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Alice Cooper – Welcome 2 My Nightmare
Alice Cooper – Welcome 2 My Nightmare [Classic Rock Fan Pack Exclusive Limited Edition] (2011, Universal Music Enterprises/Spinefarm Records UK/Nightmare Inc.)
1. “I Am Made Of You”
2. “Caffeine”
3. “The Nightmare Returns”
4. “A Runaway Train”
5. “Last Man On Earth”
6. “The Congregation”
7. “I’ll Bite Your Face Off”
8. “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever”
9. “Ghouls Gone Wild”
10. “Something To Remember Me By”
11. “When Hell Comes Home”
12. “What Baby Wants”
13. “I Gotta Get Outta Here”
14. “The Underture”
Bonus Tracks:
15. “Under The Bed”
16. “Poison” (Live at Download Festival)
Band:
Alice Cooper – Vocals
Steve Hunter – Guitar
Damon Johnson – Guitar
Tommy Henriksen – Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Chuck Garric – Bass
Glen Sobel – Drums
Additional Musicians:
Michael Bruce – Guitar, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Dennis Dunaway – Bass, Backing Vocals
Neal Smith – Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Ke$ha – Vocals
Dick Wagner, John 5, Keith Nelson, Tommy Denander, Vince Gill, Keri Kelli, Patterson Hood, Pat Buchanan – Guitar
Piggy D, David Spreng, Jimmie Lee Sloas – Bass
Jimmy DeGrasso, Scott Williamson – Drums
Rob Zombie, Kip Winger – Backing Vocals
Welcome 2 My Nightmare is a reunion for all different eras of Alice Cooper. Take a look at the credits! The surviving members of the original group are here (Bruce, Dunaway & Smith) and they have some co-writing credits too, the original Nightmare era guitar duo of Steve Hunter (back in the band full-time) and Dick Wagner are present, more recent Alice gunslingers Kerri Kelli and Damon Johnson (who recently left and has been replaced by Orianthi of all people!), Jimmy DeGrasso, Piggy D (who worked with Alice on “Keepin’ Halloween Alive”), Kip Winger sings backing vocals, Desmond Child co-wrote “I Am Made of You” and Bob Ezrin is producing!
I think pretty much all eras of Alice are represented! I’m surprised Alice didn’t bring back Eric Singer, Derek Sherinian, Ryan Roxie, Eric Dover, Kane Roberts and Jason Hook! In addition to all of those people, Rob Zombie, Vince Gill, John 5 and Ke$ha also perform.
All of this star-power and buzz over doing a sequel to Welcome To My Nightmare has worked as the album sold roughly 21,ooo copies and debuted at #22 on the Billboard charts. This is Alice’s best chart debut since Trash.
Before I get into the music, I want to say that this Alice Cooper Fan Pack from Classic Rock magazine is just outstanding. I had ordered the Fan Pack for Whitesnake’s Forevermore and while that was a good package, this is even better. Not only do you get the album (in what I guess what is the standard hardcover booklet format for these Fan Packs) but there’s a School’s Out pin, Alice Cooper face paint, Alice cut-out face mask, 2 two-sided posters and finally the 132 page magazine called Classic Rock Presents Alice Cooper.
With that out of the way, I will agree that this album is a “return to form” in that it has returned Alice to his old school schizophrenic ways. After dabbling in industrial metal and garage rock for the last decade, Alice is back to genre-hopping. Auto-tune, Rolling Stones, disco, pop-rock, surfer music, symphonies, Tom Petty, rag-time… It all has a home on this album.
The good/bad thing about Alice is that he’s never been afraid to throw his blood-stained top hat in to practically any genre of music. Case in point, after starting off with the piano from “Steven”, “I Am Made of You” is a ballad complete with vocals done in auto-tune and some electronic beats in the background and a piano. I did not like it when I first heard it, but the song has grown on me and is now one of my favorite tracks here. Next, “Caffeine” kicks in with some rowdy rock ‘n’ roll. My first thought when hearing it was that it sounded like Velvet Revolver. Well, I wasn’t too far off because song was co-written by Buckcherry’s Keith Nelson. This and “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” (with its Stonesy vibe) are the most straight forward rockers of the bunch. “The Nightmare Returns” is a short instrumental still incorporating parts of “Steven”.
“The Congregation” is a pretty good Beatles-inspired number that sounds like a track from The Last Temptation but it took me a few listens to get in to. And hey, what album would be complete without that classic Alice ballad? Here that song is “Something To Remember Me By”, a great companion to those late ’70s ballads of his. The next highlight on this album for me is “What Baby Wants”. A true guilty pleasure for sure, it’s a pop/rock song featuring Ke$ha. The final two standouts is the Tom Petty-ish “I Gotta Get Outta Here” and the Fan Pack exclusive “Under The Bed”, a mid-tempo ballad that could’ve come from the Hey Stoopid era.
So, like I said, there is good and bad when Alice attempt to cover so many genres. When he succeeds, he really succeeds. When he fails… yuck. With Vince Gill on guitar, the country-rocker “A Runaway Train” can’t go away fast enough but I can kinda here old school Alice in it. Immediately following is the vaudevillian rag-time of “Last Man on Earth”. Just awful but I can’t decide if it’s worse than “When Hell Comes Home” (which is garnering rave reviews for featuring all the surviving members of the original group).
As for “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever”, that’s just goofy fun. Something you might hear from Alice in the early ’80s. Basically filler as is the surf rock of “Ghouls Gone Wild”. “The Underture” closes out the standard edition of the album and it’s an instrumental bring in pieces of songs from both Welcome To My Nightmare and this album.
Overall, the songs are just so varied I think you have to really be patient and let it all soak in. After the first listen, my head was spinning was variety of music. With each listen, I’m picking up on songs more than I had before and while there are some really bad songs on this disc, they are few and far between and the songs I like I like A LOT. Having said that, Welcome 2 My Nightmare is easily Alice’s best since The Eyes of Alice Cooper if not The Last Temptation.
Highlights: “I Am Made Of You”, “Caffeine”, “The Congregation”, “I”ll Bite Your Face Off”, “Something To Remember Me By”, “What Baby Wants”, “I Gotta Get Outta Here”, “Under The Bed”
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Buy ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ at Amazon.com
Bonus Words:
Welcome 2 My Nightmare continues a rather disturbing trend of offering different bonus tracks depending on which edition you buy: the regular edition of this album has no bonus tracks, the Classic Rock Fan Pack has “Under the Bed” and a live version of “Poison”, the deluxe edition features a cover of The Animals’ “We Gotta Get out of This Place” and live versions of “No More Mr. Nice Guy” & “The Black Widow”, the vinyl album has “Flatline” and finally iTunes gets the exclusive “A Bad Situation” (which you can’t even purchase as a single, you HAVE to buy the whole album to get it).
I really couldn’t care less about the live tracks but there are four brand new tracks scattered about that I would have loved to have been included on at least ONE edition of the album so I could just buy that one! It’s a cash grab and I don’t think this practice is very fair to the fans. I can’t imagine a significant number of fans are going to buy all of these albums to get those handful of bonus tracks because you’re looking at someone having to spend $80-100 total to snatch up all of these editions. I really don’t understand the thought process here and Alice isn’t the only artist guilty of it. If anything, this only seems to increase the likelihood of illegal downloading.
After that little rant, I have to be honest: I have two copies. The CR Fan Pack and then a standard edition (no bonus tracks) that came with Alice’s autograph when you pre-ordered… Hey, at least I didn’t buy an extra copy for bonus tracks!
ALICE COOPER – Alice Cooper Goes to Hell
Alice Cooper – Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (2008, Warner Bros. Records)
Original Release: 1976, Warner Bros. Records
1. “Go to Hell” … 5:15
2. “You Gotta Dance” … 2:45
3. “I’m the Coolest” … 3:57
4. “Didn’t We Meet” … 4:16
5. “I Never Cry” … 3:44
6. “Give the Kid a Break” … 4:14
7. “Guilty” … 3:22
8. “Wake Me Gently” … 5:03
9. “Wish You Were Here” … 4:36
10. “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” … 2:08
11. “Going Home” … 3:47
Musicians:
Alice Cooper – Vocals
Dick Wagner – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Steve Hunter – Guitar
John Tropea – Guitar
Tony Levin – Bass
Babbitt – Bass
Allan Schwartzberg – Drums
Jim Gordon – Drums
Jim Maelen – Percussion
Bob Ezrin – Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Producer: Bob Ezrin
…Goes to Hell is a weird album. Then again, you can say that about every Alice release up until the albums became more streamlined beginning in the mid-’80s. First off, the album cover is terrible (but still better than Pretties For You!). When I first saw this album years ago at the old Camelot Music store and was just starting to get into Alice, I actually thought it was a low budget compilation disc judging by the pitiful artwork. It certainly had the retail price to go with it. For as long as I can remember this album could and still can be found for $6-8 bucks. I got this particular version (a part of Warner’s “Flashback” series) for $5.99 from Barnes & Noble.
I can’t lie, the song “Go To Hell” is classic Alice. Years before ever listening to this album I was familiar with it because it appeared on The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper box set, which I also own. I absolutely love it. It shows Alice in fine lyrical form talking about force feeding diabetics candy canes and poisoning a blind man’s dog (and even stealing his cane) After that rip-roaring opening classic we get disco Alice in the form of “You Gotta Dance”. It’s so bad it’s good but I can’t call it an album highlight.
The whole album basically sounds like the soundtrack to a musical. It features tons of different styles: disco rock, sappy pop ballads, ’50s doo-wop, rock ‘n’ roll, and weird laid back numbers like “I’m The Coolest”. When I hear that song, I can’t help but think of it as a song that you might hear on a Charlie Brown or early Garfield cartoon special. If you’ve ever see’em, you know what I’m talking about, those specials always had weird trippy songs.
Though there are a handful of songs that I found myself enjoying but there are only two classics, IMO. Alongside “Go To Hell”, there’s “I Never Cry” which is one of my favorite ballads from Alice but it was another song I was already familiar with thanks to the box set. I can’t help but try to sing along to it whenever I hear it.
This was the second of four albums (the others being Welcome to My Nightmare, Lace & Whiskey and DaDa) where basically Alice Cooper was more of a conceptual effort with Alice, Dick Wagner and Bob Ezrin guiding the ship. Ezrin already had a long history with the original Alice Cooper band and Wagner had played on some of their albums as well.was technically a solo act by this point but Ezrin and Wagner participated so heavily on these albums you could almost say that they were new Alice Cooper band.
Overall, this is an okay release but certainly not a classic and a pretty disappointing follow-up to Welcome to My Nightmare. Alice didn’t even tour for this album due to alcohol problems, which may help explain why this album isn’t up to snuff!
Highlights: “Go To Hell”, “I Never Cry”, “Didn’t We Meet”, “Wake Me Gently”, “Wish You Were Here”
ALICE COOPER – DaDa
Alice Cooper – DaDa [Remastered] (2009, Rhino Entertainment/Collectors’ Choice Music)
Original Release: 1983, Warner Bros. Records
1. “DaDa” … 4:45
2. “Enough’s Enough” … 4:19
3. “Former Lee Warmer” … 4:07
4. “No Man’s Land” … 3:51
5. “Dyslexia” … 4:25
6. “Scarlet and Sheba” … 5:18
7. “I Love America” … 3:50
8. “Fresh Blood” … 5:54
9. “Pass the Gun Around” … 5:46
Musicians:
Alice Cooper – Vocals
Dick Wagner – Guitar, Bass, Backing Vocals
Prakash John – Bass
Richard Kolinka – Drums
John Anderson – Drums
Bob Ezrin – Percussion, Drums, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Graham Shaw – Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Producer: Bob Ezrin
Is is “DaDa”, “Dada” or “Da Da”? I’ve seen it all three ways but prefer “DaDa”, which is the how the album cover seems to present it.
This is an album I’ve wanted for a long time. I believe it has been out of print for a numbers of years but it was re-released under Rhino’s Collectors’ Choice Music imprint in 2009. It’s a bare bones reissue that doesn’t even credit who did what on the album. Granted, this wasn’t exactly a best-selling album because no one was paying attention to Alice in 1983 anyway (the album didn’t chart) and those that were paying attention didn’t review the album too kindly. There are some liner notes giving a description of what was going on at the time of the making of this album. Other than that, the lyrics to the entire album are printed on ONE PAGE. You’d have to have a magnifying glass to read it!
The album is fantastic as far as I’m concerned and one of Alice’s best. It’s classic Alice to me and is full of the weird, creepy and humorous lyrics that Alice’s career was built upon.
Longtime Alice producer Bob Ezrin returned for what was Alice’s last hurrah on the Warner label, having not produced a studio album with Alice since 1977′s poorly received Lace and Whiskey and it pays off big. The few albums previous to this saw Alice getting too soft & sentimental and/or experimenting way too much with new wave sounds. Alice, Ezrin and guitarist Dick Wagner sat down and wrote the whole album together.
There’s a lot of variety on this release, as is the case with many of Alice’s albums. The most interesting is the extremely creepy “Da” which was written entirely by Ezrin. It sounds like the theme music to an early ’80s slasher movie. Then there’s the Middle Eastern influence of “Scarlet and Sheba”, the redneck anthem “I Love America”, the funky “Fresh Blood” and in the classic mold of unusual Alice Cooper ballads there’s “Former Lee Warmer”. Alice could shake new wave off entirely it seems though because “Dyslexia” fills the void. Overall, I really don’t see how anyone could not like this album. It has all the trademarks of a great Alice record: odd, campy, creepy and funny and features some of his best lyrics.
Not only was this album the end of Cooper’s deal with Warner Bros. but he also “retired” from the industry having gone back to the booze and checking himself into rehab again. He had just come out of rehab around the time work on this album was getting started and if I remember correctly, he one said he remembers nothing about the writing and recording of this album. Luckily for us, he resurfaced in 1986 with Constrictor.
According to the liner notes, the original album’s liner notes stated that “for the most part” a drum machine was used and live drums were only used for embellishment.
Picked it up at a used record store across the street from Michigan State University for only $5.
ALICE COOPER – Brutal Planet
Alice Cooper – Brutal Planet (2000, Spitfire Records)
1. “Brutal Planet” … 4:40
2. “Wicked Young Man” … 3:50
3. “Sanctuary” … 4:00
4. “Blow Me a Kiss” … 3:18
5. “Eat Some More” … 4:36
6. “Pick Up the Bones” … 5:14
7. “Pessi-Mystic” … 4:56
8. “Gimme” … 4:46
9. “It’s the Little Things” … 4:11
10. “Take It Like a Woman” … 4:12
11. “Cold Machines” … 4:14
Band:
Alice Cooper – Vocals
Ryan Roxie – Guitar
China – Guitar
Phil X – Guitar
Bob Marlette – Bass, Keyboards, Guitar
Eric Singer – Drums
Produced by: Bob Marlette and Bob Ezrin
After 1994′s The Last Temptation, Alice took a six year break from recording (the longest in his career). The Last Temptation shook off the 80s pop metal of Trash, Constrictor, Hey Stoopid and Raise Your Fist and Yell and featured similarities to his 70s work, but in 2000, Alice’s “comeback”, Brutal Planet, was another shift in sound. This time a drastic one which had more in common with the industrial metal of Rob Zombie (Alice’s “pick” to be his successor, should he ever desire to step down from being the King of Shock Rock) than Bon Jovi or the original Alice Cooper band.
I remember “Brutal Planet” was made available for streaming and it took me awhile to get into it. Alice inspired Rob Zombie greatly, so it was sad and disappointing to see Alice trying to play catch up with the new generation by taking a stab at industrial metal, which was then a trendy sound for many young metal acts.
I listened to this album a lot when it came out, just because I was a huge fan of Alice, but I could not get over Alice’s new heavier sound. It just didn’t seem natural to me. 70s Alice, 80s Alice… Anything but industrial Alice! In the last few years though, I’ve come to really appreciate it for what it is. Personally, 80s Alice is my preference, but Brutal Planet has some great songs, even if they aren’t what I would consider to be Alice classics. The lyrics are great to boot and I remember many reviews at the time giving high praise to them, saying they are some of this best.
There’s a general sense of doom and pessimism (see “Pessi-Mystic”) to the album. There’s not a lot of Alice’s signature humor outside of “It’s the Little Things”. This is angry Alice. This is an Alice that’s a bit more serious and the album focuses on real world tragedies instead of his usual tongue-in-cheek macabre. This album is a different kind of Alice, but one that I’ve come to enjoy.
The one song that really sticks out just from the rest, for the fact that musically it is so different than the rest of the album, is “Take It Like a Woman”. It is just one of a few numbers Alice has done throughout the years that I consider to basically be follow-ups to his signature ballad “Only Women Bleed”.
There was a really great Alice song left off the album, and it too, did not fit in with the rest of the songs — “Can’t Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me”. It definitely showed that fun, twisted side of Alice and sounded like a great fit for Trash or Hey Stoopid. It eventually ended up on international special editions of Dragontown.
On a superficial note, I’ve always hated the cover the and pictures of Alice the album had. Alice just didn’t look like Alice. He looked like a old bum. Maybe that’s what they were going for, but it didn’t work for me.
Highlights: “Brutal Planet”, “Sanctuary”, “Pick Up the Bones”, “Pessi-Mystic”, “Gimme”, “It’s the Little Things”, “Take It Like a Woman”
KISS – Music From “The Elder”
KISS – Music From “The Elder” [Remastered] (1997, Mercury Records)
Original Release: 1981, Casablanca Records
1. “Fanfare” … 1:21
2. “Just A Boy” … 2:25
3. “Odyssey” …. 5:36
4. “Only You” … 4:17
5. “Under the Rose” … 4:51
6. “Dark Light” … 4:18
7. “A World Without Heroes” … 2:40
8. “The Oath” … 4:31
9. “Mr. Blackwell” … 4:52
10. “Escape from the Island” … 2:52
11. “I” … 5:03
Band:
Paul Stanley – Lead Vocals, Guitar
Gene Simmons – Lead Vocals, Bass, Guitar
Ace Frehley – Guitar, Lead Vocals
Eric Carr – Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Additional Musicians:
Bob Ezrin – Bass
Allan Schwartzberg – Drums
American Symphony Orchestra – Ensemble
Produced by: Bob Ezrin
Honestly, this is one of my favorite KISS albums. Upon release, it was bashed by fans and critics alike and failed to be a commercial success, but has since found a home in the heart of many KISS fans.
At the time, it definitely wasn’t the album that the band needed. They were losing their hardcore fanbase and Music from ‘The Elder’ was just about the nail in the coffin that the band had been hammering with their disco flirtations from Dynasty and Unmasked. Instead of delivering a killer rock album to show the world and their fans they hadn’t gone soft, they gave the world a fantasy concept album based on a Lord of the Rings-inspired story idea from Gene Simmons.
There was a dual purpose to this release. The first reason was that KISS, instead of playing to and for their slipping fan base, wanted to critic cred. They wanted to be viewed as serious musicians. Secondly, the band also had plans to produce a movie, called The Elder, hence the “Music From” portion of the album’s title. The band brought back successful producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare, KISS’ Destroyer) to help construct the album.
Having the perspective of being fresh ears to KISS at the time of buying this, I loved it, and I still do. Yeah, I’m sure if I was old enough at the time of this album’s release (it was released just days after I was born!) and a longtime KISS fan, I probably would’ve hated it at first. But many of those haters have come to respect the album for what it is.
Interest in the album was so poor, this is one of only two KISS album to not go at least Gold (Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions is the other one) and the band didn’t even bother to tour to support it. Oh well, the album was a serious commercial misstep for the band when they really needed to get back to meat-and-potatoes rock, but creatively, it’s enjoyable (though cheesy).
And can you imagine being Eric Carr? His first album with KISS and he has to play these songs and then he’s told they won’t be touring at all because the album tanked! This album was also the ‘final straw’ for Ace.
Highlights: All of it. One of KISS’ strongest albums top to bottom, in my opinion.
