Where to start with Alice Cooper?

I am wanting to check out Alice Cooper again after all these years.  Where should I start?  I don't remember much about his early albums but remember "Constrictor" through "The Last Temptation".  Is his new stuff good?  Would you check out what you remember first or explore some new ground?

Two of my favorites from the 70's are Welcome To My Nightmare and Billion Dollar Babies.

Both of these are available at Amazon for $4.00 each



http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-My-Nightmare-Alice-Cooper/dp/B008645YXA/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1448371116&sr=1-1&keywords=alice+cooper






http://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Babies-Alice-Cooper/dp/B000002KEN/ref=sr_1_6?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1448371217&sr=1-6&keywords=alice+cooper

Some of the later albums are on Spotify:

https://firestreamvault.com/album.php?id=2457

https://firestreamvault.com/album.php?id=8488

My introduction to Alice was Welcome to My Nightmare. My favorites would probably be Constrictor and Brutal Planet.

Yeah, Alice Cooper is pretty bad ass! I mean - he has a whole legacy of music (ranging from many different styles including New Wave, Hard Rock, Glam Metal, Pyschedelic Rock, Glam Rock, Garage Rock and Heavy Metal! And I'm probably leaving out a lot of stuff! In other words - Alice Cooper is very versatile!!! Like a chameleon. Almost like a Hard Rock version of David Bowie. He's a legend.

Anyway - I like all of the eras of Alice Cooper, but my favorite would be his late 80s and early 90s era. When he was full on Glam Metal! Those albums are my faves:

1. Raise Your Fist and Yell
2. Trash
3. Hey Stoopid
4. The Last Temptation

Those are the albums that get spun the most around this joint.

I think I am going to start with what I remember first and work my way forward.  I had a lot of the 70s stuff on cassette way back when.  To be honest, though, a lot of it was hit and miss for me.  I think I will start with "Constrictor" and work my way on through "Welcome 2 My Nightmare".

alldatndensum wrote:I think I am going to start with what I remember first and work my way forward.  I had a lot of the 70s stuff on cassette way back when.  To be honest, though, a lot of it was hit and miss for me.  I think I will start with "Constrictor" and work my way on through "Welcome 2 My Nightmare".

Probably the best choice if you want metal Alice. The World Needs Guts is a great tune.

I love the whole "Raise Your Fist & Yell" album!  The song "Freedom" is definitely something that we Americans need to pay attention to.

out of the stuff from Last Temptation to current day, I give my highest recommendations to Brutal Planet,  Along Came a Spider, and Welcome 2 My Nightmare.

Brutal Planet is a bit different fro most of Coop's catalog, it was sort of an "answer" to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar album, and carries a LOT of the same mid 90's alt/industrial metal feel.  Probably his "heaviest" disc, and also some I've the most overt Christian messages and themes he's done.  I love it, your mileage may vary.


ACAS and W2MN are very much "classic" Alice benefitting from modern advances in production and recording.  Both are concept albums, with W2MN being a direct sequel to the original Welcome to My Nightmare.  ACAS maintains a similar 70's Rock and roll feel throughout, W2MN is a truly varied platter, ranging from 70's vibe rock and roll, to dirty 20's New Orleans Jazz/blues, to modern club/disco (!) dance rock.  Both are absolutely chock full of Alice's classic sardonic, dark, dry humor, and absolutely FANTASTIC discs, some of his best work, IMO....

I've always been partial to DaDa, but to recommend that is probably close to some kind of Cooper blasphemy, so...I'll be quiet. 

Coops catalogue is hit and miss for me, but mostly hit.  I must say however I haven't heard an album from brutal planet on that I haven't really enjoyed.  They've all been fantastic.  I'd even suggest starting with some of them over the 80's early 90's stuff.

I loved those albums from the 80's and very early 90's.  I definitely started there.  I started with "Constrictor" and am now ready for "The Last Temptation".

pathogenics_cloned_twin83 wrote:I've always been partial to DaDa, but to recommend that is probably close to some kind of Cooper blasphemy, so...I'll be quiet. 

DaDa is a great album, but hardly a good starting point for a Cooper newbie.

Two words:  BRUTAL PLANET.

Seriously, that's one of my all time favorite albums.  I had never been overly impressed by what I'd heard from Alice before that (I must admit though, I hadn't heard much of his work), but when I got Brutal Planet it was love from the first listen.  Fantastic from start to finish.  The follow-up, Dragontown, isn't as brilliant, but is a good album nonetheless and has a somewhat similar sound.  It's bonus track, "Can't Sleep Clowns Will Eat Me," is a real treat too.

Alice is an artist who's catalog I've always meant to investigate more but never got around to it, at least not much.  I got Trash when it was on sale on Amazon, and it was okay, but not really my thing.  I will definitely grab Welcome to My Nightmare and Billion Dollar Babies at $4 a pop.  Thanks for posting that, Highway Star.

WildWorld wrote:

pathogenics_cloned_twin83 wrote:I've always been partial to DaDa, but to recommend that is probably close to some kind of Cooper blasphemy, so...I'll be quiet. 

DaDa is a great album, but hardly a good starting point for a Cooper newbie.

I wouldn't call myself a newbie.  I was very familiar with Cooper's work in my earlier years.

My all time favorite Alice Cooper album will probably always be "Raise Your Fist and Yell"! It's very underrated. A lot of people think it's terrible for whatever reason.

But it's a brilliant Hard Rock album! With a lot of true Heavy Metal and Glam Metal throughout.


Hooks GALORE!!!




"Trash" would be a close second though.

Ive always loved the songs Lost in America and Poison

The comparison to David Bowie, I can see it, though I dont see Alice Cooper really re-inventing himself to the degree that Bowie does, but definitely has the longevity and as i Said I can see the resemblence in their careers.

For later stuff I recommend from The Last Tempation on.  Brutal Planet and Along Came a Spider are amazing.  For earlier stuff try Pretties For You And  Easy Action That was when it was a Band and not a Solo project and it was very Psychedelic stuff.

This thread has me revisiting a bunch of the coops discography.  Listening to the Alice Cooper band albums something struck me.  How did we let hard rock get so boring?  Those albums had so much going on.  From hard rock hits to spacy, bluesy, jazzy stuff.  Heavy metal and pop sensibilities blended together in arrangements that often stayed away from stander verse-chorus songwriting. Man, so much hard rock is so paint by numbers now compared to this stuff.  Often coopers genius seems to revolve around his groundbreaking gimmick, but these guys were ridiculously creative where it counted, the music.