CLASSIC

(stunned expression)

"Huh? Eh?"

I hear that both he and Iggy Pop are quite good golfers.

His adverts with Ronnie Corbett were good though.

Alice's Greatest Hits from the mid-70s is one of the great rock & roll best-of compilations.

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0408/queen.php

his best song ever is "Teenage Lament '74," in case anybody wonders.

His late '70s muppet show ballads are also very underrated.

Can someone just give Dave a weekly column? Somewhere, anywhere?

To me, it seems, during the first half of the 70s, Alice Cooper was to the US heavy rock scene what David Bowie was to the UK glam scene, that is, someone who would mix the genre with lots of other elements, plus use irony in a brilliant way to create something so much greater and more creative than anything else within the genre.

It is obvious that the band represents his creative heyday, yet I consider his first solo album, "Welcome To My Nightmare" even better than anything the band ever did. "Alice Cooper Goes To Hell" was also great while later on the solo Alice hasn't been worth wasting time on. Everything the band did from "Love It To Death" was great, with "Billion Dollar Babies" being the band's greatest moment.

I've yet to get Killer, but heard it at a friend's house and was super impressed.

I recently traded out my CD copy of Billion Dollar Babies since the Greatest Hits essentially makes a much better listen. It was an early example of a really fine greatest hits collection from a hard rock act.

School's Out was a creaky-sounding Tin Pan Alley theatre and psychedelic album. I never listen to it anymore even though it spawned one of their big singles. The rest of the album isn't like the title cut in thrust.

I don't even have Welcome to My Nightmare anymore. Saw the tour and it was really hokey and dumb. The backing band was a herd of superpro studio hacks and they sounded terrific doing children's music. James Gangs sans Joe Walsh opened and rocked harder which should tell you something.

There was a point in the late Eighties-early Nineties were AC had this bodybuilder playing lead guitar who would flex his muscles at every cameraman in eyesight. The music was terrible but the guy was good for a laugh.

The two albums Alice Cooper did for Frank Zappa are interesting. Pretties for You is spotty weirdness but Easy Action has them turning into an actual rock band. Except for the album closer "Lay Down and Die Goodbye." Zappa wanted them to be called Alice Cookies. It must be something of a minor miracle that they bumped into Bob Ezrin.

This may have to do with them being Americans while Bowie was a Brit. There are cultural differences, and they do come through in your comparision.

http://image.com.com/mp3/images/artist/pic200/drp000/p084/p08457y6yxq.jpg

NOTHING compared to Michael Angelo Batio

http://www.deanguitars.com/angelo/angelold.jpg

I can't find a good hotlinkable photo with him & the quad-necked guitar.

Of course it does. In places like where I grew up, the hard rock audience thought Bowie was "a fag." Maybe AC got around this by including a pair of paper panties in School's Out. No one thought they might be his.

you mean KANE ROBERTS??? a.k.a. the most ridiculous man in rock history??

I certainly do. And that's one of the banner photos. He's even shaved and coated in vaseline.

When I was lucky enough to meet Ezrin a few years back I told him that Mitch Ryder's Detroit (his first big job)was a favorite and he just looked at me like I was insane.

hat Kane Roberts picture says more than like 1,000 essays about 1980s America.

Yeah, he's really rockin' the Sly Stallone/Johnny Rambo look.

The Billion Dollar Babies' -- the band -- album was aimed at a concept and rock opera. The album came out after Welcome to My Nightmare at which point the old Alice Cooper Band was well and truly dead, which is what the label and management wanted. But actually the Billion Dollar Babies box set, out a year or so ago, and -- yes -- there is one, shows it more by delivering the old album plus the original mixes and a raw and ugly tape of one of their few live shows which was still aimed at carrying on themes and directly competing with Alice Cooper.

By that time, the Alice Cooper band could make a good live recording. But prior to that there are none that I can stand. The live material on the expanded version of Billion Dollar Babies sounds pretty lame and the pre-Ezrin vinyl that floats around under various titles isn't good either. The best live Alice Cooper recording of old material was delivered by Michael Bruce with a pickup band in Iceland. He performed most of the favorites old show numbers in 2002 or thereabouts faithfully and live, his voice is almost indistinguishable from that of his old pal.

Just picked up Love it To Death on CD. Previously only had the Greatest Hits. So good.