As a way to rediscover my vinyl collection, I’m playing an old record each time I work out. The idea is to listen to stuff I haven’t heard in decades, and to get out of my listening rut. The rules are:

  • I go alphabetically by artist, then chronologically within the artist. I skip anything I own digitally. (This keeps me away from stuff I listen to already)
  • I skip stuff that is accepted canon.( I can’t think of anything else to say about the White Album)
  • I reserve the right to skip the second third, fourth, etc. album from an artist I’ve already covered.

This morning, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell.
My brother used to blare this on 8-track in his 1972 Road Runner driving around Alden NY. I’m so used to it in that form that I still expect the fade out/fade in right in the middle of “Didn’t We Meet”, and I guess I kind of miss it.

An arch record wherein the famed Mr. Cooper, like Dante, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Phantom (more on him when we get to the p’s) go to hell and then finds a ray of hope at the end. I’m pretty sure Joss Whedon based his entire career on this album. Silly supernatural story-check. Clever writing-check. Good performances-check. A really surprising amount of heart–you betcha.
Alice Cooper was Ozzy before Ozzy was Ozzy, and the stories that I used to hear about him in the schoolyard made biting the head off a bat seem tame. Most of them were probably made up on the spot, but that only means he had become something of a boogie man to us.
And with good reason. When I googled this album this morning, this amazing video clip from 1976 came up:

He starts by assaulting his co-host, grabbing a random woman from the audience and getting tackled by the cops in a pretty convincing way. The dancers come out, and it becomes clear it’s an act. But even then, he still shocks–returning to flog a bondage-clad woman on the stage live. In the end, it came off as too staged, but he clearly had a punk heart before punk was punking. That whole thing was about being shocking.
The thing is, Alice Cooper always knew how to goof off his wild man image, and this album really has fun with it. In “Go To Hell”, the opener, he condemns himself “For making us doubt our parent’s authority, For being a brat, refusing to act your age…you even make your grandma sick”. Sure, a tough guy.
For all the green skin demon artwork, the album boast four acoustic ballads, and a dead on cover of the tin-pan alley classic I’m Always Chasing Rainbows complete with tweeting birds. Throw in the operatic I’m Going Home, the jazz danceresque I’m the Coolest and the goofy courtroom dialogue stage piece of Give the Kid a Break and there’s really no room left here for balls-to-the-wall satanism. Go To Hell and Wish You Were Here come off as goofy as well, but with more guitar. Guilty is really the only classic Alice Cooper style rocker, and it’s quite fun. The most risque thing on the whole record: “It seems the laws on my ass every time I stick it out the door.” Toby Keith wishes he wrote that, for God’s sake.
The hit was I Never Cry which I I enjoy hearing considerably more than the similarly themed Doctor My Eyes.
Bob Ezrin produced this and much of Alice Cooper’s other stuff. I first saw his name on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. That actually makes a lot of sense–they both have a “music in service of the narrative” quality that comes off as a bit corny and bombastic, but is pretty fun too.
I’m waiting for the broadway musical.