Alice Cooper album recommendations sought

Strangely enough I prefer the German Mono issue of Killer

Get the quad versions of B$B's & Muscle of Love. You can hear lots more going on that you can't on the stereo vinyl's

 

I'd definitely check out Love it to Death and Killer. All the albums with the original band are great, even the first two records.

His solo stuff is hit and miss. From the Inside is interesting. Alice had spent time in a mental institution while being treated for alcoholism. After being released he wrote a concept album about his stay in the asylum.

Alice Cooper – From the Inside: Revisiting the Asylum – Green and Black Music

 

My whole Alice Cooper collection consists of:

Pretties For You
Easy Action
Love It To Death
Killer
Billion Dollar Babies
Muscle of Love
Welcome To My Nightmare
Goes To Hell
Lace & Whiskey
From The Inside
Flush The Fashion
Special Forces
Zipper Catches Skin
DaDa
Welcome 2 My Nightmare

ESSENTIAL ALBUMS
EXCELLENT-VERY GOOD ALBUMS
OK ALBUMS
PIECE OF JUNK

 

I can't speak to the vinyl side of it, but as a fan of The Coop, here's what I can suggest:

First, I'm an odd duck in that I prefer solo Cooper to the band. I don't dislike the band. I just think he was far more interesting when he took off and got to be theatrical with whoever he chose to write songs with.

So, that taken on board, and based on your suggestions, I'm going to second recommendations for Goes to Hell and From the Inside. Both are great records, if not quite the "kick in the doors and annoy the neighbors" fare of the band albums. They have a nice range of moods on them as well and can be very funny lyrically to boot!

Going off of that

 

Interesting no one recommends anything after the early 80s? I'm not looking to get into that, I grew up in the 80s with Poison and Hey Stoopid and that's not the sort of music from Alice Cooper that I'm into.

 

Are most people here buying his music on CD?

 

In my case, they're all cd's.

 

Second Coming / Ballad Of Dwight Fry (from Love It To Death) and Halo Of Flies (from Killer) are classic album tracks. Fantastic blend of great early 70's hard rock with his macabre theatricality. Works perfectly, and IMHO he never bettered those 2 albums (the singles and lead cuts are great too).

 

The best later era album, and the only one I'd possibly recommend, is The Last Temptation from 1994. Apart from that one he seemed to be doing his albums in pairs, cheesy heavy metal (Constrictor, Raise Your Fist and Yell), bombastic melodic metal (Trash, Hey Stoopid), dark industrial metal (Brutal Planet, Dragontown), back-to-the-roots garage rock (The Eyes of Alice Cooper, Dirty Diamonds).

Any format possible!

 

So my response was focused more on your request for something with "acoustic" numbers (which is why I suggested the 3 I did).

Post 80's? I think Hey Stoopid has the great ballad "Might As Well Be on Mars" -- written by Dick Wagner. If you didn't like that, I don't know if going forward will work for you. ;-)

But, after that, I think the back-to-back "Eyes of Alice Cooper" and "Dirty Diamonds" from the 2000s are fairly comparable to the AC Group material in terms of melodic rock songs. And I think the much-maligned "Welcome 2 My Nightmare" is not that far off from those two.

The rest of his post-80s material is much harder-rock for the most part (and that's being incredibly *general* there...)

(So you know my tastes for comparison: AC albums I almost never revisit: Constrictor/Raise Your Fist... and Brutal Planet/Dragontown. There's little I like on either of them. And Trash -- apart from "Poison" -- is nowhere as near as good as Hey Stoopid.

And, for the life of me, while I own it, I could not tell you a thing about "Along Came a Spider" as to whether or not I like it. It must be like "Last Temptation" -- fine, but unmemorable to me.)

 

On the first two albums, they were trying to be somewhere between The Mothers Of Invention and The Doors. Their singles from the Spiders and Nazz eras were straight-up Yardbirds style garage band, but when they became Alice Cooper they wanted to be artsy and experimental. Most of Pretties for You sounds like a bunch of guys just learning to play their instruments, but that's not really accurate because they already had several years of band work behind them. Mostly they were just trying to find an original sound, but they weren't really into drugs or the blues so they didn't fall back onto the bluesy jamming that their peers did. When they hooked up with Bob Ezrin, he taught them how to arrange their music and helped them strip down their songs to the core. But their two or three years or so of just goofing around taught them to try anything, so when they finally found their basic rock sound, it was different because the creativity and invention came with them.

That's why I recommend the first two albums if you find you really have taste for the original band - it really shows their development.

 

God Bless ya. I love it, too, but I'd never recommend it. It's not easy to get into

 

His sound completely changed after the mid-80s, when he moved into heavy metal territory. I can't get through those albums now, but I like a few select tracks. I have the budget "Playlist" CD which has all I would ever need from that era (and nothing from before except live versions of his classics with his later band).


The title isn't exactly accurate IMO, but it's nice to have this for a few fun tracks.

 

I find a lot of the '80s stuff when he moved into his version of "hair metal" an acquired taste. Again, not horrible, but it doesn't really rock my socks either - outside of the singles, which are great. That said, I have been meaning to give those years a reappraisal and see if my taste has changed any.

Yep. Strictly digital on my end.

 

Are there any good vintage concert film releases? Looking on Youtube now but all the full concerts seem to be more recent so am assuming the setlists won't cover all the old stuff

 

Bar the very lacklustre Lace & Whiskey, all the Warner Brothers studio albums are great in their own way. The Studio Albums box set (1969-1983) is something of a musical cornucopia, and you could delve into lots of differing aspects of AC; although, of course, it's CDs, not vinyl. (From The Inside would be a good stand alone album choice.)

Post-WB, I think Brutal Planet is a classic; but, it's his 'heaviest' album. You might like Dirty Diamonds; it's very diverse, melodic, acoustic and rocky!

The Saga Of Jesse Jane (from DD):

 

The albums I listen to the most

Love It To Death
Killer
Billion Dollar Babies
Eyes Of Alice Cooper
Dirty Diamonds

The first three are essential. The last two are fun back to rock albums.
I also like Pretties For You but it's not for everyone

 

The Strange Case Of Alice Cooper
Good To See Yuu Again

 

Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper: Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper - Wikipedia | Alice Cooper - Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper
Welcome To My Nightmare: Welcome to My Nightmare (film) - Wikipedia | Alice Cooper (2) - Welcome To My Nightmare

 

Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper - Live 1973 - Billion Dollar Babies Tour
This is the DVD to get. I saw this tour as well as the Killer tour. Both were superb.
Albums - Easy Action thru Billion Dollar Babies are all excellent with virtually no filler tracks. Some people take issue with Lay Down and Die Goodbye from Easy Action, but I like it. Pretties For You and Muscle Of Love have some great songs as well, but they're inconsistent. The only solo album I ever listen to is Goes To Hell.
BTW, Glen Buxton's guitar solo on Long Way To Go from Love It To Death is one of the all-time greats.

 

Love It To Death
Billion Dollar Babies
Welcome To My Nightmare
Go To Hell
From The Inside
Greatest Hits (1974)

.....Those are his best.

 

I would suggest "Easy Action" as well! (produced by David Briggs and the 2nd Alice Cooper album released in 1970)
It's a perfect blend of the freaky psychedelic leanings of the 1st album ("Pretties For You") and the more melodic and excellent "Love It To Death". A good sounding album as well.
I think "Easy Action" is a better album overall than "Muscle Of Love". Having said that, "Muscle Of Love"is not bad, however you had to be there in 1973 to know how upset and disappointed the real fans were when "Muscle..."came out.
It was one big let down after the classic and excellent "Billion Dollar Babies" (not to mention the ridiculous and inconvenient 'cardboard box' packaging)

 

I think you'd be fine with original vinyl. Just watch the condition and don't expect to find all the extras.

 

Vintage WB vinyl is damn good!

 

Any fans of Bob Greene's book? I snagged a copy on Ebay for a reasonable price maybe six months ago. I had it when I was a kid and it was tough to reacquire. Great book - Bob Greene is a great writer, I also have a collection of his newspaper columns.