Alright, this poll and discussion might go nowhere but what the hell, I love 70's Cooper but have only liked two albums since 79 which Brutal Planet and Dragontown.

Any opinions on Alice?

I loved Cooper till he turned in a Hollywood celeb and starting playing golf with people like Bob Hope and started appearing on game shows and The Muppets. He totally lost his edge by 77. He is even worse now, he is a reborn Christian and about as threatening and scary as a bowl of jello..



My pick - Killer.

I have never liked Cooper much but if I have to choose one album, it would be Killer just for the Halo of Flies track.

I like Welcome to my Nightmare, probably because I saw him on that tour.

I only like a few songs and most of those are from the Killer and Billion Dollar Babies albums but I went for Killer but could have gone either way on those two. Hate hearing him in interviews, he always seems to want to take credit for everything, whether it be stage shows or inventing heavy metal. I find him a bit irritating.

Wel I'll probably be the only one here but I love mostly everything by Alice Cooper, even the very strange albums he recorded in the early 80's... And I must confess I love Trash (probably the only FM-friendly hard-rock record I'll ever love !), ha ha. Seen him live just once, three years ago, and the show was great. Absolutely predictable, yes, but the man is in great shape, his daughter is a wonderful performer, and the musicians were top-notch. It was... nice. I admit the idea of Alice cooper being nice can be shocking, yeah ; absolute halloween rock'n'roll circus, yeah. But I still like that. More than any Kiss show, actually...

Anyway, I voted for Billion Dollar Babies, but it was difficult to choose.

I must admit, I would rather pay money for a Alice Cooper show any day over Kiss.

For me AC is one of the most overrated bands ever. I can't understand why are they so popular.

I don't know about him being overrated but I guess he is. I know when I first started really checking out his albums, I was surprised how light some of his albums are.

After the original Cooper band split, he got stuck to a formula. It started when he released "Only Women Bleed" as a single. He did again with "You and Me" and so on. His albums of the 75-79 era almost sound cabaret. I do like a lot of what is on those albums but he cashed in on whatever was happening at the time like Disco. Welcome To My Nightmare was his last classic album imo.

I was only I think about 12 when Nightmare came out so I thought it was a pretty creepy album and I loved it. When Go To Hell came out, I rushed out and bought it and was totally disappointed. I hate those broadway show tunes he started doing, "Give a kid a Break" and all that crap, then there are the ballads - ewwww..horrible crap and then there was his attempts at disco-rock, again, pretty terrible stuff.

I must confess I love most of his "Broadway Show tunes", as you put it, but that's mainly because I like cabaret, jazz and musicals stuff - especially when it's done with a dark, ironic edge... But I understand why you hate that stuff too !

Ha ha That guy was my idol when I was younger!
I still like the old man although it is probably nostalgia rather than real admiration for his music. As far as the glam/Hollywood thing...I think he was a showman since day one! Maybe his more commercial stuff later on is just a natural evolution.

In a weird perspective I think Cooper is still underrated (mainly his early carrier) other mainstream artists of this kind became huge...

I'm holding off on voting for now, since I haven't heard much of his actual albums, I just know the classic songs, and a few other ones here and there.
The one track that really stands out for me is "The Ballad of Dwight Frye"..

Has to be Killer.

I think Schools Out was the first record I ever bought. I still love early Cooper but can't stand the man these days. Ever since he quit the booze and became a born-again Christian he has become a total prat imo.

I chose Love It To Death...

I had stated in the Iron Maiden thread that I stop really caring for Alice after Welcome To My Nightmare...but that's because I had forgot about Go To Hell...

I haven't heard 90% of his material so I can't really make a judgment. I did have an old 8-Track player and Schools Out ages ago and I used to play it all the time.

I think in the early 70's, he couldn't do wrong then once his split from his original band, he lost direction. He did Hollywood show tunes, disco, new wave and none of it work IMO. Every his harder, heavier songs started to sound weak and thin. From The Inside was his last listenable album for a long long time and even that is a patchy album at best.

I listened to nothing but Sabbath and Cooper for a quite some time there in the 70's. I can still remember Alice being so drunk at one show in 73, he was pissing over the side of the stage and quickly fell onto a poor woman in the front row, still holding his dick and peeing straight into the womans face. The woman freaked and ran out of the hall. I saw him another time in 75 and sang great the entire night but did it leaning against a Marshall stack most of the night because he was too drunk to walk.

I saw him one time in the 70's and he was drinking more than singing. I lost count of how many beers he downed. It must have been at least 20 by the end of the show.