminal acts and violence on the stage/For being a brat, refusing to act your age" and then saying he wants to go home. In the most surprising and controversial ending of all time, he wakes up to find that it was just a dream. Still, I like the record. No two songs sound anything alike so surely there's something for everybody. Especially grindcore fans, who will get a major kick out of "Pyosisified Detruncation Uterogestation Verrucose Mucopurulence (Guilty) Excoriating Crepitating Inpropagation Jigsore Hepatic."
(*flute solo*)
I hope you enjoyed the flute solo. I'm going to review a record album now. If you'd like to stay behind and enjoy the flute solo a bit longer, that's fine but I'm not repeating anything so don't get all bitchy if the rest of the reviews have faded off the screen by the time you get to them.
It's difficult to figure out what exactly Alice was attempting to do on this record. First of all, he's not wearing any make-up. Instead, the two photos present him as (a) a pulp mystery fiction writer sitting at his typewriter and (b) the gun-toting private detective main character of the writer's novel. Then the album cover's made up to look like a book called Lace & Whiskey, complete with commentary from various literary critics. But see, there's no STORY inside. The songs don't have any overriding theme at all, as far as I can tell. They do appear to mostly revolve around average characters living average lives (roadies, dumb Southern studs, working men, construction workers, Alice's REAL self) rather than macabre superstitional hoodoo voodoo creatures, so perhaps there's something there. Let's assume there is, just in case. Because if you "do not assume" something, it makes a "donut-ass" out of "u" (you) and "me". Speaking of which, what the hell kind of grammar is "You and me ain't no movie star"? But wait - I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's step back and look at the entire picture as presented to us on this latest release by Mr. James Fenimore Cooper.
In the grand scheme of things, what the hell kind of grammar is "You and me ain't no movie star"? Could he just not think of anything else to rhyme with "What we are is what we are"? Or was he trying to make the "average man" narrator sound like an illiterate dumbmograph? That's just like a big fuckin celebrity to pull crap like that out of his ass. "Oh, I'm the brilliant Alice Cooper. To portray a blue-collar character, I have to dumb down my language because I'm a genius. Would you like more tea and crumpets, dear sir?" Well FUCK YOU, Alice Coltrane.
Oh I'm sorry - something went wrong with my typing skills there. I intended to write "TRUCK JEW, Alice Coltrane." I think that would be a good subject for a song, Alice Cooper. A "TRUCK JEW." With a big pointy nose that runs the world and controls the media.
No no, the NOSE controls the media. The rest of the guy just drives a truck.
Look, I'm not saying the idea is completely fleshed out yet. Hell, YOU'RE the artist! Me and me ain't no music star!
"You And Me" is of course the third, final, and least grammatically correct entry in Alice's "hit ballad at the end of side one" trilogy. But before we discuss it in any way, even by title, let's point out something else really stupid and irritating about this release. The first three songs are hard rockers. GOOD hard rockers. Heck, two of them are downright GREAT hard rockers. "It's Hot Tonight" is so good, in fact, that its riff was lifted by the Dust Brothers for the Beastie Boys' "What Goes Around Comes Around" song! So you've got these three great hard rock songs, followed by... not a single other hard rock song for the rest of the album. They're just all crammed right there at the beginning and then pffft. After that, it's a piece of godawful country rock, followed by the hit ballad, a sickeningly bad 5 1/2-minute Broadway show tune, a fun rockabilly cover, some killer disco pop, the shit ballad and a beautiful slow-moving pop-rock shiner. So yes, the diverse Alice Cooper prevails once again.
Although I wouldn't say that more than one or two songs on here come across as show tunes like the majority of the last couple records (for example, the hard rock tunes on here actually DO sound like hard rock, rather than a Disney portrayal of "hard rock"), there's still a certain theatrical flair to them. Sorta the way Meat Loaf's music has that theatrical flair. But I'd call Lace & Whiskey less a Broadway album than a diverse set of different types of music, some more theatrical than others. Take "Road Rats" for instance -- that is a complete fuzzed-out heavy ASS KICKER of a song!!! No way could you call THAT thing a "show tune." Even the hit ballad "You And Me" is more adult contemporary than Tim Ricey. Isn't that that guy's name? Tim Rice? What a dick that guy is, if I have his name right.
Musically, as before, you're mostly looking at (and potentially hearing as well) pianos, guitars, horns and strings. Lyrically, Alice creates a bunch of character studies while setting aside the finest lyrics of all for three absolutely WONDERFUL confessional tracks, probably the most honest he'd written up to this point in his career. The title track finds him admitting that he's become an alcoholic, "My God" details his need for a religious/spiritual being in his life, and most coolly and self-referentially of all, the phenomenal lyrics of the musically limp "I Never Wrote Those Songs" explain how embarrassed he is when he reveals his true feelings in his art. Isn't that AWESOME!? And he does it with HUMOR and everything! Look: "And oh, that music, I hate those lyrics. It stayed inside me so long. And I swear to you I never wrote that song. But pardon me, I'm not lookin' for sympathy, Not sympathy. I'm just thinking out loud. the melody, it goes nowhere pointlessly. Silence please." Don't you LOVE this man? Don't you want to KISS this "I've been hiding behind a character for too long" guy??? He's so darn... Alice Coopery!!!
Otherwise, worst album ever.
Worst album that RULES, that is!!!!
As you aptly pointed out, this is quite the schizophrenic release that is
all over the map, musically. It's another one of those albums that was
consistently panned for years in the media but has more recently acquire a
cult following. I personally think it's great! It's so strange that it's
compelling! Unsecretly I kind of wish Alice would create a new album in the
vein of these unorthodox late 70's/early 80's releases.
By the way, I worked in enough blue collar jobs in the past that I can
verify that stupidity, ignorance, and bad grammar are frighteningly
commonplace...it's not just Alice being a snotty prick.
Although about half of these songs are honestly catchy little hard rockers, the tempos are far FAR too sluggish, suggesting that a bit of drug or alcohol abuse may have been in the mix. And more damagingly, the production is absolute SHIT. Under the guidance of a "Lee DeCarlo," the record ended up with almost low end at all, creating a huge headache of over-reverbed, over-trebly guitar racket with the great Dennis Dunaway's basswork COMPLETELY inaudible and Neal's ass-kicking drumming reduced to a tepid "pip-pip-pip" way in the background. Occasionally you can hear the keyboards too, especially during the supercool (and pompous!) sci-fi prog rocking title track, but for the most part this is a hissing, distorting, unpleasantly overmodulated collection of guitar chords and nonstop soloing. CHRIST! WHERE IS THE BOTTOM END??? I'm playing it right now and am just aghast at how poorly it was mixed! My pristine vinyl copy sounds like a fourth generation cassette dub! What, did they mix it in a pile of dirt or something? Did "Lee DiCarlo" accidentally plug the bass amp into the television? What the darn?!
So Battle Axe fails to deliver on its promise, basically. Only one or two of the songs sound like lost Alice Cooper tracks ("I Miss You" is a forking fanTAStic hook rocker, and "Too Young" has a totally ass-kicking Rock God guitar lick they keep going back to -- not to mention some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard! Why is he pretending to be 17? He's like thirty fuckin' years old!). The rest of it as I said sounds more like early Kiss (until the last two tracks, which abruptly jerk over into Emerson Lake and Palmer progressive synth bombast for no clear reason). Big fuzzed out lumbering chord rockers with some nostalgic Chuck Berry choogling tossed in for that Brownsville Station vibe, a few throwaway piano ballads, aggressively generic song titles like "Shine Your Love," "Dance With Me" and "Rock Me Slowly" (along with the hilariously noncommital "Love Is Rather Blind"), and most likely the worst production on any album released in 1977. Check out the final track "Winner" -- it sounds like they wasted half of the available tracks on the fake crowd applause!!! Can you hear the bass or drums at all? And the vocals sound like an ancient astronaut singing through his walkie-talkie from the other side of the galaxy! Lee DiCarlo? More like "Christ YouSucko," if you ask me!
Alice Cooper's first official live album, The Alice Cooper Show allows you - the fan at home - the exciting opportunity to hear all your favorite Alice Cooper hits [except "He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)" - that hadn't been written yet, so don't get all pissy] performed LIVE! in front of a concert audience of LIVE! people, way back in the '70s. Not only that, but you can also look at all the photos on the cover for a visual impression of how wild and woolly his LIVE! shows could be. You know what Grass Roots song I really like? "Let's LIVE! For Today." Also, "The Days of Pearly Spencer." I'm not too fond of their mustache material of later years though ("Sooner Or Later Love Is Gonna Getcha" is particularly rank). The photos on the cover of The Alice Cooper Show demonstrate what his "Show" was all about -- giant hairy monsters, guillotine, big toothbrush, gangster outfit, top hats and tuxedos, snakes, hangings, Las Vegas dancers, and individual set pieces for all of his different characters. Like a "Weird Al" show! In fact, that was the name he went by for a while -- "Weird Al" Icecooper. Such hilarious parodies as "Only Women Pee," "Is It My Potty?" and "Eightpeens" had the aisles laughing and the crowd aflitter-flutter! Urine sales shot up 400%!
Unless some major liberties were taken in post-production, Alice seems to have adopted the Vegasy habit of shortening his hits and clumping the edited versions into "medleys" for live performance. There's really no excuse for this kind of cost-cutting crap, quite frankly. I mean, I PAID my $5 -- don't I deserve to hear all 14 minutes of "You And Me Ain't No Movie Star"!? Don't WE ALL deserve at least that much consideration from Alice "Go Fuck Yourselves, The Audience, Because I Play Golf With Jules Verne" Couper???? I've had it with his bullshit. I give this album an EIGHT! Take THAT to the crackhouse and suck it!
As my familial relationship to Sesame Street's "The Count" might predict, I like to count things sometimes. As such, I've counted how many songs from each Alice Cooper studio album can be found on this live release. A group of Chinamen tabulated my results and the outcome is as follows: (if you count each part of a medley as a separate song), THREE each from Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome To My Nightmare and Goes To Hell, TWO from Love It To Death, ONE each from Killer, School's Out and Lace & Whiskey and ZERO from Pretties For You, Easy Action and (somewhat surprisingly) Muscle Of Love.
Also, every track from Special Forces four times. Those might only be on the Australian import though.
This next section discusses how the formerly studio-bound songs translate to the live arena setting. I invite you to take notes in the margins with highlighter or colored pencil.
I LOVE the super fuzzy, bassy guitar tones! One in each speaker! And it's interesting to hear the new guitarists bring their own styles to early songs they had nothing to do with - they make them heavier and full of more masturbatory solos! The only bad thing about it is that Alice's voice sounds tinnily scraggly on the more rock-oriented material. I don't mean his normal whiskey-soaked low-pitched scraggle, but a higher-pitched nasally scraggle that sounds like Phil Collins being ground up in a lawnmower. He sounds great on the ballads though, and really isn't that why people become Alice Cooper fans in the first place? I know we all PRETEND to like his silly horror movie antics and what do you call them..."rocking" songs and what-have-you, but wouldn't it be nice if he took a cue from his only real competitor for the title of 'greatest artist of all time,' Rod Stewart, and spent a few years recording nothing but covers of boring shit songs from 400 years ago? I think so, and it's worth noting that I do too.
A few other things that a fan might notice regarding the musical notes and sounds to be heard within The Alice Cooper Show might include:
"School's Out" - this fuckin bassist isn't playing that awesome bass line that drives the original! What's the fucking point of playing it at all!?
"Eighteen" - the verses are built on jazz piano with lead wanking for some reason. It's slow, mean and long.
"only women bleed" - in the middle, they start playing the riff from "The Awakening"! Is that in the original? We'll never know.
"billion dollar babies" - he has to sing donavon's lines too!
In conclusion, I remember being pretty upset about WalMart's decision to close The Alice Cooper Shop, but in retrospect the idea of a store selling nothing but a single human being really d
Back as a young man, 6, 7, 80, I'm not good with dates - that's why I eat raisins when I need to shit! Ha ha ha! No no, but that's not really part of the story per se. No, I'm not good with dates - I always try to effemup the a before we even reach the drive-in! Heh heh, no no. But I'm just diggin'. Or "kiddin'," rather. DAN Rather! Hee-HEEEEEEE! But he's not part of the story either. If he were, perhaps something interesting would happen.
As my story begins, I find myself working at TSI Communications, a now-defunct technology-focused public relations firm in the heart of midtown Manhattan. In my collection of music and ephemera, I own a whole slew of 1970's Alice Cooper LPs thanks to a dollar bin gone wild. But what had I done but listened to all of 'em in chronological order like one might do if one is inclined -- now, pay attention because this is where the story would get interesting if anything actually happened -- and I'm listening to your Killer and your Muscle Of Love and all of a sudden I runs into Welcome To My Nightmare and of course I'm all like, "What the fuh is thishi'?" You know? Because it was a buncha show tunes and it sucked! The same for the next few records as well, so I'm sittin' there thinkin', "Main, Abbie Cooper sure went to pot after his band all died in the traffic accident." But then - wait, I'll pause here so you can leave.
Okay then. One day a fellow employee at so-called TSI Communications says to me he says, "Have you heard From The Inside?" on account of we was talkin' about Apple Cooper and I'd said I didn't like the Broadway material. And I'm all like, "No," and he's all like, "Well, I'll bring it in and you can hear it," and I'm all like, "Okay," and he does and I'm all like listening to it and goin', "Well fug it does sound pretty dang good for an Elton John musical." But see, the thing is that it's GOOD. It's a good record. So good in fact that it made me go back and finally understand how good his three or four preceding records had been. Sure, they're "Entertainment!" but man, they're good entertainment. And that's my story. The End.
Oh, I forgot. I also got in a furious battle with pirates and met God! But that's another story.
This is Alice Cooper's jolly recollection of a mental institution and his rehabilitation from an alcohol addiction (repeat). The story goes that he ACCIDENTALLY checked himself into a mental hospital rather than a rehab clinic, but that seems a little too silly to be true. Whatever the case, his little stint gave him reams of inspiration for a concept album. Why, it's almost as good as James Hetfield's St. Anger!
Now that we've all had a good laugh at the expense of a washed-up animal murderer, why on EARTH did Alice seek out Bernie Taupin's assistance on this record? Alice has always been a WONDERFUL songwriter! Was it forced on him by the record company? Or was Alice actively trying to create an album that sounds like Elton John? If the latter is the case, I'd say he succeeded. As near impossible as it is to believe, Elton John DID actually put out a few good albums back in his youth, interjecting some killer glammy rockers and fun piano poptones into his usual package of novelty time-wasters and nondescript ballads. And that's basically what From The Inside is: three glammy rockers, two piano poppers, two horrendous novelty tracks and three ballads. The only difference is that two of Alice's ballads are actually GOOD!
But what happened to Bob Ezrin? Who's this David Foster producer fellow? You know what - don't even tell me. I don't WANT to know. With my luck, he's CANADIAN or some BULLSHIT. At any rate, at least one of Alice's former guitarists (the dick wagger) stuck around for this most lyrically and thematically intriguing of all Alice Cooper records. The songs are of two types -- confessionals and character studies. The confessionals present yet another rare glimpse into the real-life thoughts of America's costumed superhero, as he ponders his freefall into chronic alcoholism, the "Quiet Room" where suicidal patients are kept, and his fears that his wife won't like a "sober" Alice Cooper. The character studies are less moving and more humorous, but do a solid job of attempting to penetrate the actual thought processes of Alice's co-residents in the ward - a gambling addict, a shellshocked Vietnam vet, a horny sick priest who lusts after a nurse, a Beverly Hills rich girl whose parents had her put away for incessant pill-popping and shoplifting, a loving young couple who murdered the woman's husband and chopped him up into pieces and a man of indeterminate ailment who keeps screaming that he has to get out of the hospital or his dog will be put to sleep.
And there's lots and lots of pianos, synths and guitars too! Cheap Trick's Rick Neilsen is on here somewhere and Kiki Dee of "I've Got The Music In Me" fame sings backup at some point, but lesbi honest -- some of these melodies just aren't all there. "Millie And Billie" is shitty country pop garbage, "Jacknife Johnny" is an acoustic picknstrum that's about as memorable as a wedding anniversary, and "Nurse Rozetta"? More like "Nurse Lame Funk Groove With Grotesque Sex Lyricsa!" Here, enjoy a few lines from this 'hilarious' bawdy tune: "Secretly my eyes undress her/Let me feel your tongue depressor/I'm suddenly twice my size/My pants are all wet inside." What am I supposed to tell my parents when they hear that!?
Otherwise, buy it. It might have a few more slow songs than necessary, and it might seem a bit over-theatrical to people who make love with the opposite sex, but as I said in my Oprah-award winning story above, From The Inside is the album that made me realize how much I LOVE Alice Cooper! Without it, there'd be no Alice Cooper reviews on this page! And you'd be off somewhere reading about the Squirehorses or The Ass Ponies or some other BULLSHIT equine-related band.
Like Horse The Band. Or Horsey.
Or Crazy Horse, that Neil Young band. Or Brandan Kearney's "Horse-Cow."
Acid Horse, Iron Horse, Drunk Horse, Six Horse, Horsemilk, Horseshoe -- I'm serious. You'd better be thankful for this album.
Dead Horse, The Horsemen, Horsehead, Horse Opera, Horse Sense -- hell, maybe I should give From The Inside a 9 or 10! . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Horse Noodles, Rocking Horse, One Horse Blue.... AND FOR GODS' SAKES, DON'T FORGET "FIVE HORSE JOHNSON"!!!! THEY HAVE THE BLUES FOR MY DOG!!!!
(Henry)
(They have an album called Blues For Henry.)
(I intend to live a long, healthy life and die at age 85 in my sleep, having never heard it.)
I love this album (I know, I seem to say that for each record)! Lyrically,
it might just be the best thing he's ever done. The problem is that the
music is too soft overall, and a tad too polished as well. As fantastic as
From The Inside is, it could have been a masterpiece had it sounded a bit
darker and meaner than it does, to match the twisted lyrics. Speaking of,
I'd love to know exactly what Bernie Taupin contributed, because all the
lyrics solely reflect Alice's style of writing.
Ever heard Johnny Thunders' L.A.M.F. album? Well, this is Alice Cooper's L.A.M.E. album! Even from the getgo, things are just screwy all over. First of all, the fuckin' thing is only 28 minutes long! Second of all, three of the ten songs weren't even fuckin' written by Aclie! And look at that fuckin' photo on the back cover. Good heavenly Lorde. If you thought it was strange to see Aielc as a normal-looking man in the Lace & Whiskey photos, wait 'til you see the new wave Aleic. Slicked back hair, black eye mascara and cheek rouge, wearing leather... and holding a riding crop. (*utters long, audible sigh*) A riding crop, I say. (*farts, says the dog did it*)
But these are all visual trappings, intended to allure and deceive. That which really matters can only be found deep within the grooves, where the sound originates. Let's begin with the vocals. Alice has completely changed his singing style -- far from the friendly, raspy drunk we've grown up to marry, the new Alice sounds snide, humorless and obnoxious, like an asshole teenager who's just discovered nihilism. He does as much talking as singing, with a pinched-nostril approach that sounds like he's puckering up his butthole as tightly as possible to keep a turd from dropping out during an important business meeting. And when he DOES sing, he sounds smooth and wispy, with very little of his classic whisky dick. I don't like it one bit, this new voice of yours.
And the music - OH, don't get me started on the music. Oy! What do you think I am, some kind of meshugginah? Who are all these people? Even Dick Wagner is gone this time, leaving Alice in the incapable hands of a stripped-down new wave bunch of bullhockey artists. Results = bouncy fake stiff beats, phased distorted guitars playing nothing but barre chords, and Cars-esque synthesizers blooping and weeble-whooping all over Creationism (which is probably appropriate since Cars producer Roy Thomas Baker was behind the keypad this time around). For some reason I'm having a hard time coming up with a band that this sounds like - kinda fast punky rock, but with that new wave plasticity too. Sort of a cross between... hmm. Let's say X-Ray Spex, Rezillos, and some band that really blows.
To quote David Yow of The Jesus Lizard fame, "None of this would be so bad if not for the fact" that these songs aren't very well-written. It sounds like they're trying to pair unorthodox chord changes with formulaic cutesy singalong choruses, and it just doesn't work all that well. There are no complete ass-suckers like "The Black Widow" or "Jackknife Johnny," but nearly every song sounds half-finished and half-assed. As a result, there are only about three honestly solid tunes on the whole record - one of which wasn't even written by Alice!
What really saves the record (no surprise) are the lyrics -- with all of these unpleasant new wave updates, one thing that hasn't changed is Alice's ability to make one laugh, cringe and nod one's head emphatically. Subjects tackled on Flush The Toilet include (a) taking pills for his headaches, only to realize that they are slowly destroying his brain, (b) pain itself -- from PAIN's point of view, (c) the lighter side of being contaminated with nuclear waste, (d) the importance of informing parents that their children are criminals, pregnant, prostitutes and groupies... and that Alice is going to take advantage of them, (e) the tribulations of a straight arrow teen with pot-smoking orgy-loving parents, and best of all (f) others. Even the tracks NOT written by Alice are a lyrical hoot, poking teasatory fun at cloning and violent cops. So when you play the album, be sure to block out all the music and just listen to the words. If your local store sells an acapella or poetry version of the album, get that one.
Actually, three of the songs rule, even musically. Sadly, none of these are "Talk Talk," a hideous and depressing cover of a formerly great Music Machine song. They are, in reverse alphabetical order by last letter, the total Cars-a-thon "Clones," the old-school dirge/ballad "Pain" (the ONLY song on here that actually sounds like Alice Cooper), and the sleazy hard rocker "Nuclear Infected." Musically speaking, all the other songs can go riss up a pope. Especially "Dance Yourself To Death," which is a bigger Rolling Stones ripoff than that shitty live album they just put out.
So you see, in life it's better that everything stay the same always and never change. That's why I'm still the same height and weight I was at birth, and also why your wife and I start each day with a Big Bang.
A Big FUCK Bang, that is!!!!!!
(in case you didn't know what I meant by the confusing, obscure statement "your wife and I start each day with a Big Bang.")
Mark Prindle Presents:
A Mark Prindle Production
"Mark Prindle's New 'Play-On-Words' Template"
(begin)
Well, I guess the typesetter was smokin' dope or giving a rim job because by my calculations, the correct title of this LP is Special ALBUM!!!!
(fin)
From this point hence, that shall be my new "play-on-words" format. For example, if at some point I choose to review The Eagles, I might say something like "Well, I guess the typesetter was smokin' dope or giving a rim job because by my calculations, the correct title of this LP is Hotel PILEOFCRAPULORNIA!!!! Alternately, if I suddenly decide to shift my focus to reviewing American states, you might run across a witty passage like "Well, I guess the typesetter was smokin' dope or giving a rim job because by my calculations, the correct title of this state is New LAMPshire!!!!! (if it turns out that there are a lot of lighting fixture stores in New Hampshire or something - I'm just speculating).
In short, it's a very special day for very special people. So it's appropriate that I'm reviewing Special Forces, an album that at the time of its release was the most enjoyable LP Alice Cooper had released since his original band broke up. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm well aware that most 'critics' hate this album -- heck, even Roland "Alice Cooper" Fratzl gave it a C on his web site (he grades like a teacher, because he believes that public education is the most important thing a child can do) -- but you know what? Critics are critics, artists are artists, and it's always been that way. As an artist (a WORD artist) (oh wait, I actually write and record my own music too - just not much recently) (but that still makes me an artist, and thus uniquely qualified to express my opinion in a public forum, something that nobody who ISN'T an artist has the right to do in America), I love this stupid fuckin' album.
This is not a new wave album per se -- the music sounds more like ominous MTV-friendly early '80s music of the "Don't Pay The Ferryman"/"White Wedding"/"Talking In Your Sleep" persuasion. The early '80s synths are as prevalent as the raw, slightly phased distorted guitar, and the production is very much "of its era" (in other words, the drums are far too loud), but the hooks - the HOOKS! The everlasting HOOKS! In all serious honestly, a full SIX of these ten songs have been running through my head nonstop since I listened to it for review three days ago. Here, I'll hold the keyboard up to my brain so you can read what's going on in there --
DON'T TALK (DON'T TALK OLD TO ME!) DON'T TALK SO (DON'T TALK OLD TO ME!) WHO DO YOU THINK WE ARE? SPECIAL FORCES IN AN ARMORED CAR? I'M THE PRETTIEST COP ON THE BLOCK! SET YOUR SOUL ON FIII-YER. VICIOUS RUMORS (DWANG DWANG DWANG-ANG-ANG-ANG) VICIOUS RUMORS (DWANG DWANG DWANG DWANG) WHOA... WHOA WHOA! SKELETONS IN MY CLOSET.... WHOA - WHOA WHOA! SKELETONS IN MY CLOSET -- I LAUGH TO MYSELF AT ALL THE MEN AND ALL THE LADIES WHO NEVER DID CONCEIVE OF US BILLION DOLLAR BABIES...... LA LA LA LA LA!
As you can see, I'm quite
Everybody has this image of Alice Cooper up there onstage hanging himself and flying around in a balloon with a skull and crossbones on it, but what most people don't realize is that not only did the band not create their macabre image until the third or fourth record, but Alice NEVER flew around in a balloon with a skull and crossbones on it! This image has been imprinted in all of our brains by a savvy bloodhungry media out to create controversy where none previously existed, but they'll have to try again because now we all know the truth. That's important in moderntimes America - knowing how to separate the truth from the fibbery. Everyday we're inundated with corporate lies, government lies, media lies - LIES!!!! But no more. As Robert Daltrey once sang, "We Won't Get Fooled Again."
I've tried for years to make sense of this debut, but it's impossible. Some
of way outest music I've ever heard! I think the 6 is too high - there is
indeed some really good stuff here, but you have to run the aural equivalent
of the gauntlet to get there. You're dead on when you say that a great deal
of the music is just OOOGLAY.
Unfortunatly I bought this album after Billion Dollar Babies, thinking
it would rock , but I was shocked when I played it the first time.So I
gave it a second,third, and even a fourth try and it still sounded
awful.At the time i purchased this album,I was a sixth grader in the
mid-70's, and was used to the harder edged sound of the previous albums
I had purchased(Killer.Love it to Death,Schools Out,B.Dollar Babies),
not realizing that this was the first studio Lp for the band,it stunk
like shit when compared to the others I mentioned.Needless to say, i
gave Pretties For You away,during my hard rock youth.Now i wish i had
this one back so I could give it another try.Maybe not.
Say! What's your opinion of bawdy goodtime sexual innuendo boast hard rock songs? Are you as fond of them as I am? Because I'll be fucked up the pipehole if I didn't just come up with the greatest bawdy goodtime sexual innuendo boast hard rock song this world has seen in quite the lengthy year. The patent office put me on hold, so I thought I'd share it with you here on the Internet. Please observe the honor system and don't record this song and have a huge hit with it. Thanks!
Words by Mark Prindle
Music by Mark Prindle
Tranquilizer dart of love
I got a tranquilizer dart of love
I stick it in you and
you don't feel a thing
That's my tranquilizer dart of love!
I got a tranquilizer dart of love, sweet mama!
A tranquilizer dart of love
I stick it in you and
you fall asleep
That's my tranquilizer dart of love!
I got a tranquilizer dart of love, good baby!
A tranquilizer dart of love
I stick it in you
Ten seconds later, 'Good night!'
That's my tranquilizer dart of love!
Call me crazy, but even though so many people insist that the 2 studio
tracks on this fraudulent sham of a release have nothing to do with Alice
Cooper, the vocals sure sound like him!
The 2 mystery tracks on this much bootlegged bootleg are performed by none other than the legendary Ronnie Hawkins and his 35th version of the Hawks. It was a fuck up by the guy who put together this piece of shit. Glad I could be of assistance....have a day!!!!
You weren't kidding when you wrote: "This one single
show can be found on CDs bearing many different
titles" ... mine's titled "Live at Toronto."
And I've seen it on cassette, also called "Freak Out
Song," only the last track is called "Science
Friction." Which is actually an improvement on the
actual title.
When was the demand for Alice Cooper product so great
that it led so many bootleggers to issue so many
variations on the same piece of crap?
Live In Toronto 1969 (aka a million other names) is not technically a
bootleg. Those who produce it legally purchased the rights to do so.
It is still an exploitative piece of shit, though.
Alice Cooper's back!
Kinda weird that you gave Easy Action the same score as the debut. I'd say
this one is a significant improvement in every category, though if you dig
surreal, experimental stuff, you won't find nearly as much of it this time!
A couple of the songs still kinda suck though!
After I bought Pretties For You,I bought Easy Action.When I put this
album on the turntable the first time, I noticed a vast improvement over
the previous Lp.The first song,Mr. & Misdemeanor had that Alice Cooper
sneer and swagger that i was accustomed to hearing.A memorable line that
I'll try to remember seems to go like this"Stand beside the ocean,land
sake's alive a gotian?, who put all of this in motion" da da da da am am
am am, damn"I gave this album away also, but it made more of an
impression on me than the previous one.Also there was this song that had
a line"Easy action,gotta rocket in your pocket",and i think it was on
the first side.After that I couldn't stomach the rest of it.
all this talk of "easy action" and no mention of the brilliance of "shoe salesman"? damn all you earless fuckers to hell.
One of the larger mysteries in the history of rock is what exactly happened between 1970 and 1971 to make the Alice Cooper Band so goddarned good. Was it their sudden move to KISS's fabled Detroit Rock City? Was it the guiding influence of their new producer Bob Ezrin? Or was it just a feeling that, now that the band had made the leap to Warner Bros. proper, they actually had a chance of radio success if their new songs were commercial instead of infuriating? Whatever the reason, they hit a touchback with this one, creating a classic early '70s hard rock album that'll make you shout, "I 'love it to death'! It's 'killer'! I'm sure glad 'school's out' so I can sit here and play with my 'muscle of love' while --- GGGGAAAAHHHOOOOOWWWWWW!!!! I hate when 'zipper catches skin'!!!"
The breakthrough! Not surprised that you gave this the coveted 10 - it's
definitely a highly regarded classic and favourite for many Alice fans. I
honestly can't say I disagree since I love this album *insert cliche fanboy
statement devoid of wit* to death! There are a number of well known classic
songs here, and even the obscure songs, such as "Second Coming", "Hallowed
Be My Name", and the awesome "Black Juju" deserve to be as well. I'm not too
fond of the hippie cover at the end, "Sun Arise", but I can see the humour
in what they were trying to do with it.
This is Alice's first true album, and a classic. The
sound is a little more raw than the following albums,
but by no means this is a bad thing. You cannot wrong
with an album that has anthems such as "Caught In A
Dream", "I'm Eighteen" and "Is It My Body". Another
highlights are "Black Juju" and "The Ballad Of
Dwilight Fry", although the former is a little
overlong. I cannot give it a total 10 though, because
the closer "Sun Arise", while not bad, seems too out
of place and "Hallowed Be My Name" is like a kind of
self-parody to me. But in general, excellent hard rock
album. I'd give it a 9/10.
agreed, excellent, like its follow-up, but you didn't mention anything about how "Eighteen" is a pre-punk classic of teen angst or the overall garagey sound...
Alice Cooper has actually called himself "the first punk" in the Prime Cuts video because of his torn clothes and whatever snotty attitude.
Johnny Rotten auditioned for the Pistols by singing along to "Eighteen" on Malcolm McClaren's jukebox and admits to being a huge Alice Cooper fan.
either way, good review and good album.
This was one of the first albums I ever got as a kid. My Dad and I went to a local record store that was closing and they were auctioning off entire sections of records, known back then as "lp's" that you played on your "hi-fi." We totally made off with a bunch of records in the "B" and "C" category. Dad let me have Badfinger's "Straight Up," The Beach Boys' "Greatest Hits," Bloodrock "2," the first two Joe Cocker albums, and this baby. When you consider the Alice Cooper and Badfinger albums, I think I made off pretty good. Right now, Mark is screaming "What about Bloodrock?! They are awesome!" Well back in the day, I'll admit, I thought Bloodrock was pretty cool too. Then I learned "God in heaven, teach me how to die" was a really retarded lyric.
Are we on the same planet? Alice Cooper sells artistic integrity to
commercial rock and we are calling teeny bop stuff like Eighteen an
improvement? At least the epic trilogy sounds authentic.
The first time I saw this album, my sister and one of her friends were
holding it with the center of the jacket open and the photo of spider
legs mascara on Alice's face,around each eye freaked me out so much
that I had trouble going to sleep that night.Over time I listened to
this Lp and fell in love with it.I would get home from school and put it
on my sister's turntable and enjoy the opening guitar licks of "Caught
in a Dream" and kick back while the sound of a harmonica played along
with guitars and drum at the beginning of "I'm Eighteen". It shifts into
the dual guitar attack of "Long Way to Go", which also features some of
the best soloing of lead guitarist Glen Buxton, while he was in his
prime. "Black Juju" is a Doors influenced song that has the listener in
a trance until Alice screams "wake up! wake up! wake up! wake up"!. You
and I know that "bodies need their rest".
Re: Dwight Frye
Bopping the Bishop
Shaking the Snake
Jerking the Turkey
Polishing the Purple Pleaser
Fisting the Mister
Squeezing the Salami
Doing the Hand Solo
Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton were a couple of hard rock guitar players, using dirty crusty early-'70s distortion to make young heads bang and old ears fall off. Each loved to solo of course (as we all do in this, the genre of smooth jazz), but they also wrote freaky-ice guitar riffs both belligerent and cathartic. Bassist Dennis Dunaway was one of those "frustrated guitarists" you read about in books about Chris Squire, writing full-fledged melodies on his machine and up-down plugging away at the strings as if they were skinny. His tone was also fairly high-pitched for whatever reason. Maybe he played higher on the neck than many players? Or perhaps he just set his knobs on "trebly" the way most bassists set my knobs on "fire." And then were was "Stinky" Neal Smith, the little drummer with the crazy flappy arms. Innovative he too, creating new-fangled beats to keep his mind occupied while supporting his guitarists' 4/4 compositions. Either Keith Moon was an influence or somebody influenced by Keith Moon was an influence, because this guy played lead drums half the time! So how could an instrumental juggernaut of such energy, smarts and first-rate ideas possibly fail? Well, I'll tell you exactly how they could -- and DID -- fail. They DIDN'T!
Another astoundingly good album! I remember in an interview Alice once said
that this was their most "musical" album, and what he meant with that was
that it has the least amount of vocals of all the albums, and it's true,
there are a lot of long instrumental passages. I think that purely in terms
of songwriting and arrangements, this is the most musically insteresting
album of Alice Cooper's entire career. It was still a band consisting of a
bunch of high school buddies at this point who were hungry for success,
which gives the album a unique personality that never occurred again. After
this, Bob Ezrin started going a bit overboard in the production department,
session musicians were brought in to cover Glen Buxton's drunken ass, more
and more emphasis was placed on showtunes rather than dark, creepy, rock 'n
roll, and then the band broke up.
After the brilliant 'Love It To Death', we have
another winner from Mr. Cooper. The music has become
even more sinister and the lyrics even more crazy!
From where do I start? "Under My Wheels"! "Halo Of
Flies"! "Desperado"! (possibly my all-time favourite
Cooper song ever) and of course the last two songs,
"Dead Babies" and "Killer". The other songs are okay,
with "Yeah Yeah Yeah" being close to do nothing to me.
But that can be forgiven, since the album has the
ultimate ballad "Desperado", a tribute to Jim
Morrison. Another 9/10.
I remember when this record came out - blammo, homerun, the big career
breakthrough (which required years to undo). Speaking as someone who was
there, AC were really great on the road, that was a big part of what
sold these albums. (The first time I ever sexed the wife, side one was
roaring through the night. Marvelous!) Now, the last thing I wanna do is
hoist the AC flag down ...but... recall June 11, 1971 at the Fillmore
East and we see AC opening the show for (you guessed it) Bloodrock, who
were still hot with 'DOA.' I'm sure the young guns were watching the
headliners slay the audience with that one, saying to themselves: 'Hmmm,
how 'bout a whole show of that kinda stuff?' That's my theory and I
think it's safe to say the rest is rockin' history.
After Love it to Death made the band some money, they were finally able
to headline venues and buy equiptment to help them expand their
sound.The evidence of sound expansion is witnessed on the first
song"Under My Wheels" with the horn section backing up Alice and the
band."Be My Lover" is a basic three chord number tailored made for
radio, but I think that Alice drops a low volume f-bomb after the famous
Neil Smith fumbling his drumstick onto his shell of the bass drum part.I
think Alice drops it on the verse "and I'm still on my own","
fucking".at least that 's what it sounds like.This song is followed by
the multi-chord changes and tempo of "Halo of Flies".Check out "she
really came as no surprise, but I still did destroy her and I will smash
Halo of FLIES!"The guitars drive full steam ahead with a blitzkrieg of
sound that gives way to added symphony strings
followed by bass soloing from Dennis Dunaway and some kick-ass tom -tom
drum work from Neil Smith.After the dust settles from "Halo", the lone
guitar intro of "Desperado" begins and the vocal style reminiscent of
Jim Morrison is performed by Alice as an ironic tribute to The Lizard
King. One of the hardest rock songs by the band."You Drive Me Nervous"
starts side 2 of the vinyl format and for some strange reason I can see
Guns' and Rose's covering this song during their Appetite for
Destruction "days . Anyway the next cut,"Yeah Yeah Yeah,starts out like
an ode to the Beatles, but the band goes into a jam section of the song
with Alice contributing some damn good harmonica work, before returning
back to the lyrics of the song "This is Alice speaking, suffer" Then the
mood shifts dramatically from fun to doom and gloom with the song "Dead
Babies".Even though the song is about child neglect, the media and the
parental listening audience portrayed it as sick gratification and thus
the band's publicity was overwhelmingly negative by adults, so the kids
used it as a way of rebellion, making Alice and his band martyrs for the
angry youth of society.In short,albums would sell briskly and tours that
followed would sell out in every city and country the band would play
in.Bad publicity is better than no publicity!
This Phallus Pooper album has gone down in cinematic history as a "concept album" about high school, but that's a bunch of bogusry - there are only three songs about school on the whole damn album! Of the other six, three are based on West Side Story (which does NOT take place in a high school), and the remaining three are unrelated Cooper sickolalia. So why the "rock opera" tag? Because you can fold out the album cover into a school desk? Well whoopdeedoo. I can fold out my penis into a school desk too, but you don't see me calling it a "cock opera." Who's the braggart now?!
This album has always confused me, and it continues to do so. It blasts off
right at the start like a firecracker with the fucking amazing title track,
whetting your appetitite for what you eagerly anticipate will be an entire
album full of similarly intense, rocking barnstromers, only to be
disappointed that nothing else rocks! In that sense School's Out has always
been a big letdown for me. Just when the band was peaking creatively and
commercially, they should have hit a home run instead of just the bunt that
this album is. That's not to say it's a bad effort at all though - if
anything, there is a hell of a lot of great, innovative music to be found
here, but it just isn't as edgy as it should have been. It actually sounds
more like the solo Alice Cooper albums of the late 70's than the work of the
Alice Cooper Group.
With 'School's Out', the sound of the band has changed
a bit. If 'Love It To Death' was his "rocking" album
and 'Killer' was his "crazy" album, this one is his
"carnival" album. But that's not a bad thing! I dig
the sound of this album! You all probably know the
self-titled anthem, but there are some other gems as
well. "Blue Turk" is an amazing cocktail of jazz and
rock and it has a very cool horn riff. "My Stars" has
a great piano line and some good screaming from Alice.
And if you want a pure rocker, what about "Public
Animal #9"! It's fun! The record loses a bit near the
end, but that doesn't prevent it from getting a strong
8/10 from me.
I bought this album,, and the "The History of Eric Clapton", for my
sister as a Christmas gift. It was the first time I had seen a record as
a novelty item. The album jacket would fold out into a desk and the
sleeve that covered the vinyl was a pair of paper panties. Needless to
say,the panties were torn by some teenager friend of my sister who was
trying to put them on. Legend has it that Warner Bros. had to quit
making the panty sleeve due to some kind of fire hazard. Later copies of
the album had the regular square shaped plastic sleeve.My mother had to
buy this album,since I was only in the second or third grade, but I had
an ear for good rock at a very early age.
Oh, first he wants them dead and now they're worth a billion dollars? Make up your mind about their PRICE, VINCENT!
Woman: "It's cum. I'm a prostitute."
Man: "Gum? Why, I'd love a stick of gum!"
"HEY! I THINK I GOT A LIVE ONE!"
"ELECTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!"
"ACHIN' TO GET ME!"
"IIIIIIIIIIIII LOVE THE DEAD!" (repeat 4000x)
A lot of Coop fans point to Billion Dollar Babies as being the best album to
bear his/their name, and there are days where I come pretty lose to
believing that myself, since it really is quite fantastic, but there are a
few smallish things that I don't like about it - "Raped And Freezin'" always
seemed merely average to me, to the point where I didn't even put it on any
of the seven 90 minute Alice Cooper mix tapes that I made, "Elected", as
great a song as it is, loses a bit of lustre for re-using the chorus of an
older song, "Mary Ann" is a useless little piano interlude that isn't catchy
at all, and even though I think "I Love The Dead" is one of the album's
highlights, it's a bit too repetitive even for me. Otherwise the album is
fantastic in every regard - like the best Alice Cooper albums, it contains
an intriguing blend of humourous, bizarre, and creepy subject matter!
This is in my opinion the best Alice Cooper album.
It's not that there isn't any filler here - both "Sick
Things" and "Mary-Ann" suck ass and are boring - it's
that the strong songs here are fantastic! This album
can be a big addiction if you love hard rock. I just
cannot pick a single favourite here, the title track,
"Unfinished Sweet" (gotta love the dentist sound
effects!) and of course "No More Mr. Nice Guy" are all
amazing. And the album closer "I Love The Dead" is
also great and atmospheric, check the lyrics to that
one! Just crazy! I think I'm gonna give it a 10
because it's very closer to perfection, if you ask me.
If the two weakest songs had been removed, that would
be one of the very best albums ever!
I completely agree with the "Alice is an entertainer" statement. I think that Alice Cooper and his band have such a good time making pisstakes of what pisses off the holy cows, conservative right and whoever else. It's like that love/hate relationship you have with your younger brother or parents; he knows he's part of the family and proud of it (being a Republican and proud American) but gets a jolt out of making them squirm from time to time, only to remind people in the same song, "hey! it's just a joke!" The song "Billion Dollar Babies", despite its angry, creepy sound and words is actually a fun way of saying, "we're the billion dollar babies, you give us money to act like little kids."
When John Fogerty wrote the song "Bootleg" for his band Creedence Clearwater Revival back in the late '60s, he couldn't have known that one day somebody would release a bootleg recording of a couple of Alice Cooper concerts..... Or could he? Did John Fogerty possess some sort of psychic vision that allowed him to see six years into the future, and did this amazing power allow him to foresee and warn all of us music listeners out there in the world today that no matter what happens to us, we must never, ever, ever, very, very but this CD? I thought heftily on this topic for months one day before finally realizing that if Fogerty had any sort of insight at all, Eye Of The Zombie wouldn't exist.
Alice Cooper has pulled a nilly-nally this time. You hear the album title and think, "Christ! He named the album after his dick!?" Then you hear the title track and he reassures you with the 'clever' chorus, "My heart's a muscle." But then you're playing it for your little five-year-old daughter and all her friends and suddenly they start giggling and you're all like, "What? He's singing about his heart!" but this one three-year-old toddler girl goes, "Did you listen to the lyrics? He's talking about crankin' the old beanshaft!" And indeed he is. "I read Dad's books like I did before/Now things are crystal clear/Lock the door in the bathroom now/I just can't get caught in here." I suppose it's possible that he's talking about reading the Bible and hiding in the shower so Pontius Pilate can't find him, but why then call the song "Muscle Of Love"? Is he referring to Jesus's muscle? And if so, why is Jesus masturbating?
Person R: "Bud Yorkin, Bernie Orenstein and Saul Turtletaub, silly!"
Man B: "When his dick falls off in your mouth, it gives you AIDS!"
Muscle Of Love was always more of a low key entry in the Alice Cooper
discography, and used to get really low ratings from critics for ages, but
that's been changing in the past few years as more and more people have been
re-discovering it to be the awesome album that it is, and a lot of recent
reviews have been scoring as high or nearly as high as the band's
established classic releases. I couldn't agree more! In fact, there are days
when I even like this album better than Love It To Death or Billion Dollar
Babies! The only song I don't think is great is the last one. Everything
else rocks my cock!
It should be stated here that guitarist Glen Buxton, although receiving an album credit, is nowhere on this album. Right before recording B$B, his pancreas exploded from too much drinkaholic, so he took up non-alcoholic drugs and couldn't be depended on to show up or to even play well. Even on "Billion" you can tell there ain't much of him there, so Ex-Ezrin hired A Cast of Thousands to session in on the recordings. An additional guitarist was hired for their live shows, too.
Broadway Presents "A Rock Album!"
Axl Rose
Hey!! For years you said you hated "Department Of Youth"!! :P
Alice Cooper's backup band (not actually Alice) were apparently sued by Bad Company over the song "Escape" because the riff to that one is similar to one of their's, I don't remember which one.
I'm a long time alice cooper fan and i just bought welcome to my nightmare. I'd have to disagree with you prindle you cock sucking communist nazi. I like the first side. Welcome to my nightmare is very homosexualy oriented but it still sounds good, devil's food is alright but the thing i really disagree with you and your wretched ethnic group about is when you say bad things about the great vincent price and his fabulous monologue! The late Vincent Price's voice always sounded good and I would even speculate that some of alice's own vocal styling may have been influenced by Price's orration. And considering alice was a big fan of b movies it makes sense. And Black Widow is a great song! It sounds creepy and it rocks.
Because of the horribly important nature of this album (I mean, the man literally goes to HELL!!! They recorded half of the album in HELL!!! All the tapes kept melting and the backup singers were whores and executed murderers!!!), I knew I couldn't rely on my own common sense and poor taste to give you an adequate depiction of its many tasty morsels. As such, I went to the music message board I spend far too much time on (http://www.eboards4all.com/841116/ - Ask for it today!) and asked the locals what THEY would say about it. Here are just a few of the many, many thousands of responses I received within the first 25 seconds, all regarding the 1976 LP Alice Cooper Goes To Hell:
Initially I didn't really like this album very much because it almost sounds
like a Disney soundtrack, but slowly I came to appreciate the fact that that
is the very genius of it, but I won't explain why because you can read it
all at Roland Fratzl's Eclipse Review Emporium album review site! Fuck this
Mark Prindle lunkhead!
If I were the poetry guy in the Moody Blues, I'd totally write this poem: "Fear not, for Alice's malice is not callous - it would be a fallacy to believe that his chalice would leave you to grieve and conceive of darker days, windswept nights. Move to Dallas, live in a palace, forget where your gal is and along comes Alice, singing of the strange, the mystical journey through desolation and into The Word. So keep on breathing free, on the threshold of my peen."
I more or less agree with the scores you gave this album and the last one,
but one disturbing trend I've noticed is that you've been singling out the
actual best songs as being the worst! Sup with that?
I've been reading down through these reviews and looking at the scores and noticing that Mark is still, at this point, hovering at 7 out of 10. Staying the course for now I suppose 'cos it's a long way down.....
Finally, 15 years after Alice parted ways with his original band, three of them -- guitarist Michael Bruce, drummer Neal Smith and bassist Dennis Dunaway -- formed a new band with keyboardist Bob Dolin and lead guitarist Mike Marconi and (quite fairly) chose a name that would allow possible fans to associate them with their previous career. Unfortunately, the music was not destined to do the same. Distinguished by a more heavily fuzzed-out happy-barre-chord songwriting style and the uncharismatic lead vocals of Mr. Bruce, the BD Babies somehow wind up sounding like early Kiss with Michael McKean singing lead. And sure Michael McKean does an excellent job on the Credibility Gap records ("You Can't Judge A Book By Its Hair" is a classic!) and his Lenny & The Squigtones album has topped charts since Day One (some song on there is probably a classic!) and don't even get me started on his wonderful folk singing with The Folksmen ("Never Did No Wandering" is a classic!), but when you put him in front of loud guitars, it ends up sounding like... hell I don't know... I can't even think of what that would possibly sound like. But a possible exploration of such an outlandish idea can be suggested by Michael Bruce singing lead for the Billion Dollar Babies, a band that formed in 1976 from the ashes of John Waite's The Babies. You know, when John Waite sat down to write "I Ain't Missin' You At All," the last thing on his mind was genital warts. But sometimes life ca
The only song from this that I've heard is "I Miss You", and it's awesome,
but yeah, I can't picture the guys being able to write an entire album full
of quality songs without Alice around!
I remember being pretty upset about Nike's decision to discontinue The Alice Cooper Shoe, but in retrospect the idea of a sneaker made entirely out of grain alcohol really d
I like it too, even though I never get the urge to listen to it. For years I
avoided listening to Alice's first ever live release because it had such a
bad reputation. Many fans told me that Alice sounds terrible on it, but I
didn't find that to be the case at all! The main problem is that by the time
this came out, Alice wasn't nearly as popular anymore. A live album should
have been released 4 or 5 years earlier, when the old band was still
together and at their zenith. I can't imagine why any record exec would have
thought it was a good time to release the first live Coop album in 1977,
when nobody cared about him anymore.
yes, the awakening is jammed in the middle of the original version of only woman bleed. Conceptual continuity man!!!
I'm gonna tell you a little story. Now it's not much of a story, so don't be running to your literary agent friends tellin' 'em you've got a hot one! Heh heh. Nosiree, it's not that kind of a story. It's not a barnstormin' heartwarmer like The Horse Whisperer or The Bridges Of Madison County. This is a different kind of story. A brief and meaningful yet dull and pointless story. The kind you don't even want to spend any time with, as minimal a time as it might be. I'm gonna tell you the kind of story that nobody in the world would ever want to hear, because it doesn't go anywhere and nothing happens. That's the kind of story I'm best at, and that's the kind of story I'm gonna tell. So gather around the fireplace and be sure and bring your pillows and marshmallows because one thing you're NOT gonna be wanting to do is listen to this story. Here I go:
Actually, he didn't accidentally check himself into the nuthouse - he was
forced to by his friends and family.
More like Flush The ALBUM!!!! He he he. He he he. He he HE he he. Pardon me one moment while I take the pill that I have to take for my finger stutter. He he he HE HE he he released this album in 1980 -- as evidenced by his new name "Alice Cooper '80" -- and never before or since has our fine nation witnessed such a startling and unimpressive change of direction in terms of (a) image, (b) singing style, (c) musical style and (c) image. Leaving his shiny personality-filled big band piano Broadway daze in a garbage can behind the piss club, Alice lurched face-first into the short-lived musical fad known as "new wave." Why on Earth would he choose to do such a foolish thing? Who knows? Maybe all his show tune albums stopped selling (ooh, I'm pretty excited -- I'm about to use a rock critic cliche! Are you ready? This is gonna kick SO MUCH ASS!!!) 'after the drugs wore off.' (DID YOU SEE IT!???? FUCK YEAH!!!! I'M "ONE OF THE TEAM" NOW!!!! I GET TO GO TO SPEAKING PANELS!!!!) Perhaps he was feeling old at 32 and wanted to get back in touch with the kids. Maybe he saw some new wavers on Quincy and thought they were the "shit". Whatever the reason, new wave helped Alice Cooper to create his most pisspoor album since 1969, okay? Albatross the USA.
Hmmm, I thought you'd like Flush The Fashion a lot more than you do. I agree
with you that Alice's backing band this time around sounds sloppy,
amateurish, and simplistic, and the production is shit, but the songs
themselves are great enough to overcome that! This is where I disagree
strongly with you - I think there are only two shitty songs on the whole
album (the awful, tuneless "Talk Talk" cover, and "Dance Yourself To
Death"), and the rest are wonderfully catchy new wave pop ditties! I think
this drastic stylistic change suited him well and it's too bad he traded it
in for hair metal a few years later, but if he hadn't done that he probably
wouldn't have become hugely popular again and thus probably wouldn't still
be making awesome music in the 21st century!
Granted, this album hasn't aged well, but the blame doesn't rest with Alice. As was the case with many established artists (Pete Townshend!) he fell victim to the conventions of the time. The assumption that 'new wave' would have more staying power than proved to be the case led more than a few musicos to crank up the synthesizers for fear of facing an uncertain future on the nostaglia circuit. You'd have to give him a ten for adaptability though. BTW, 'Clones' doesn't strike me as a Cars rip-off -- more of a David Bowie, 'Scary Monsters' era vibe.
Don’t know much about this album other than it contains the rather fabulous ‘Clones (We’re All)’ which sounds just like contemporary Gary Numan ( and nothing at all like that well known Numanoid, David Bowie… )
More like Special ALBUM if you...ehh... I need to think of a better "play-on-words" template. That cursed "More like (XYZ), if you ask me!" format has been weighing down my neck like MDC drummer Al Batross. Oh sure, it's funny and we all get lots of laughs about it, but sometimes in life you have to take a chance and try a new "play-on-words" template. Prepare yourselves because the next five seconds are going to blow your mind.