Monday, June 23, 2014

SCHOOL'S OUT

Watched the new doco on Alice Cooper, Super Duper Alice Cooper, over the weekend. A decent overview of the career of  Cooper, both the band and then the man who took the name, with some great vintage clips and photos, but not much in the way of new stories or information that even a casual fan (like me) hasn't already heard/read many times before.

One thing that really disappointed me about the documentary is that it pretty much cuts off at the beginning of the 1980's. While the most creative and interesting years of his career and life were certainly the late-1960's to mid-70's, Cooper still had a pretty decent career throughout the later half of the 1980's. 

I've always enjoyed his 1986 album Constrictor, Cooper's first collaboration with Rambo-like guitarist Kane Roberts. Beau Hill's production is a bit thin and sounds rather dated now, but overall I think it has a much stronger selection of tracks than his big 1989 comeback album Trash. Apart from 'He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask) - the theme song for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives - Constrictor also had such fun and catchy tracks as 'Thrill My Gorilla', 'Life and Death of the Party', the S&M paean 'Trick Bag' and 'Teenage Frankenstein', a great ode to 50s B horror...