Listen to this while high: Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare
Behind the buzz:
The man called Alice is only now coming into his due-and-proper band that's
about three decades tardy. This rowdy and star-crossed Original Goth never
inspired the critical awe of Bowie or the uncritical worship of Ozzy, but a
sizable number of first-rate albums and singles were more than enough to offset any well-publicized foibles and ongoing rockcrit stupidity toward metal in all
its abrasive forms. Of the former, AC's 1975 horror-movie concept album that
was one of the most ballyhooed rock events of the year, complete with TV
special and a memorable tour reeking of Grand Guignol. In addition to headlining
a successful radio show and basking in a long-overdue induction into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame, Cooper is prepping Welcome
2 My Nightmare, a very late pendant on his first solo LP due to drop Sept. 13. Expect further
poison bon-bons from the reigning king of rock's Great Unhinged. Possible
single? "Bite Your Face Off."
Today's weed: Pineapple
Kush. Given the object of the exercise, it's best to stick to the classics.
We sweat and laugh
and scream here: The title track's creepy guitar opening (courtesy of the
great Dick Wagner) sets us up for the aural equivalent of Shock Theater and
rings on AC's best Crazy Jim Morrison croon, bidding us welcome to his
disintegration. Petti Glan's magnificent drum breakdown stands in for AC's
joyous descent and those biting sax licks rake the ears mockingly on the way
down to ""Devil's Food." In this Cayman's Trench of the spirit, where devils lick the juiceless
bones of sinners, we find none other than horror icon Vincent Price, his
inimitable voice crooning smooth as squeezed lard while leading a curate's tour
through the insect kingdom. The old ghoul warms Renfield-like to the subject of arachnids,
noting in detail the fatal effects of spider venom before leaning into a
messianic rant about mankind's inevitable successor, "The Black Widow." The
tempo picks up with "Some Folks," but it's the same bloody-minded obsessions -- "Some
folks love to see red/Some folks never talk about it." The mood shifts in
true bipolar manner with the durable hit "Only Women Bleed," a soft elliptical
sermon on spousal abuse that got to No. 12 on the Billboard Pop chart and
kicked off a tradition of at least one big-money pop ballad on every LP.
Cos' life is just a dream here: "The Department of Youth" and "Cold Ethyl" return to the madcap form of the old Alice Cooper Band. The former is a surreal production number invoking an army of revolutionary sugar-crazed midteens that's recalls "Billion Dollar Babies" before plunging off into Zappasque absurdity. The latter is an extended double entendre involving either the lady or the bottle resident in
the loon's refrigerator. "Years Ago," "Steven," and "The Awakening" for a twilight
suite detailing the interior life of a disturbed child-man, with Alice hamming
it up like Freddy Krueger. The finale is "Escape," a bracing amphetamine flight into workaday showbiz reality through the nearest open door.
It all ends with the star babbling like a loon and being hauled away by the
fadeout.
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