For those wondering why there has
been such a slowdown in album reviews, I took last week off from walking to and
from work. Also, I recently got a whole
bunch of new music that took up my listening time. When I did have time to write, I worked on my
next novel (and got two chapters drafted, than you very much). Add it all up and there wasn’t much time for
the CD Odyssey.
Today was my first day back at
work, and it seems as fitting a time as any to get back onto these music
reviews. We restart the experience with the
second album in a row from that great year in music, 1972.
Disc 406 is…School’s Out
Year of Release: 1972
What’s Up With The Cover?: It is designed to look like the top of a desk, with
the initials or partial names of all the band members carved into it. I’ve never liked this album cover as much as
I should. It is just OK. It kind of reminds me of “Beggar’s Banquet” in how it makes me feel grimy. It also
reminds me of all those ancient school desks you use in school, so old they
still had the hole for the inkwell decades after the advent of the ballpoint
pen.
How I Came To Know It: Regular readers
will know that I am a massive Alice Cooper fan.
School’s Out is a classic Alice Cooper album, so it is no surprise I own
this album. I’m one of the few of my
generation (b. 1970) that heard the title track first on vinyl, rather than on
the Muppet Show (although I enjoyed both experiences).
How It Stacks Up: I have twenty-six Alice Cooper albums. “School’s Out” is pretty strong, and comes
out solidly in the band’s golden age, but competition is tough at the top, so I’ll
say 9th overall.
Rating: 4 stars.
The title track of “School’s Out” starts
with one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock music, but sadly that is
where most people’s knowledge of this album end. The fact that the other songs range through psychedelic
proto-prog to jazz saxophone, classical piano and violin, funky horn sections
and strange homages to a Broadway musical is largely forgotten. Thankfully, I’m here to remedy that.
Off the top, it bears noting that in
1972 we are being treated to Alice Cooper ‘the band’ rather than Alice Cooper ‘the
guy’. While Alice Cooper ‘the guy’ has
some classic records after the breakup of the original band, he never matches
the creative output of the five classic albums put out between 1971 and 1973. “School’s Out” falls right in the middle of
that period.
Michael Bruce’s skanky,
inappropriately delightful guitar is particularly welcome on the title track
and “Public Animal #9” and the
opening bassline laid down by Dennis Dunaway practically makes “Blue Turk” the bluesy creepfest that it
evolves into. These are fine songs (but
more on them later).
First, a quick note on the album
overall, which has a loosely themed collection of songs about high school and
its many perils. It isn’t a concept
album as such, but it comes close, with the vast majority of songs relating in
some way to education, and how little of it those darn kids seem to be getting
(Cooper was always a stealth moralist, even at his most troubling).
“Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets” is actually an homage to West Side Story,
even to the point of including a large chunk of “When You’re a Jet” re-imagined in Alice Cooper Vaudevillian
devil-rock style. The musical track that
ends the record, “Grande Finale” also
briefly includes a portion of “When You’re
a Jet” but I don’t know if there are other tracks references from West Side
Story elsewhere. I don’t want to know
either. I can’t stand West Side Story,
and it is a tribute to Alice Cooper’s bent re-imagining of it that they can
make it enjoyable for me to listen to.
“School’s Out” would’ve been
interesting enough right here, but the band is not finished yet pushing their
musical limits.
“My Stars” sounds like a pop song that dropped out of high school
and went and got high on LSD with Timothy Leary. The
track features classical piano, paired beautifully with rock guitar while it straddles
the line between psychedelic sixties rock and progressive time signature
changes.
The previously noted “Blue Turk” and “Public Animal #9” are both songs founded on an R&B base, and
jazzed up with acid rock and, well, jazz.
They’re also two of my favourite tracks lyrically speaking. “Blue
Turk” evokes an encounter with the undead in its chorus:
“You’re so very picturesque
You’re so very cold
Tastes like roses on your breath
But graveyards on your soul.”
“Public Animal #9” starts with a series of unrepentant confessions
from a couple of playground delinquents:
“Me and G.B. we ain’t ever gonna confess
We cheated at the math test
We carved some dirty words in our desk
Well now it’s time for recess.”
The song ends with these two
misfit dropouts ending up in jail. “Public Animal #9” is so delinquent that
as the song reaches its climax, Cooper’s vocals slowly morph into little more
than primal shrieks and screams that somehow still carry the melody of the song. Kind of like Kurt Cobain, only triumphant
rather than depressed.
It seems natural to end this
review with a return to the title track, which has become the signature song
for delinquents throughout the English speaking world, and an anthem through
multiple generations bidding a less than fond farewell to the high school
experience. I remember playing this song
the weekend I graduated, and I felt like I was tapping into the collective consciousness
of millions of teenagers that came before me when I did it. I like to imagine that millions more came
after me doing the same.
The best lines come near the end,
and are missed by a lot of people who just know the chorus. They are the final verse, and sum up the
irreverent humour that Cooper can deliver with tongue planted firmly in cheek. A gifted lyricist, Cooper finds the best way
to make an anti-establishment song about high school end:
“Well we got no class
And we got no principals
And we got no innocence
We can’t even think up a word that rhymes.”
Of course he can, but the deliberate
and carefully placed wrongness of it all is the perfect example of why this
album is so right.
Best tracks: School’s Out, Blue
Turk, My Stars, Public Animal #9, Grande Finale.
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