Alice Cooper album recommendations sought

Absolutely this. I love Raise Your Fist and Yell. Probably my most listened to Album by him.

 

D'oh! Thought you were going to start with Killer?

Love It To Death and especially Killer are just classic 70's hard rock albums. But on School's Out in particular, and maybe Billion Dollar Babies, it's more like he tried to put his theatre show onto record, and the songs aren't good enough to hold up for a full album. IMHO anyway.

 

Roses On White Lace is probably the most metal song he's done. Love the album!

 

co written with kip winger

 

Love it to Death through Billion Dollar Babies is pretty obvious. I never really got into Muscle of Love but I suppose it warrants a listen.

 

Love It to Death

Ballad of Dwight Fry is so killer

 

I'll be watching this thread. Religious parents in the 70's basically nixed any interest I should have in Alice. I did get Lace and Whiskey through the Columbia House record club though. I have picked up a few along the way and typically like what I hear. I occasionally get on YouTube and watch snippets of Alice live doing things like The Ballad of Dwight Frye (not sure if I spelled that correctly) and really love this stuff. Thinks for starting the thread!

 

Ok, so your post was enough for me to go back to Discogs and pick up Killer. Now I have to stop spending money on vinyl (at least until next month)

 

Killer is killer. Money well spent.

 

AC Group albums in order of essentiality:

Killer
Love It To Death
School's Out
Billion Dollar Babies
Muscle Of Love

The first two albums are excellent, but they represent an evolving style. My advice would be to go for the five listed above before exploring the first two.

AC solo is too slick a proposition for my tastes.

 

Update:

I now own all the Alice Cooper vinyl albums from Killer through to From the Inside (with the exception of Muscle of Love). I'm loving discovering this music. Not everything works for me (the spoken track on Welcome to My Nightmare and the song about having sex with the dead) but I guess by its nature some of this is an acquired taste, but overall at least 90% of it is great IMO. However...I'm sitting here watching Good to see you again Alice Cooper. What the hell is going on?? The concert footage is awesome but then there's some "drama" with an elephant and a camel, a giant viking and some German impersonator. Maybe if I was on drugs, and watching it in the 70s, it might work haha. Shame the concert alone wasn't just released.

 

I've never seen this video, but I'd like to take a moment to salute how awesome that description is.

 

If you enjoy the 'Syd Barrett' era of Pink Floyd, the early Who sound and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, you'll probably enjoy Alice Cooper's first album Pretties For You.

 

If you have the DVD there is an option to just play the concert footage which removes that guff you were speaking about - it's not even of the time period - its just totally wacked out lol

 

I am jealous of you. To me, there is no greater ride than a tour through the Cooper catalog. He is a musical chameleon with plenty to offer just about any taste. To be at the beginning of your adventure must be exciting. I can't imagine having 25+ albums to experience all at once. Prepare to be overwhelmed. I discovered each as they came along. The magic to doing it that way is having time to give each song/album an opportunity to grow on you. My advice at this early stage is to not totally discount something that doesn't appeal to you right off the bat. For example, School's Out is my all-time favorite album, with styles, nuances, and flavors that mean a lot to me. However, I can easily understand those people who don't like it. Everyone's tastes vary, so it may help to know a little about his "eras," what was happening in the music scene at that point, and how he put his stamp on it. Have fun!

 

There is some info. about this at the beginnig of the Wikipedia article: Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper - Wikipedia

I don't have the DVD release and have actually only seen the alternate theatrical release where "the 'storyline' segments of the original version were replaced with B/W excerpts of scenes from old Hollywood movies." I have to agree with the above poster, your description makes it sound totally awsome.

 

In the 70's, it wasn't ever enough to just release a straight concert film - for some reason filmmakers and maybe even the bands thought that was boring. So you have this half-assed pseudo-surreal comedy act going on between cuts. Someone should have told the director that just not having script doesn't really make it "surrealist." Or comedy. The stupid thing is, the Coopers could have done a really good job with an actual script.

 

It was so weird, later on someone pretending to be a dentist attacked him on stage with a giant drill (during the concert) and then someone appeared dressed in a life size tooth costume and Alice chased them through the streets with a giant toothbrush while the "German" guy was looking for him. It wasn't a dvd copy so I had no option but to watch it.

On another note I had my first listen of Paranormal today (which I was going to avoid as I'm only really focussing on classic Alice) and it was surprisingly good. It has that "heavy metal" sound that the lps I have don't (and which I'm not a fan of) but the melodies were strong and it wasn't an overlong album so it may be the first new release Alice material I buy!

 

That part's actually based on the stage show - the theatrics for "Unfinished Sweet." So at least it has some relevance!

 

Oh yeah, now it makes total sense

 

Good list. Personally, I have 1 & 2 flipped. Good to see some love for Hey Stoopid. Only issue I have is Trash, to me it just stand stand up on multiple relistens.

The new album Paranormal, while not breaking any new ground, is very enjoyable. Long live Alice Cooper, 50 years and still going.

 

Indeed, the new album is good. Much much better then Welcome to my nightmare 2.

 

The Welcome to my Nightmare movie is getting a release on DVD

Welcome to My Nightmare [DVD] [NTSC] Welcome to My Nightmare [DVD] [NTSC]: Amazon.co.uk: Alice Cooper: DVD & Blu-ray

 

Exactly!