After a crazy weekend where I
behaved like I was twenty years younger, I awoke today hung over and feeling decidedly
44 again. It was a great weekend though, surrounded by friends and revelry so I
regret nothing.
Speaking of good friends,
discerning readers will note that I seem to have skipped reviewing Disc 660 –
that’s because it was an album by a friend of mine. I listened to it and I loved
it (and generally love all the music he’s made over the years) but way back at
the beginning of the Odyssey (at Disc 56/67, to be precise) I decided I
wouldn’t review albums by my friends.
In addition to excess, it was a
weekend full of music, starting on Friday night where Sheila and I and some
friends went to see Canadian punk legend Art Bergmann at the Upstairs Lounge.
Bergmann was great, and so was the opening act RADco. In fact although I loved
Bergmann, it was RADco that inspired me to buy one of their downloads – they are
a cool band with a great energy. They reminded me of L7 crossed with very early
No Doubt. I’m looking forward to downloading their music, once I get enough
courage (I always buy my music in hard format, so this is new territory).
With all these good musical
experiences, this next review is a sharp turn into disappointment.
Disc 661 is…. Science Fiction
Artist: Alice
Cooper (mostly)
Year of Release: recorded in 1969, although
not released until 1987.
What’s up with the Cover? A young Alice Cooper, sans eye makeup, looks
thoughtful and – dare I say it – reasonably sober. Behind him, his alter ego
lurks, haunting and haunted at the same time.
Also note in the upper right hand
corner the logo for “music options.” Not all options are good, my friends.
How I Came To Know It: I was browsing through the Alice Cooper rack at a
local music store looking for rarities and found this – a rarity! Made in
Holland, no less so you know it’s…er…European. I’d never heard of any of the
songs, which was even better.
How It Stacks Up: I have all twenty-six of Alice Cooper’s studio
albums (I’m kind of a fan). “Science Fiction” is a live album, so doesn’t
really stack up against the studio collection.
Rating: 1 star. I never thought it would
come to this, Alice.
Alice
Cooper is one of my all-time favourite musicians, and he’s given me a lot of
joy over the years, which is why it pains me to have to say this, but “Science
Fiction” is a wretchedly awful album.
The
record was originally a live illegal bootleg, which I guess somewhere along the
way became legitimate when some Soulless Record Exec (or Alice himself) figured
they could make a buck off of it.
This is
very early in Alice Cooper’s career, and while I liked the relative obscurity
of the songs initially, it didn’t take long to realize why they have remained
obscure. They just aren’t that good. Most are little more than two to three
minute snippets of musical ideas. They are performed like the band is wading
through knee-deep industrial sludge; slow and plodding.
Not in
that good, crunchy kind of way either. The songs lurch around and fail to
create any energy. It is like Pink Floyd tried to write Cream songs and then
performed them in the shower drunk.
I
realize this is a live bootleg, but even so the sound quality is awful. Whoever
recorded this should have reviewed what they had and kept it private. In fact,
it is an early cautionary tale for all those folks that record concerts on
their phones and then post them to Youtube. Mostly, those clips suck. Digging
through them trying to find something worth listening to is not unlike digging
through “Science Fiction” looking for a song I liked. The main difference being
at least some of those Youtube clips are OK.
In fact,
the best sounding songs on the album are “Goin’
to the River” and “Ain’t That Just
Like a Woman” and those songs are (inexplicably) performed by Ronnie
Hawkins, not Alice Cooper at all. What the hell?
For no
apparent reason the other songs all have the wrong titles (it’s no wonder I
didn’t recognize any of them). This isn’t just a weird CD upload thing either;
the album prints them with the wrong titles, and always has. The title track is
actually called “Fields of Regret” a
song off of their first album “Pretties For You.” Well, it is half of “Fields of Regret” anyway – at the 2:40 mark it just abruptly stops.
I guess I should be thankful for small miracles.
“Fields
of Regret” would certainly be a better name for this album, since I deeply
regret ever buying it. I’m going to get rid of it so that I can get back to my
usual thoughts about Alice Cooper – that he is a great talent and a living
legend of rock and roll that consistently gives me joy. I hope I roll one of his
many awesome albums soon to wash the echo of “Science Fiction” out of my ears.
Best tracks: um…no.
No comments:
Post a Comment