― walter kranz (walterkranz), Sunday, 5 June 2005 19:00 (eighteen years ago) link
Pretties For You sounds like a Beatles-cum-Zappa album but in mostly great ways. the recording quality is inconsistent, but the songs are quite solid.. the best one is "Levity Ball"..
Easy Action seers all the way through. "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" is Alice's best song, period.
― donut debonair (donut), Monday, 6 June 2005 00:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 6 June 2005 01:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 6 June 2005 01:41 (eighteen years ago) link
hey i nearly mentioned iti'm 35 and grew up with "school's out ", "elected "etc but didn't buy anything of alice until "trash" - -poison is his best single,other songs like "bed of nails","house on fire" are so good - i might buy trash tour dvd but can't find it in Australia.i'm learning "bed of nails" on piano.who wants sheet music copy ?i'm willing to pay for alice cooper trash songbook
― trash tramps, Monday, 6 June 2005 02:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mike Dixn (Mike Dixon), Monday, 6 June 2005 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 6 June 2005 04:26 (eighteen years ago) link
At the very least, "I'm Eighteen" from Love it to Death is essential.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 6 June 2005 04:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 6 June 2005 04:32 (eighteen years ago) link
OTM.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 13:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― Babysquid (babysquid), Thursday, 22 June 2006 21:12 (seventeen years ago) link
― babysquid (babysquid), Friday, 23 June 2006 10:47 (seventeen years ago) link
i'm gonna buy one of his records tomorrow or something
― Charlie Howard, Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:04 (sixteen years ago) link
get Killer or Love It To Death
― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:07 (sixteen years ago) link
Well done sir! (xp)
― Tom D., Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:07 (sixteen years ago) link
Buy:
Love It to Death Killer Billion Dollar Babies
At once
― Tom D., Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:08 (sixteen years ago) link
Alice Cooper just played the Missouri State Fair. Blue Oyster Cult were also on the bill. I'm almost regretting not going.
― Trip Maker, Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:19 (sixteen years ago) link
what an awesome show that would be...
...in 1975!
I can't say enough about the effect the Coop had on my teenage self...my first full-length purchase was an 8-track tape of Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits...I'll never forget how huge "Hello! Hooray!" sounded coming out of those Ford LTD speakers...
'Billion Dollar Babies' is probably the one to get (for the unheralded "Generation Landslide" alone)...but 'Welcome To My Nightmare', recorded with a completely different band, is just as good...songs like "Steven" and "The Awakening" are truly uncanny, scary in the David Lynch sense...(see the DVD of same for some welcome rubber-mask silliness)...if you were a young boy in the mid-70's, Alice had it all: rock, rebellion, horror, spy movie soundtracks...even a little Busby Berkeley thrown in for good measure!...
see also the DVD of 'Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper' for some great vintage concert footage (and some truly terrible comedy skits)...and track down a copy of 'Billion Dollar Baby', Bob Greene's account of life on the road with the Cooper group, circa 1974...if nothing else, you will be amazed that large-scale rock tours could be executed without cell phones, ATM's, computers, etc...
― henry s, Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:42 (sixteen years ago) link
my wife recently met Alice Cooper's former road manager ('69-'72). He is now an insurance broker with a cowboy fetish.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:52 (sixteen years ago) link
you don't mean David Libert, do you?
― henry s, Thursday, 23 August 2007 17:06 (sixteen years ago) link
no, some guy named Jim Scherz...?
― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 23 August 2007 17:18 (sixteen years ago) link
Coop's playing here soon, and if I get this job, I can go see him free with a date.
― roxymuzak, Thursday, 23 August 2007 17:18 (sixteen years ago) link
(entirely possible that "road manager" was an exaggeration/misnomer - I didn't meet him personally or get to pump him for stories)
x-post
― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 23 August 2007 17:19 (sixteen years ago) link
Libert managed the tours during the Billion Dollar Babies era, so he must have suceeded Scherz...what stories both these guys must have!...
roxymuzak, what kind of job come with a free Cooper show as a perk?
― henry s, Thursday, 23 August 2007 17:22 (sixteen years ago) link
I dig the first 7 Lps plus From the Inside and Dada.
Any more votes for From The Inside & Dada coming? No?
I do have several earlier ones and love them (to somewhat varying degrees). But those two I've been hesitating about for awhile now...
― t**t, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:04 (sixteen years ago) link
'From The Inside' is patchy...has a couple of decent rockers (the title track, "For Veronica's Sake" which I swear has an uncredited Paul McCartney on backing vox) but overall suffers from too much David Foster...(Gloop-King of LA)...(by now, his power ballads were verging on the obligatory, and "How You Gonna See Me Now" is about the weakest of the lot)...
the title track was used most effectively on the tour for that album, where he began his shows by jumping out of an "open bottle" (projected on a screen) to start the show...
― henry s, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:10 (sixteen years ago) link
My mom saw a televised Alice Cooper appearance sometime in the early-mid 70's, and the result was that I wasn't allowed to listen to rock and roll for the next year or so. I still have a hazy memory of her horrified description of the concert...had to sneak over to my friend's house to listen to "School's Out" on 45 from then on.
― dlp9001, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:11 (sixteen years ago) link
school's out is dope too...killer's is the jam.
the orig. alice cooper's greatest hits (with the mafia type drawing of the band) is song for song one of the greatest rock albums ever. always see it used for cheap.
― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:11 (sixteen years ago) link
But no good words for Dada, then?
― t**t, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:24 (sixteen years ago) link
hell, I don't even remember that one...I basically wrote him off after 'Special Forces'...
― henry s, Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:32 (sixteen years ago) link
My mom saw a televised Alice Cooper appearance sometime in the early-mid 70's, and the result was that I wasn't allowed to listen to rock and roll for the next year or so. I still have a hazy memory of her horrified description of the concert...
That was probably Midsummer Rock, a live one-off from Cincinatti in 1971. That's the show where someone throws a chicken on stage and Alice plays with it for a while then throws it back, and the audience tears it apart. Also features Iggy (and a jar of peanut butter) & the Stooges, and that famous photo of him standing on the crowd pointing forward is from there.
The show also has Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, and Traffic; an exellent 90 minutes.
― nickn, Friday, 24 August 2007 00:21 (sixteen years ago) link
I found both Pretties For You and Easy Action at a garage sale and paid $3 each for 'em. I think that's about what they're worth— kinda fun, kinda hit and miss.
― I eat cannibals, Friday, 24 August 2007 00:37 (sixteen years ago) link
cheers for steering me in the right direction, guys. cuz i was thinking 'trash' :)
just kidding
― Charlie Howard, Friday, 24 August 2007 06:50 (sixteen years ago) link
I found both Pretties For You and Easy Action at a garage sale and paid $3 each for 'em. I think that's about what they're worth
Ha!
http://www.popsike.com/php/quicksearch.php?searchtext=pretties+for+you&x=0&y=0 http://www.popsike.com/php/quicksearch.php?searchtext=easy+action&thumbs=&x=0&y=0
Sometimes I think that Love it to Death is the finest US major label rock album of the 70s. But then 'Halo of Flies' rules all.
― myopic_void, Friday, 24 August 2007 09:43 (sixteen years ago) link
Myopic Void OTM.
The first two are kinda lame tho'. I have them as a 70s twofer.
― Raw Patrick, Friday, 24 August 2007 10:14 (sixteen years ago) link
"Ballad Of Dwight Fry" from LITD is probably Alice's best song...would certainly find a home in any self-loathing emo fan's iPod...("see my lonely life unfold")...
― henry s, Friday, 24 August 2007 12:48 (sixteen years ago) link
The first two are kinda lame tho'. I have them as a 70s twofer
They don't possess the total vision and concept of later releases, but they do possess some heavy music. I think "Return of the Spiders," off Easy Action, is one of the original band's hardest rocking songs. It's kind of where the band found the power to leap to LITD, Killer, BDB, etc.
Another track on EA, "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye," looks to Alice's darker theater rock. In fact, the final minute or two, where the band's vocals sound like melting acid-hell, are pretty intense.
― QuantumNoise, Friday, 24 August 2007 12:56 (sixteen years ago) link
i am totally not listening to statements like this anymore, they've kept me away from too many good albums. so pretties/action, i am buying you.
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 24 August 2007 19:54 (sixteen years ago) link
Saw the Melvins cover "Ballad of Dwight Fry" sometime in the early nineties and it was chilling. It was the first time I heard the song.
― Trip Maker, Friday, 24 August 2007 20:17 (sixteen years ago) link
first time i heard it was on lysol by the melvins. "poison" and the alice cooper-as-cher's mother thing in the 80s turned me way off of him, so hearing that cover kind of made me think he might not suck.
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 24 August 2007 20:39 (sixteen years ago) link
the early alice stuff is okay. pretty zappa-ish.
― M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 24 August 2007 20:42 (sixteen years ago) link
Something about the early Alice records makes me think of the Pretty Things album SF Sorrow and also Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
― Trip Maker, Friday, 24 August 2007 20:47 (sixteen years ago) link
you know what's really killer? the 45 version of "don't blow your mind" by the spiders with alice cooper. gaw. damn.
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:02 (sixteen years ago) link
actually i don't even know if it was a 45 or released at all, come to think of it, but it's still great 60s shit.
― GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:05 (sixteen years ago) link
I've got a Sundazed 45 of it. And yes, it kills.
― Trip Maker, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:08 (sixteen years ago) link
Another vote for Love It To Death!
― Colonel Poo, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:23 (sixteen years ago) link
segue from "Second Coming" into "Dwight Fry" is brilliant...(do not listen to either on shuffle)...
― henry s, Friday, 24 August 2007 21:38 (sixteen years ago) link
I take him more seriously as a golfer than as a recording artist.
Posterity will do likewise.
― PhilK, Saturday, 25 August 2007 22:33 (sixteen years ago) link
really? is he that good he's gonna win in the US tour...seniors?
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 26 August 2007 09:22 (sixteen years ago) link
No, but he will mock-execute Jose-Maria Olazabal with an electric chair.
― PhilK, Sunday, 26 August 2007 19:14 (sixteen years ago) link
Flush The Fashion was easily better than the (3?) studio albums that preceded it - From The Inside, Lace And Whiskey, Goes To Hell.
― henry s, Friday, 16 July 2021 21:17 (two years ago) link
Classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJpqK8ZZbaA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDgNNbyoWdk
This changed my life trajectory when I saw it as a nine year old.
― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Friday, 16 July 2021 21:21 (two years ago) link
Forgot the best one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz0lXNNkqac
― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Friday, 16 July 2021 21:22 (two years ago) link
I've read a few online reviewers who admire those early 80s records (which I haven't heard), is that a defensible position?
I like them. DaDa is a weird, dark fuckin' album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7rnFIsoYbM
― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, 16 July 2021 22:04 (two years ago) link
Yes, Dada's pretty good.
― Wouldn't disgrace a Michael Jackson (Tom D.), Friday, 16 July 2021 22:16 (two years ago) link
Flush The Fashion is one of my favourite Alice Cooper albums, but Special Forces is weak. Haven't heard Dada actually.
― bovarism, Friday, 16 July 2021 22:19 (two years ago) link
Cooper reportedly has no recollection of recording DaDa, or the preceding albums Special Forces and Zipper Catches Skin, due to substance abuse. Cooper stated "I wrote them, recorded them and toured them and I don't remember much of any of that",[8] though he toured only Special Forces.[9] In 1996 Cooper said that DaDa was the scariest album he ever made,[10] and that he never had any idea what it was about. There was no tour to promote DaDa, and none of its songs have ever been played live.
― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Sunday, 18 July 2021 03:45 (two years ago) link
Dick Wagner and Bob Ezrin really held DaDa together, and they created one hell of a creepy album. As far as theatrical "shock rock" goes, I'd list this LP right up there with Coop's best. "Pass the Gun Around" is particularly unsettling.
― A. Begrand, Sunday, 18 July 2021 18:08 (two years ago) link