Alice Cooper-PRETTIES FOR YOU (1969 Straight Records)

Today is Alice Cooper's 64th Birthday.

First, A True Story:
When I was a youngster in 1975 or so, I used to have to go to church on Sunday mornings. Mostly it was just Sunday-School; United Church style- which is to say; a pretty loose affair.
I used to enjoy exploring the innards and hidden places in the Church: The teeny hallways, small doors, and windey staircases.
One day, I found a turntable in a little closet: no speakers, but lots of albums I'd never seen before, with very plain covers.
The next week I brought in an l.p. (My first and favorite) to play.
When the right moment arrived, I snuck away from the common room, went into the innards of the church, and went to that cupboard.
I took out my favorite record, and I put it on the turntable, turning up the volume knob a bit from whatever it was set at, and put the needle on the record.

The effect was instantaneous, but hard to grasp for my 11 year old mind: The music seemed to be coming at me from a distance, but from everywhere at once.
It seemed both loud and not-loud at the same time.
It was at about the 15 second mark that I realized what I had done, and, ripping the l.p. off of the turntable I ran to get back to the common room as quickly as possible, to try to blend in.
AND SO: The point to all this is that I played Alice Cooper's "No More Mr. Nice Guy" from the l.p. "Billion Dollar Babies" through the bell tower of my neighborhood church for the local residents at 10:00 on a Sunday morning in lieu of the traditional Carrillion music.

Call it payback for the Reverend Smithee's punch in the nose.
Happy Birthday, Alice.

And Now, The Music:
This is the Alice Cooper group's first album.
In this debut,(and in the band's second album- "Easy Action") the "Alice Cooper as Villain/Monster" concept has not yet been thoroughly developed.Ambiguity is the theme here.Even the name of Alice Cooper identified both the band and the singer, all of whom were confrontationally androgynous.
Wiki- "One night after an unsuccessful gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, California, where the band emptied the entire room of patrons after playing just ten minutes, they were approached and enlisted by music manager Shep Gordon, who ironically saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction. Shep then arranged an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer, Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock." The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of psychedelic rock at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough to sign them to a three-album deal. Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, who liked to "dress the Cooper boys up like full size barbie dolls," played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look."

The identity of the protagonist in virtually all of the songs is entirely unidentifiable, and often contradictory, as are the lyrics. The violence of the later albums' horror narratives is here mostly absent and the lyrics are more "stream of consciousness" and nonsensical; the Words are often used primarily for their sound, or their ability to confound the listener and their expectations: Time and again, the lyric being sung at any moment is cancelled out by the lyric sung at the next moment- through wordplay, surrealism and other poetic devices: enjambment,metonymy and synedoche (No- I didn't know these terms; I had to look them up).
(I have included lyrics, sourced from the web-I corrected the mistakes which I could).
The guitar work is decidedly angular and interwoven- each guitarist, taken singly, often plays lines and figures which are,in themselves, irrational and often atonal.
(sort of like a slightly less capable and more accessible Magic Band. This band also seems to have been as well-rehearsed as the Magic Band: Check out "Live at the Whiskey 1969" and you'll hear many of these songs played identically to this record- with minor lyric differences).
The bass is played like a third guitar and not as a member of a "rhythm section"- the drums are sometimes played more like a percussionist's batterie than a traditional rock drum kit, Smith often playing 'lines' rather than 'beats', (Cooper later said that Bob Ezrin, who produced their "breakthrough" third album re-taught the group how to play their instruments, helping to create their more popular 'signature sound')

The music is, nonetheless, often melodic and even rather psychedelic.
Wiki: The band have later claimed that this period was highly influenced by Pink Floyd, and especially the album Piper at the Gates of Dawn. the late Glen Buxton could listen to Syd Barrett's guitar for hours at a time.

This album and the one which followed it are unique in that they are usually ignored or disliked by fans and met with critical indifference and commercial failure.
























Alice Cooper-PRETTIES FOR YOU (1969) Straight

Side One:

1- Titanic Overture (1:13)
2- 10 Minutes Before The Worm (1:38)
3- Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio (5:43)
4- Today Mueller (1:47)
5- Living (2:55)
6- Fields Of Regret (5:47)

Side Two:

7- No Longer Umpire (1:59)
8- Levity Ball (Live At The Cheetah) (4:37)
9- B.B. On Mars (1:13)
10- Reflected (3:14)
11- Apple Bush (3:07)
12- Earwigs To Eternity (1:18)
13- Changing Arranging (3:04)












Music,Lyrics,and Arrangements by Alice Cooper
Produced by Alice Cooper
Engineered by Dick Kunc
Bizarre Business by Herb Cohen

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