SONG OF THE WEEK: “I Am Not Mister Average”
— The Rank Strangers

ROCKIN’ WITH THE ERGO TIME MACHINE©,
PT. I:

CD Reviews

Alice Cooper
Pretties For You
(Straight/Enigma Retro, 1969)

Long before the dulcet strains of “School’s Out” tore out of the open windows of beat-up pickup trucks and rebuilt street rods across a Nixon-ravaged America; before the world tours, the guillotines, mock hangings, giant toothbrushes, and lead guitarist’s exploding pancreas’; before the makeup, the binges, the breakdowns, and the eventual incarceration of their lead singer/songwriter in a mental ward, The Alice Cooper Band made their freaky little ways from the dusty expanses of Arizona to the big, bad, bright lights of L.A.

Sporting long, wavy tresses, gaudy bangles and costume jewelry, and bizarre, space-age dresses and tunics, the five wild cats in the ‘Cooper band (previously known as The Earwigs, The Spiders, and The Nazz, until the aforementioned lead singer claimed to be hosting the spirit of a long-dead Salem witch, Alice Cooper, inside his body—but that’s a story for another day) brought their trippy, cacophonic psychedelia straight from mom’s garage to the glitzy clubs of Sunset Strip and beyond.

Playing alongside (or at least in the same time zone) as such Sixties giants as The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Doors and The Turtles, lead singer/harmonica player Vincent D. Furnier, drummer Neal Smith, bassist Dennis Dunaway, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, and rhythm axe-slinger Mike Bruce soon became the talk of the town—mostly because of the odd combo of their hippie/freak fashions and their alternately awful and brilliant live shows. They may have become just another footnote in the long and bloody history of rock/and/or/roll, but as luck would have it, one of the few artists of the day who could truly claim to be as eccentric and musically brave as themselves heard about them and stopped in at a gig to check ‘em out.

That eccentric was none other than singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Frank Zappa, who by that point in his career had his own imprint label, Bizarre/Straight Records, and was actively signing and working with other Outsider acts of the day, including his old pal Captain Beefheart, The Fugs and Wild Man Fischer. Zappa was immediately struck by the outfit’s tenacity, musical curiosity, and their sometimes-out-of-tune but always interesting lead singer.

He immediately signed the band to Bizzare, and began, in his own inimitable way, to help steer them through the pitfalls and perils of the corporate music world. In Frank, the band found a sympathetic musical spirit, as well as a generous supporter of their vision (he allowed the band to produce their own work, for one thing) and their growth as a unit. Although later Cooper albums (the ones featuring this core lineup, anyway) were arguably more listenable and definitely more commercial, there’s no doubt that the band would never have reached those pinnacles without this critical stage on Zappa’s tiny but influential label.

But you’ll find none of the hard-rock, macho posturing or vapid, teen-oriented lyricism so prevalent on later Cooper releases on this, the band’s first official studio album. No, Alice and the boys were, like most of the free world around them, heavily immersed in the druggy, fantasy-oriented jam rock that was saturating the clubs, festivals and FM radio stations across the land like so much Orange Sunshine. Pretties For You (yes, the vinyl album originally came with a pretty pair of pink panties tucked in the sleeve, and yes, if you’ve got a sealed copy you’ve got something worth a few duckets on your hands) kicks off with a grand, one-minute, nine-second keyboard/orchestral movement called “Titanic Overdrive,” a disconcerting little piece of music that more recalls the background music to a TV horror movie marathon than anything remotely connected to rock and roll. Later, Cooper would use these ideas to flesh out his ultimate rock/horror stage show, but at this point, it seems the band actually thought this was great music.

“Ten Minutes Before The Worm,” which is, in reality, only about a minute-and-a-half long, showcases Cooper’s warbly, off-key vocals brilliantly—as he competes with a munching, crunching “worm” and some slithering keyboard grooves. Shrill, screeching lead guitars mesh uncomfortably with pounding, unrhythmic drums and plonking bass. This wasn’t music for the faint of heart, regardless of the fact that the band wore dresses and were led by a man named Alice. “Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio” starts out a bit more tuneful, with tasty acoustic strumming and a cohesive rhythm line, but it doesn’t take long for the band to flesh out the track with the usual, unsettling entropy they obviously preferred. Thing is, you can’t make music this bad unless you know what you’re doing—and, for awhile, this band were the undisputed Kings of that practice.

“Today Mueller” does touch on some of the grand, cabaret-style rock shlock Cooper put out in the late ’70s—particularly standout semi-concept material like AC Goes To Hell—and you can tell the man was laying the groundwork for an as-yet-unformed master plan. “Living” finally finds them breaking out of the space-mode and cranking things up a bit. Though the lyrics are still ’60s ridiculous, the growl and groove of the guitars and rhythm section are definitely an early pattern for the faux-metal wangle-dangle to come in the mid-’70s. By the time “Fields Of Regret” comes ambling in with a wobbly, Stooge-y stagger (Alice would later move the band to Detroit, where they’d share stages with the early Michigan punk/street rock crowd), the band has undeniably found their footing.

A live reading of “Levity Ball” (from a show at The Cheetah) reveals a group who certainly seemed to come into its own in front of an audience, and even Alice’s vocals (which in later years morphed into the instantly-recognizable, gruff sneer we all know and love, but here sometimes sound like a cross between a dying sparrow and a Quaalude-laden Syd Barrett) are surprisingly on the mark. The remaining tracks—“B.B. On Mars,” “Reflected” (which later inspired some of the melody and lyrics to “Elected”), “Apple Bush,” “Earwigs To Eternity” (my personal fave), and the self-prophesying, proto-anthemic album closer, “Changing Arranging,” each showcase a particular angle or reflection of the band, both individually and as a unit, while still managing to say almost nothing of consequence, lyrically-speaking.

In other words, Cooper’s Pretties For You is the perfect psychedelic, or “Acid” rock album. Its loud, woozy guitars; stomach-churning keyboard riffs; thrashing bass and drums; shrieking, sometimes incomprehensible, vocals; and a general lack of regard for any tunefulness, listener connection or musical standard make this a perfect aural snapshot of one of rock’s early, real Outsiders long before he and the band became a household word and an inspiration to the Rob Zombies, Marilyn Mansons and Slipknots of the modern world.
The group’s second release, 1970s Easy Action, found them treading much of the same musical ground, and there, the inexorable, ongoing transformation into the Cooper band that history remembers is even more apparent. A transfer to Furnier’s birthplace, Detroit, and a lucky break at Warner Brothers Records (producer Bob Ezrin began a long relationship with them at that point) later that year was the defining moment for Alice Cooper, and by 1971 they had a gold record (“Eighteen”) and were at #21 on the pop charts. The rest, as they say, is written in stone for all to see. A very interesting side trip to a little-known corner of a major rock band’s early career, and well worthy of recommendation to the curious, the historians and the Outsiders of today. Now if I can just make it back to the Time Machine before this purple mescaline kicks in ...

The Go Buttons
Here Come The Go Buttons
(Self-released, 2004)

I sometimes wonder when I’ll simply have had enough of gorging my ears and senses on fun, pop-py, guitar bands. Will I ever grow up and learn to appreciate stuffy, over-wrought shoe-gazer electronic-punk? How about devolving—regressing, even—and delving wholeheartedly into the latest cookie-cutter hits on the Top 40 charts—y’know, the ones your 12-year-old nieces and nephews are blasting down their hear-holes through tiny earphones? And what’s wrong with having just a little taste of granola-peppered, jam-band hoo-ha once in awhile? Why can’t I just be happy with what society wants me to hear? What all those super-smart, super-snide, super-snappy rock crits out there are recommending for me? Sigh. All I know is, there’s not much material left in the Big Star vault I can sit through comfortably, having burned their limited catalog permanently into my psyche over the course of many, many long, drunken nights by my stereo. The Byrds? Radio has so befouled their pop stuff that I’m pretty much permanently locked into the country side of the band—Gene Clark, specifically, both with the band and solo. The Beatles? Fergit it, man. I only get a charge playin’ ‘em to kids who’ve never heard the good stuff—Rubber Soul, Revolver, some outtakes and live shit. Matthew Sweet? Where’d you go, dude? I miss you. Ditto a hundred other great purveyors of the art who came and went without much fanfare in the mid-to-late ’90s. Modern pop, well, it’s usually either really cheesy, over-produced, or tongue-in-cheek, (The Sandwiches, anyone?) or totally downer (I hated it too, but was anyone really that surprised when chronically depressed singer/songwriter Elliott Smith did himself in?) shit that makes me almost go back and put my Big Star and Beatles albums in. Then there’s foreign pop—some of it so brilliant, so perfect (XTC, Abba, Teenage Fan Club, Shonen Knife), so True that it almost literally cuts you to the bone. Hell, I love it all, even some of the cheese, so I guess I might as well throw my hat in the proverbial ring for local pop-sters The Go Buttons, who fall neatly into every one of the categories I listed above so perfectly that I probably just described half of their collective record collections. But no—they’ve apparently also spent a hefty chunk o’ time with the music of Grant Hart, Bob Mould (dark, delicious shadows lurk in the corners of some of these bright, sparkly songs), Paul Westerberg, The Mekons, Nick Lowe, and Marshall Crenshaw over the years, too. And though some of the song titles are a tad scary (“Phone Girl,” “Numb Is Better Than Dead,” which I must say sounds like a direct challenge to Neil Young’s tag line, “I’d rather burn out than fade away,” but that’s just me, and “Songs And Words” stand out), the music itself is fully developed, smart pop (but not snotty pop, ack) with the requisite “la-la’s,” “woo-woo’s” and “ah-ha’s” tucked into all the right spots. Album centerpiece “Sun Up,” the country tinged “Rhodhiss,” and the spooky, rollicking gait of “You Think” have all been running willy-nilly through the old cranium for days now, and I guess if the genre can still be this enjoyable, this interesting, this FUN, I won’t climb on board the Commercial Crap Train quite yet. Tasty, honest, filling pop-rock courtesy of Johnny Wilson, Pete Nelson, Mike Pretel, Jason Larson and Tom Kubasik—mm-mm—I think I’ll have a second helping.

That’s it for this time out, peeps. Tune in again next week for more adventures in the Ergo© Time Machine, when we’ll pop in on those other guests I mentioned earlier, and mucho, mucho more!! Until we meet again—make yer own damn news. ||

If you have local music news/gigs/events/CDs you’d like to see mentioned in this column, or you’d just like to send out an alert that you left a pair of brown, wine-stained, fingerless gloves in the Ergo© Time Machine and never got ’em back, send replies to: (temporary e-mail) jamescrouch_1@juno.com.