All Hallows Eve Spotlight Part 1

So as promised I will be doing spotlights on various artists that everyone can relate to for Halloween.



First up, no Halloween theme can begin or even be complete without the father of all things sick and scary,Alice Cooper.
Think of any band that ever used props or any type of theatrics and there is a very good chance that Alice Cooper was the inspiration. Alice Cooper used guillotines to simulate his own beheadings, carved up baby dolls, used real pythons on stage as a prop, and not to mention his own appearance which included face paint and at times androgynous outfits. Check out this video of a live performance for the song " I love the Dead" to get an idea of the madness.



This kind of show caused quite a bit of a stir in the early 70's as you can imagine, enough to garner attempts at censorship, bans from countries, and arrests for indecency. But seriously, how could a monster like this guy be so evil that Jim Henson invited him on his Muppet Show? Seriously.



By this time his popularity had started to wane but thank goodness for the 80's where older hard rock acts were starting to get a revival. Aerosmith and Kiss had experienced resurgences in popularity so why couldn't Alice Cooper? Here is the beginning of the comeback with a guest spot on Twisted Sister's "Be Chrool to Your Scuel" which by the way got banned from my buddies at MTV for being too graphic.



Following that Alice Cooper had some success with his own albums, actually garnering #2 with the song Poison. This song has been remade a few times, most motably by some techno group called Groove Coverage and also by Tarja Turunen formerly of Nightwish. I wish Tarja good fortune but stay the hell away from songs like this please, thank you. Anyway here is Alice Cooper capitalizing on the hair band popularity of the late 80's. Apparently Alice's label had a bunch of people disable embedding so enjoy this rip from my old favorite show, Headbangers Ball.



Fast forward to this hilarious bit from Wayne's World. Where everyone got to see the real side of Alice Cooper even with makeup:)



So the popularity waned again in the 90's as so much of everything had in favor of rap and alternative but Alice Cooper is still out there plugging away. Here is a video off the new cd "Along came a Spider". It's basically three or four songs mashed into one. Plus Slash guest stars in it, I guess returning the favor for Alice Cooper doing guest vocals on "The Garden". Pretty cool.



So there you have it, I'm starting off this month with the king of shock rock and one of the founders of heavy metal. Love him or hate him there is no denying that without Alice....alot of the music we listen to today wouldn't be in existence.