First off, my thanks and stuff like that goes out to Mike Dickerson for making me aware of the existence of the “Welcome 2 My Nightmare” (hereafter W2MN) CD. Both he and I belong to an online Alan Parsons Project Appreciation List (“Roadkill”), and it was Mike who posted info about W2MN there.
Been an Alice Cooper fan since the days when I became aware that my parents hated him. Upon learning this I absolutely HAD to find out what this guy was all about. It wasn’t easy, because Alice was a forbidden topic in the house and had been since the days his album “Billion Dollar Babies” was new.
Well, time passed and I became an adult – ok, as much of an adult as I’m ever likely to be – and listening to Alice became a cause célèbre in my apartment (later, a house). I became enthralled with albums such as “Alice Cooper Goes to Hell” and W2MN’s classic predecessor, “Welcome to My Nightmare”. Despite Alice’s personal troubles with alcohol and such, I found that he maintained his sense of humor through his music.
Pop once spotted the “Welcome to My Nightmare” CD in my abode, picked it up, took a look at the songs on it and declared with a grimace that “Only Women Bleed” was about “a woman’s period.” I didn’t bother to correct him because I could see he already had his mind made up. I came to the conclusion that Pop had the depth of a thimble.
On the other hand, and at a different day and time, I played “Only Women Bleed” for my Mom without telling her who was doing the song. She understood that the singer meant that women bleed emotionally and declared that the man doing the song had a “nice voice”, too. She was quite surprised when I told her she had just listened to an Alice Cooper song.
Guess she changed her mind about Alice, because some years later she bought me Alice’s “The Last Temptation” for one of my birthdays. Apparently, Mom was more hip than I thought. She found it interesting that Glen Campbell once said that one of his best friends (and golfing buddies) was Alice Cooper. Looks like Alice was ok in my Mom’s eyes from that point up until the day she died.
So, to the W2MN CD.
I’m happy to report that time has not dulled Alice’s razor-sharp wit one iota. Proof? Song titles such as “Ghouls Gone Wild” (which sounds like Alice’s version of a surf song), “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever” (an Alice “rap” of sorts) and “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” (about an undead dominatrix, I guess). These songs really resonate, though; they’re what makes Alice who he is and I say Thank God for him!
The rest of the CD is vintage Alice Cooper as well; not a bad song in the bunch. Welcome back, Alice! We can always count on you to re-appear when pop music starts to become too “nice”. Or bland. Or nauseatingly Bieber-ish.
Now, if we could only get Alice to release albums like “Zipper Catches Skin” and “Da-Da” on CD.
Further proof that Alice hasn’t lost it came when I ran across an interview in progress that Joy Behar (no, I don’t normally watch her) recently did with him. When asked if he believed Gene Simmons’ claim to have slept with over 5,000 women, Alice deadpanned, “At once?” Gotta love it!
Been an Alice Cooper fan since the days when I became aware that my parents hated him. Upon learning this I absolutely HAD to find out what this guy was all about. It wasn’t easy, because Alice was a forbidden topic in the house and had been since the days his album “Billion Dollar Babies” was new.
Well, time passed and I became an adult – ok, as much of an adult as I’m ever likely to be – and listening to Alice became a cause célèbre in my apartment (later, a house). I became enthralled with albums such as “Alice Cooper Goes to Hell” and W2MN’s classic predecessor, “Welcome to My Nightmare”. Despite Alice’s personal troubles with alcohol and such, I found that he maintained his sense of humor through his music.
Pop once spotted the “Welcome to My Nightmare” CD in my abode, picked it up, took a look at the songs on it and declared with a grimace that “Only Women Bleed” was about “a woman’s period.” I didn’t bother to correct him because I could see he already had his mind made up. I came to the conclusion that Pop had the depth of a thimble.
On the other hand, and at a different day and time, I played “Only Women Bleed” for my Mom without telling her who was doing the song. She understood that the singer meant that women bleed emotionally and declared that the man doing the song had a “nice voice”, too. She was quite surprised when I told her she had just listened to an Alice Cooper song.
Guess she changed her mind about Alice, because some years later she bought me Alice’s “The Last Temptation” for one of my birthdays. Apparently, Mom was more hip than I thought. She found it interesting that Glen Campbell once said that one of his best friends (and golfing buddies) was Alice Cooper. Looks like Alice was ok in my Mom’s eyes from that point up until the day she died.
So, to the W2MN CD.
I’m happy to report that time has not dulled Alice’s razor-sharp wit one iota. Proof? Song titles such as “Ghouls Gone Wild” (which sounds like Alice’s version of a surf song), “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever” (an Alice “rap” of sorts) and “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” (about an undead dominatrix, I guess). These songs really resonate, though; they’re what makes Alice who he is and I say Thank God for him!
The rest of the CD is vintage Alice Cooper as well; not a bad song in the bunch. Welcome back, Alice! We can always count on you to re-appear when pop music starts to become too “nice”. Or bland. Or nauseatingly Bieber-ish.
Now, if we could only get Alice to release albums like “Zipper Catches Skin” and “Da-Da” on CD.
Further proof that Alice hasn’t lost it came when I ran across an interview in progress that Joy Behar (no, I don’t normally watch her) recently did with him. When asked if he believed Gene Simmons’ claim to have slept with over 5,000 women, Alice deadpanned, “At once?” Gotta love it!
No comments:
Post a Comment