Biographies

Janet Jackson Biography

2009-05-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

She's the youngest of nine children born to Joe and Katherine Jackson- including Michael, Tito, Marlon, LaToya, and Jermaine. She was always a tomboy as a child - a little chubby, and given to roughhousing. Janet became aware of the performance early on. Since the Jackson 5 were already stars by the time Janet was an adolescent, it may never have occurred to her that it was possible to fail in show business. She had an experience of life completely different from what her oldest brothers and sisters may have known as a poor Indiana family. She was perhaps the most protected child in the family, as the youngest often is.

As she grew, her interests branched in several directions- dancing, acting, singing. She was clearly a performer, but of what kind? She first appeared on stage in her brothers' show in 1973- at the age of seven. In 1977, Norman Lear offered her a job on the CBS hit as Penny Gordon Woods on "Good Times." After that, she appeared on a few shows, "Diffrent Strokes" and "A New Kind of Family" among them. She was doing sitcom acting: not terribly challenging, but highly paid, with good exposure. And as a Jackson child, how could one not draw exposure? Brother Michael was already solo and tearing up the charts with Off the Wall.

In 1982, she released her first album, Janet Jackson. It wasn't bad for a first effort, especially for a sixteen-year-old, but it played it very safe. Janet had yet to find a voice, a style, or an audience. She toured the country, performing in high schools and encouraging the kids there to stay in school. During the tour, she went with her mother to see The Time perform. Two members of the band- Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis- would become major figures in her career. In 1983, she got a role on "Fame." The show, no longer on a network, remained one of the most critically praised shows on TV- and one which somehow had maintained itself as a showcase for singing and dancing, as well as acting and writing. Anachronistic though a musical format may have seemed, the show was much like the high school it portrayed: encouraging talented performers to stay a while and learn before moving on. During her time at "Fame," she remained protected (not surprising, considering she was still a minor at the start of the season) an
d her parents were often on the set. In 1984, Janet, age 18, eloped with James DeBarge and married him. Pressures from a number of different directions intervened- her record company, the demands of her schedule, her youth. By the following March, she moved back in with her parents and had the marriage annulled.

Also in 1984, Janet released her second album, Dream Street. Inflected by the dance-pop of the time (it was produced with help from Giorgio Moroder, of Flashdance fame), it was little more than a statement of musical presence on Janet's part: I'm here, I'm making music, heads up. It was not well-received.

The album peaked at #147 on the charts and Janet retreated to think about her next album. She listened to other songs, worked intensively with songwriters and producers, and cultivated a coherent sound which had been lacking the previous effort. This sound is still recognizable in Janet's music: a blending of the sharp opening phrases and commanding bass lines of funk with the melodic sense of soul, and the rhythm backing of 80s dance-pop and, later, rap.

The album that pulled these things together was 1986's Control. It was her first album with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. It transformed all of their careers. It hit number one, putting six singles on various charts. Among the charts that Janet simultaneously occupied the #1 position on were dance, black and pop- which describe the meld the album achieved. It took the hard beat background and laid a funk-riff melody over it, with Janet not always so much singing as keeping a vocal rhythm.

The album was aggressive, in tone and melody. It was a clear stepping out from behind her parents'- and brothers'- coattails. "What Have You Done For Me Lately" is the voice of a woman taking control of her voice and her man, "Control" (the title track) being what the album is all about. The album was all about Janet- and who she wanted to be. It was sexier than any past album- enough to disturb her mother a bit. Janet knew it would, but weighed her need to get out of the nest against that- and that need won.The singles from the album just kept coming: five of the tracks from the album became top 5 pop hits. Janet spent most of 1986 and 1987 supporting the album and remixing the songs into dance versions. (Many of these versions were released as Control- The Remixes.)

Rolling Stone reviewer Rob Hoerburger called Control "a better album than Diana Ross has made in five years." Ms. magazine named the album one of the musical landmarks of the past 20 years. By 1989, Janet released her next album, Rhythm Nation 1814. What exactly did 1814 mean? Well, R and N are the 18th and 14th letters of the alphabet, respectively... but that wasn't quite it. If, as People reviewer Ralph Novak claimed, Janet was "making a strident declaration of independence" with Control, Rhythm Nation was a few years down the road. 1814 refers to the year that Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner," and the album was about some of the troubles of this Rhythm Nation. She said at the time, "Control was about my life; Rhythm Nation is about what's going on in the world around us."

Rhythm Nation was accompanied by a long-form video project, encompassing a number of the songs from the album, in a conceptually coherent form. It's a morality play featuring two young shoeshine boys, which director Dominic Sena tried to film in the style of a vintage musical. The tour that followed was as much of a production: huge, expensive, and theatrical.

If some tracks on Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 were hard for mother Katherine to take, janet, her 1993 follow-up, should, as Michael Odell put it, "turn her to the bottle... she really puts the bedsprings through their paces." The album retains the assertiveness of Control, the political awareness of Rhythm Nation, and adds a frank sexual tone. The British publication VOX said that "Musically, she touches all bases; lyrically, she hardly gets out of the sack."

Around the same time janet was released, she starred in John Singleton's Poetic Justice. The film, about the meaning of poetry in an urban setting, gained Janet some respect for her acting. Oddly enough, she had attended the same junior high school as John Singleton- "I remember his as this little kid with 'Coke bottle glasses,' who had all these books," Janet said. "After [meeting on the set of Steven Spielberg's] Hook, we got together and it all just happened from there."

Since then, she's spent time building her acting skills, writing songs, and maintaining relationships. She remains close with Michael still- as kids they'd play piano together. She still talks to him mornings, supported him in public during his roughest times. The key she wears on an earring is a gift from him- it was to the cage of a baby deer they took care of as kids. One day, he attached it to the earring- and she has left it there. The two siblings joined forces on Michael's video (currently the most expensive music video ever made) "Scream."

With the release of her seventh album, Behind The Velvet Rope, Janet joined longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on a project that set out to tackle social issues like domestic violence and the AIDS crisis. The first single from the album, "Got "Til It's Gone," features a sample from an artist accustomed to speaking out through music - Joni Mitchell (trivia: the sample comes from Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" 1970). According to Janet, "It's kind of like therapy...In the past, I've always found a way to not have to face the pain I've experienced growing up; I would brush it aside and keep going," she says. "But I'm at a point now where self-discovery has become important, and this album is kind of like a self-examination."

And like "Got 'Til It's Gone's" recurring chorus, "Joni Mitchell never lies," Janet assimilates the statement to a new level in her own career, "I've always had this need, when I discover a truth, to share it musically," Jackson said. "A lot of times when I've felt alone, music has helped me get through it. Maybe this album will strike a chord with some people out there when they're going through difficult times."

Hinder Biography

2009-05-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

Austin Winkler: vocals
Joe “Blower” Garvey: guitar
Mark King: guitar
Mike Rodden: bass
Cody Hanson: drums

Hinder (verb): 1. To be or get in the way of. 2. To obstruct or delay the progress of. 3. To interfere with action or progress.

Let nothing “hinder” your appreciation of the subtleties purveyed by this Oklahoma City fivesome, who are collectively dedicated to bringing back the good old decadent days when sex, drugs and rock & roll weren’t dirty words, but a way of life.

Produced by Brian Howes (Closure, DDT) and engineered by Mike Fraser (Aerosmith, AC/DC) in Vancouver, BC’s Armoury Studios, Hinder’s debut Universal Records effort, Extreme Behavior, is filled with flick-your-Bic moments of arena-rock grandeur, all crackling dual lead guitars, ethereal four-part harmonies and soaring beat-your-chest rock vocals, taking a page from timeless groups like Bad Company, Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones, among others.

The album’s first single, “Get Stoned,” is already tallying up pre-release airplay at such bastions of Rock radio as 102.1 The Edge in Dallas/Fort Worth and CFOX Vancouver.

“I loved all that shit,” explains rollicking lead singer Austin Winkler, a gravelly voiced howler who counts such in-your-face front men as Steven Tyler, Vince Neil and Buckcherry’s Josh Todd as his inspirations. “Four people singing and putting on a big rock show. We want to bring that back. It would be wicked if we could.”

“We’re hoping to be the band to get people into rock again,” says drummer Cody Hanson, who writes the bulk of the band’s material with Winkler.

Hinder was formed in Oklahoma City more than four years ago, when guitarist Joe Garvey and Hanson discovered Austin singing for a cover band at a college dorm party.

“I heard him and was blown away,” says Cody. “He has the kind of charisma very few people have and that unique voice. You can’t really compare him to anybody.”

Indeed, it is Winkler who infuses Hinder’s often-bitter sentiments of regret and forgetting the past on songs like the tongue-in-cheek “Bliss” and “Better Than Me” with flesh-and-blood humanity.

“It’s more about getting things off our chests,” he says. “And it’s lyrics you can understand, not this dark shit.”

“We didn’t want to be just another faceless rock band playing depressing, ‘I hate my dad’ music,” adds Hanson. “We wanted to go out there and kick ass like they did in the ‘80s.”

The band often overturns expectations, especially on “Get Stoned,” which, rather than the party anthem its title implies, is really a song about not being able to leave your pain-in-the-ass girlfriend because “the sex is so much better when you’re mad at me.”

“That line actually started as a joke, but once I sang it, we said, ‘Fuck it… let’s keep it,’” laughs Winkler. “It’s like you’ve got this girl you can’t stand, but the sex is so good, you can’t bring yourself to break up. So let’s get wasted and go have some make-up sex… Everybody’s been there, right? ”

“Bliss” is about getting so obliterated to forget a ruptured relationship that “I can hardly see what’s in front of me/Because the vodka’s running on empty/I can’t stay sober/If it’s over.”

“I love the lyrics to that song, because when you’re hammered, you lock all that stuff out,” says Winkler. “You don’t have to deal with it because you’re not even thinking about it.”

Other songs on the album include the raw uptempo party rocker, “Room 21” (“Basically about a guy getting hammered and banging some random chick,” according to Austin), and guaranteed-soon-to-be-classics “How Long,” “By the Way,” “Nothing Good About Goodbye,” “Homecoming Queen” and “Shoulda Woulda Coulda.”

“When we first got together, we were in a negative state of mind, recovering from personal problems,” says Cody about the band’s name. “We had our issues. They were different issues, but we were all trying to overcome them.”

Cut to almost five years later and the band has built a healthy regional following, released an independent album, Far From Close, which sold out 5,000 copies, was the object of an honest-to-goodness bidding war between three different major labels and is now set to release its major label debut, Extreme Behavior.

“We live the lifestyle,” explains Cody. “That’s what rock is supposed to be about… rebellion and having fun. We’ve been blessed with the opportunity to play music as a career, so we might as well take advantage of it and have a good time.

“Live is where you go out and get a chance to make fans from people who have no idea who you are. You have to go out there, kick ass and win them over.”

Guns N' Roses Biography

2009-05-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynist, violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit "Sweet Child O' Mine" showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city; bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler were a limber rhythm section that kept the music loose and powerful. Guns N' Roses' music was basic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty, and honest -- everything that good hard rock and heavy metal should be.

Guns N' Roses released their first EP in in 1986, which led to a contract with Geffen; the following year, the band released their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. They started to build a following with their numerous live shows, but the album didn't start selling until almost a year later, when MTV started playing "Sweet Child o' Mine." Soon, the album shot to number one and Guns N' Roses became one of the biggest bands in the world. By the end of 1988, they released G N' R Lies, which paired four new, acoustic-based songs with their first EP.

Guns N' Roses began to work on the follow-up to Appetite at the end of 1990. In October of that year, the band fired Adler, claiming that his drug dependency caused him to play poorly; he was replaced by Matt Sorum from the Cult. During recording, the band added Dizzy Reed on keyboards. By the time the sessions were finished, the new album had become two new albums. After being delayed for nearly a year, the albums, Use Your Illusion I and II, were released in the fall of 1991. The Illusions showcased a more ambitious band; while there were still a fair number of full-throttle guitar rockers, there were stabs at Elton John-style balladry, acoustic blues, horn sections, female backup singers, ten-minute songs with several different sections, and a good number of introspective, soul-searching lyrics. In short, they were now making art; amazingly, they were successful at it.

While the albums sold very well initially, the band soon fell out of favor. Stradlin left the band by the end of 1991 and with his departure the band lost their best songwriter. Once Nirvana's Nevermind hit the top of the charts in early 1992, there was a distinct division between what was cool in hard rock and what wasn't; Guns N' Roses -- with all of their pretensions, impressionistic videos, models, and rock star excesses -- were very uncool. The band didn't fully grasp the change until 1993, when they released their album of punk songs, The Spaghetti Incident?; it received some good reviews, but the band failed to capture the reckless spirit of not only the original versions, but their own Appetite for Destruction. By the middle of 1994, there were rumors flying that the band was about to break up, since Rose wanted to pursue a new, more industrial direction and Slash wanted to stick with their blues-inflected hard rock.

Goldfrapp Biography

2009-05-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

Once Upon A Time on Felt Mountain

The story continues...

Alison Goldfrapp - composer, vocalist, whistler, yodeller, keyboardist

Will Gregory - composer, keyboardist, string and brass arranger

Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory teamed up in the late 90s and through their mutual passion for heartbreaking melody, electronic experimentation and their intuitive appreciation of cinematic soundscapes, formed the wonderfully exotic and eclectic Goldfrapp.

Having established a strong alliance with Mute, Alison Goldfrapp and Will
Gregory focussed their considerable individual talents upon forging an utterly distinctive and passionate vision of 21st Century popular music. A dark, shimmering sound in which past, present and future musics intertwine with their own obsessions, fears and desires. A surreal wide-screen tango overflowing with mad love, loneliness and tech-noir future shock premonition. Utterly sincere, timeless music, simultaneously ravishingly beautiful, haunting and sinister.

Goldfrapp and Gregory’s dreams and aspirations for their music were realised with the inexorable creation of their classic debut album - Felt Mountain. Goldfrapp's first single, 'Lovely Head', released in May 2000, gave notice that a major new musical force had emerged. "In an ideal world this would have Fellini doing the video. Deliriously good," was the NME’s excited assessment. On the strength of ‘Lovely Head' alone, Goldfrapp's status as one of the most exciting discoveries of 2000 was assured. However, nobody could have really foreseen the level of adulation, from both critics and music devotees alike, that would greet Felt Mountain.

Released in October 2000, Felt Mountain garnered a fevered critical response. "Sublime, decadent, twisted, elegant. Perfection." asserted NME. "Stunning. Some of the dreamiest soundscapes this side of Morricone," announced Muzik. "Stirring and magnificent," praised Q. "Felt Mountain is dark, twisted, nasty and extremely satisfying. Get some," urged Later. "Warmly recommended," noted Mojo. "This is more than a brilliant LP, it's the sound of a bench being marked. We are not worthy," opined Time Out.

Felt Mountain was acclaimed as one of the best albums of 2000 in a diverse
cross section of magazines and newspapers including Q, Muzik, NME, The Sunday Telegraph, Time Out, Uncut, Record Collector and Gay Times. The general consensus was clear and unequivocal - Felt Mountain was the most assured and enchanting debut album of recent years.

Two further single releases were taken from Felt Mountain, 'Utopia' and
'Human', released in November 2000 and March 2001 respectively, which combined with television appearances on The Priory and Later with Jools Holland and a succession of national and international tours as a fully fledged five-piece band, brought the exhilarating Goldfrapp experience to an ever widening audience.

Of their two sell out shows at the Union Chapel, London, in May 2001, The
Independent on Sunday described Alison Goldfrapp as "one of the most
fascinating and mercurial female figures to emerge from British pop since Kate Bush... Goldfrapp is a Hendrix of the microphone. Where most vocalists view the mic merely as an amplification medium, Alison Goldfrapp uses it as an instrument... There can't be many singers who could make a song about eugenics ('Utopia') feel like an idyllic lullaby. And if Alison Goldfrapp sang you to sleep, your dreams would really be quite something."

The Goldfrapp phenomenon has not just been confined to the UK. They played to packed houses throughout Europe and have been rewarded with top 40 status in Germany. In North America the band enchanted sold-out audiences in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Montreal with the media reaction equally impassioned, Time Out New York hailing Felt Mountain as; "One of the most accomplished albums we've ever heard" and Rolling Stone simply stating "Awesome".

"It’s been a wonderful shock," admits Will Gregory, when asked about the highly favourable international response to Felt Mountain. "It was made on our own in a rented bungalow, but it seems like people we’ve played it to in different countries have found something that they thought was relevant to their own culture or their own music".

"We had both got to the stage in our lives, careers, whatever, where the only agenda was to do something that we felt that we wanted to hear," stresses Alison Goldfrapp. "We really believe that good music is for anybody, anywhere. It transcends language, trends, fashions or anything. I think good music should be timeless. We deliberately avoided samples and loops for those reasons, If music is good, it survives. The reaction, everywhere we've been, in Europe, Canada and America, has been brilliant. You go to these places you've never been, you don't know what to expect, but in Montreal the audience were screaming with delight and singing along throughout the gig. It was quite surreal."

The thrilling Goldfrapp saga is only just beginning. If you have not visited Felt Mountain yet, aural satisfaction is guaranteed.

Disturbed Biography

2009-05-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

David Draiman: Vocals
Dan Donegan: Guitar
Fuzz: Bass
Mike Wengren: Drums

"What I'm trying to do from a lyrical perspective is bring back the majesty of metal," says David Draiman, defining Believe, the follow-up to Disturbed's multi-platinum debut, The Sickness. "With this album I wanted to speak about important things in a grand way, and even touch on things that may not seem so important, but come at them from a perspective that makes them inviting, delicious--even foreboding in a way."
Among his many distinguishing characteristics, Draiman has superb enunciation. As a singer, it provides his voice with scalpel-like precision that razors through the great articulated noise his bandmates generate. Combined with leather-lunged projection, his voice can both bludgeon and slash at a level that transcends his lyrics' literal meaning.

Things get really nasty, though, when his voice joins his bandmates' dexterous rhythmic assault in what Draiman describes as "a constant blend of all the elements." The resulting attack during songs such as "Prayer" and "Liberate" telegraphs contusions along a listener's brainpan.
There's a reason Draiman, guitarist Dan Donegan, bassist Fuzz and drummer Mike Wengren named 2001's victory lap around the U.S. the "Music As A Weapon" tour. Sharp enunciation and road-honed chops are merely part of the arsenal.

In conversation, Draiman's voice has the same quality that you hear on disc. But the delivery is... slower... and... more deliberate. The effect lulls rather than cuts. But when he speaks, he doesn't make small talk, he makes pronouncements. The band's second album, Believe, doesn't really require further explanation, in the way that other classic albums don't require explanation. But questions will arise when spinning the disc. Mainly, "How?"
" We have a responsibility," he begins. "Two and a half million people invested in us and believed in us with the last album. We owe it to them and to ourselves and to everything we stand for, to respect the lineage and the tradition and the purity of metal. We have to remain faithful to what metal--true, true metal--was first established to be in the name of Black Sabbath and a hundred other great bands: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Metallica, Pantera, even Soundgarden.... All of those bands had songs that spoke about grand things."
True metal groups honor the legacy whose thumbnail history David sketches above. It's one of the genre's endearing traits: fierce loyalty expressed loudly. Metal requires that quality from its best bands and fans in order to survive.
As a product of natural selection, the oft-maligned genre has gathered strength from continuously swimming against the current over the course of its Ozzy-and-Iommi-conceived 33-year history.

Snatched by Disturbed from the flow of that tradition, this new brand of metal is like a shark. In their hands, the music is highly evolved, lean and muscular, and has a terrible efficiency and singleness of purpose. None of the twelve songs on Believe, for instance, stretches far beyond the four-minute mark, yet they each possess a strength and epic quality that requires other bands twice as long to convey, if ever.
Part of that boils down to simple math: Four musicians campaigning behind one album for 22 months. When Disturbed finally pulled off the road in late 2001, they took a month to recuperate and then began writing Believe. Two and a half months later they were recording the album in their hometown of Chicago with producer Johnny K. Like The Sickness, the disc was then mixed in New York by Andy Wallace.
A seemingly Herculean effort? Keep in mind that this is a band that doesn't like to sit idle for long. With the precious month the band had off between the road and rehearsal, Fuzz, for instance, built a garage and poured a driveway for his house. If that's what the band calls leisure time, imagine what they consider work.
" We've always had to work hard for what we have," explains Draiman. "Nothing comes easy to Disturbed. Such is life. It certainly hardened us. When you're put in the furnace for long enough, it hones you." "Being on the road for 22 months totally increased our playing ability," agrees Fuzz. "It made us much better musicians." "It's a different band," says Draiman. "We were eager to explore new territory and challenge ourselves." "We wanted to prove that there's not just one formula that works for this band," adds Donegan, who conceives the musical framework for the songs before they're arranged by the group. "I didn't want to duplicate what we did the first time around. There's nothing exciting about that."
Ironically, in order to explore fresh territory, Disturbed duplicated the working environment that produced such winning results with The Sickness. The band's loyalty--again, the true-metal variety--shines through in that decision, as does its pragmatism. As Fuzz says, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." It's a sentiment echoed by his bandmates.
" We write what we write without overthinking it," says Donegan. "That's part of the reason we chose to record again in Chicago with Johnny K., who's been a friend of ours since we were a local band. It put us back in a familiar environment where we could just do what we do." "We're our own worse critics," admits Wengren. "We're always pushing each other to become better musicians and I guess better people, too."
The results are evident on Believe. If The Sickness put Disturbed on the map with signature cuts like "Stupify" and "Down With The Sickness," the new album refines that signature into an even harder alloy on songs such as the title track, the first single "Prayer" and the pit-ready "Rise" and "Bound."
" We're not reinventing the wheel," says Donegan. "But when all of our different playing styles and influences come together, it's a fresh sound. There are old-school elements to what we do, but it's done in a modern way. Even though we're characterized as a metal band, I don't think there are any metal bands out there that sound like us."

Draiman's singular voice burns the final brand on all things Disturbed. This time out, however, he waits until "Intoxication"—a full six songs into the album--before unleashing his signature sound. Robert Plant has his "baby, baby, baby." Rob Halford has his vibrato wail. Draiman has his feral roar, the guttural noise that opened "Down With The Sickness" and subsequently launched a million extreme sporting events.

" The noises... oh, how they love the noises," he says with a chuckle. "When 'Down With The Sickness' broke as a single, some people forgot about the rest of the song. They would say, 'Come on, make the noise!' What the fuck am I? They wouldn't ask me, 'Can you sing that one line?' Or 'What are the words to that part? Or 'How does that melody go?" With this album, I was determined to let people know that I can do much more than just make animal noises."

If that point was already clear to those who listened to The Sickness as an album, the way that work was intended to be heard, it's undeniable now. The scalpel-sharp enunciation, the leather-lunged projection, the rhythmic assault, and, yes, even "the noises," combine to deliver Draiman's grand messages. The arching theme? Belief.

" I encourage self-exploration and internal truth--defining one's own belief. People need to seek out that which they are able to believe in. Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in the future of humanity? In God? In the death of god? In the things that you cannot see in the spiritual realm? Are you afraid of the dark? The light?"

Tellingly, perhaps, the album closes with a track called "Darkness," whose intense mood is conveyed with a spidery acoustic guitar arpeggio, a pecked piano melody and a haunting cello line. As a final address to his audience, Draiman offers his most tender vocal performance, singing, "Dare to believe for one last time. Then I'll let the darkness cover me, deny everything, slowly walk away to breathe again on my own."
" 'Darkness' is a nice closure to the album," says Donegan. "It ends the album in a way that leaves us room to go in any direction we want with the third album. I don't like to concern myself with anyone's expectations but our own."

" For inspiration, we look to any band that has stood the test of time," adds Wengren. "We don't want to be a band that's known for just one song. We had a successful debut album. Now we're building on that and seeing where it takes us."
Draiman, being Draiman, puts it more succinctly: "There's so much more to prove."

Daughtry Biography

2009-05-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

Rock n' roll is seldom a predictable affair. Just ask Chris Daughtry. Better yet, examine the very public arc the enigmatic musician carved against the grain of American Idol, electrifying the show's faithful audience with a gloves-off vocal style that revealed astonishing breadth with every new song. Still, he found himself at the center of the most surprising live rub-out in modern television history. Premature elimination, they called it on the internet, and even though a controversial lack of votes ended Chris' quest for the top rung of American Idol 5 (a spot so widely presumed to be his, even Entertainment Weekly referred to it as "the surest thing in Idol history") it ignited a groundswell of support from fans vowing he would soon be blazing his own trail.

So much for the audition...

His new album, DAUGHTRY, on 19 Recordings/RCA Records fully delivers on that promise, but what's most striking about the North Carolina native's debut is the skillfulness with which he blends his hard won attributes: The rugged voice tempered by an even sturdier sense of place. The audacious appetite for risk reflected in his hardscrabble on-the-road writing sessions with proven rockers - some of them his own formal idols - like Brent Smith of Shinedown (Chris even covered one of their songs on Idol), Mitch Allan of SR-71, and Hinder producer Brian Howes. Emboldened by riveting collaborations such as "What I Want," "It's Not Over," "There And Back Again," and the probing "All These Lives," it's evident Daughtry possesses a durable songwriting presence of his own.

Helmed by Howard Benson (My Chemical Romance, All-American Rejects), the album thoroughly mines Daughtry's instinctive ability to deliver accessible music at every turn, veering from pop gems to tight-fisted rock anthems. Chris particularly rises to the occasion on one of the songs penned solely by him, the stunning ballad "Home." "That song means a lot to me in so many ways," he says. "It's also one that I wrote even before I did the show, though it somehow seems to capture how far I've come along." More proof of DaughtryÌs uncanny ability - as one LA Times critic recently put it - to "find the story" in every song he attempts.

Daughtry has also assembled his very own band (aptly called DAUGHTRY), signaling that the charismatic vocalist is more than willing to put it all on the line. He committed to an intense audition process right from the start, determined to achieve that crucial bond between members. Daughtry summoned his keen instincts when meeting and choosing the players who would eventually become his band, tapping into both the interpersonal chemistry and musical compatibility of the guys who would eventually make the cut.

"I began my music career as a songwriter, but I've always believed in the power of a band. The great moments are when you're able to capture that extra special connection between members that you can't really define. That's what I'm striving for. We've found the right guys and I'm really excited about the prospects of what we can do. We didn't have time to feature them on the album but I canÌt wait to hit the road with them." For Chris, who drew consistently rave reviews on the summer-long Idol 5 jaunt, mixing it up with his own players will give his live show an even greater dimension. "There's nothing like the camaraderie of a band. That feeling that you're surrounded by a group of people who feel closer to you than just about anybody. It makes such a difference in the music."

And as for the music - poring over songs in some hotel room at 3:00AM with guys who only a year ago I was dreaming about meeting one day - well - it still blows my mind sometimes," he says. The combustible process produced a hefty batch of 21 songs for Daughtry to draw from. "I never wanted to dictate a set path when we started working with the writers," he says. "They are all so different, so awesome in their own way. One of them would fly in and we'd have a go-around and something would start from that." He wrote 3 songs with Brian Howes, citing the resulting "What I Want," as the kind of out-of-the gate, upbeat rocker people will expect from me. I remember we liked it so much we listened to it in the car after the session. Brian is great, so full of ideas; heÌs like a one-man library of music." The song also piqued the interest of acclaimed rock guitarist Slash, who dropped by the studio to thread his legendary guitar work into the blistering mix.

Another song Daughtry fans should immediately relate to is the first single and blazing rocker "It's Not Over." "It's one of my favorites. I did it with Greg Wattenberg (produced Five For Fighting, and does A&R for Wind-Up Records). It's about relationships that you ultimately screw up but swear youÌre going to get right the second time. That feeling when you keep doing the same thing thinking youÌre going to get a different result, still, you keep trying." Daughtry was also eager to write with Brent Smith, frontman for Jackson, Florida band, Shinedown. "He was great to work with, not to mention that I've stolen a few moves from him on stage as well." The two are both huge Chris Cornell fans, and penned what Daughtry refers to as one of the heavier' songs on the album, "There And Back Again."

The range of material suits the disciplined vocalist. "I've never believed a song has to have a rock edge, or be part of one genre or anything like that to be viable. I've been writing songs since I was 16, and my goal has always been to approach the process with an open mind. Songwriters I really admire are people like Robert Plant or an Elton John, who aren't setting out to write a rock song everytime but a great song that stands on its own no matter what. I also believe it's what you do with the song that matters, as well."
Chris recalls a moment from his Idol experience where he realized he was winning over rock fans purely on the power of his edgy interpretations. "I'll never forget I was invited to this hard rock radio station weenie roast, and I thought "should I go, they'll probably sneer at the whole Idol experience." I went anyway, and was thoroughly embraced by everyone there it was such a great feeling. Rob Zombie came up to me and told me he watched the show and loved what I did. Now that was really an honor."

The singer also cherished the experience of consulting with BMG U.S. Chairman Clive Davis, also known for his legendary commitment to good songwriting. Davis has even been known to choose some of the songs for the final Idol rounds. "He was a great guy. Very good at seeing the entire picture," says Chris. "I brought in my guitar and played "Home" for him. I couldnÌt believe it was Clive Davis sitting 2 feet from me as I sang. He said some very encouraging words to me."

Such encounters have made Chris aware of how he might be able to help struggling musicians who have yet to be discovered. "I'll never forget what it was like. To go from playing in front of 50 people to an audience of thousands. I'm always trying to hook up bands I've played with, encouraging whoever I can. It's why I work so hard to make these songs unique. I owe to those who've supported me and to those still trying to climb up that ladder."

It's that same passion, that sense of communal all-for-one-ness Daughtry so empathetically telegraphs to his fans that he poured into the making of the album. "Yes we were in crunch time, making it," says Daughtry. "But I never got the feeling I was going somewhere creatively that I didnÌt belong." Pure Daughtry. You get the feeling he's still "an event unfolding" wrote one critic, about his ability to extend his reach with every performance. A sensibility he's magically been able to capture on the new record.

Crazy Town Biography

2009-05-05T22:32:00.001-07:00

Over the years and through the tears, Mary J. Blige has been more than just the finest and fullest practitioner of modern R&B. She is the woman who voices what we can only feel. Through her music, Mary acts as both sister confessor and conduit to real emotions and hard fought hurts.

Once again, as she has done in the past Mary has been looking into the mirror of her soul and putting into measured words the truths she has seen in her reflection. "I have learned something," Mary offers, her tone a wondrous blend of amazement and awareness. "I've learned that we've got to take responsibility for everything that comes out of our mouths.. so.. my focus is on claiming peace and prosperity, trust, patience and love.”

That love: of self of family, of a mate, of friends, of the spirit and of the power of the beat is soulfully evident on Mary J. Blige’s fifth studio triumph No More Drama. The album includes songs and production from such notables Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Missy Elliot, Chucky Thompson, Swizz Beatz, Rockwilder, The Neptunes, Dr. Dre, Ron Lawrence, Kenny Flav, Dame Grease and Mary. Special guests include Eve, Hakeem, Missy and Lenny Kravitz. No More Drama is a passionate and purposeful exploration of the heart, soul and body. Like her 1999 Grammy nominated, platinum plus smash Mary album, which drew upon Ms. Blige’s renewed confidence and reinvigorated spirituality, No More Drama is both affirmation and declaration of intent.

No More Drama is filled with slice of life truths and sizzling tracks that are both deeply personal and richly universal in scope. "This album is a continuation of a turnaround,” Mary explains, speaking to the changes and growth between then and now. “The Mary album was a clean up. It was about cleaning up around me because I still had debris left around me. And this album? It’s about solidifying and moving even further with the things I’ve learned and the strides I’ve made."

That knowledge is apparent on the potent title track. Written and produced by Jam and Lewis, who have collaborated with Mary since 1993’s Share My World “No More Drama” is a (wo) manifesto of determination, set to a gospel laced mid-tempo track. The song opens with the instrumental theme from the "Young and The Restless" and slowly Mary’s burnished voice makes its impact felt with lyrics like “no more pain, no more drama in my life." It is a resoundingly emphatic track, womanly and wise, and one that touched Mary to her core. ”Jimmy and Terry wrote it without me and when I heard it I was like.. do you have a private detective following me around? Because this song is so where I’m at. This song is demanding that you stay away from my life if you’re going to bring me drama."

Another song seemingly taken from Mary’s diary is “Never Been,” produced and penned by good friend Missy Elliot. Framed by a determined and stately vocal, “Never Been” is a song that touched Mary’s core and speaks to her faith. ”I didn’t have a relationship when I heard “Never Been” but I knew that love was going to come, and it didn’t have to come from a man. It came from 'The Man'.. and God gave me that self love, and from that I was able to draw to even more love.”

Love, on a more romantic level is the muse behind “Flying Away” which was co-written by Mary and her younger brother Bruce (who cowrote several songs on the album.) A soaring incandescent cut, “Flying Away” finds Mary in a lighter than air, amour mode, offering her mate support in the form of lines like “here’s your only chance, call me your sunshine on a rainy day..love is on the way.” “Flying Away” is about being on a trip in many ways because someone is treating me right and I’m treating him right and, well, that’s where I’m at.”

Another place Mary finds herself returning to on No More Drama is the dance floor. Case in point is the thumping rhythm fueled tracks "Family Affair" and “Dance With Me.” Offers Mary, “That’s me when I’m out at the club. I just wanted to be able to dance and have a song where everybody could leave their troubles behind and have a good time. A lot of people don’t know that I like to party and that I like to hang out, not the way I used to," Mary laughs, alluding to her wilder youth, “but I do like to get my dance on.”

Mary gets her dance on and allows her fans to join her party on several cuts that feature collaborations with some of the shining lights in hip hop, including The Neptunes, Rockwilder (who kicks in with the insistent “Keep It Moving”) Grammy winner Dr. Dre, (the butt shaking “Family Affair”) and Swizz Beatz who goes for his with the hard core life lesson “Where I’ve Been.” Written by Mary and boasting a guest rap from Eve, “Where I’ve Been” is brutally honest and ruggedly real; a tale of redemption and salvation with a club savvy and uplifting attitude. "I wanted to let my fans know that Mary, despite of the adversity, is gonna be happy.”

Happy but also attuned to others. Mary's charity work is as much a part of her healing process and her journey as the music she creates. She is seen in anti-drug public service announcements, has worked with various education groups and has helped raise monies for people with AIDS. In the spring of this year Mary received the Rolling Stone Do Something Award for her humanitarian work and she was recently honored with a lifetime service award by 100 Black Men. She also received Rock The Vote's highest honor, the Patrick Lippert Award. Mary continues as the spokeswoman for MAC’s Viva Glam III with all proceeds from the lipstick earmarked to AIDS education and research and her tireless work for People with Aids included an appearance at the United Nation’s AIDS Awareness Day fundraiser.

Along with her music and her altruistic outreach, Mary is embarking upon an acting career, She recently did a guest spot on Lifetime’s series "Strong Medicine." “I had fun doing that,” Mary smiles adding that she also sang No More Drama’s “PMS” (produced by Chucky Thompson) on the show. Along with plans to do more acting, Mary is readying the launch of her label and firming up her roster of artists.

Few would have imagined back in 1992, with the explosive debut of What’s the 411, that this young girl from the projects of Yonkers, NY would in less than ten years time become both a multi faceted talent and a template for contemporary R&B. That she would release one live album, four studio albums, see them go to the top of the charts, earn numerous industry awards and be able to bring her idiosyncratic brand of soul to audiences worldwide and cut across race and genre boundaries in the process. On TV, on radio, on CD, in the clubs, the streets, and the bedroom, the honest and humane songs of Mary J. have blossomed into modern classics, and she, in return, reigns as the undisputed Queen of Hip Hop Soul. She was crowned that back in 1992 and throughout the course of her career, from the brilliant My Life through the powerful Share My World, to the triumphant Mary to No More Drama’s blend of prayer and partying, Mary has reclaimed her rights to that crown again and
again.

Ask Mary what she wants No More Drama to convey and she thinks for a bit. “I’d like people to be entertained but I’d like them to hear what I’m saying, too. But if it doesn’t grab you right away, cool. Just dance to it. Just feel it until you are ready to hear what I have to say .. and then what ever happens will happen."

Crazy Town Biography

2009-05-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

Cannibal Corpse Biography

2009-05-05T22:31:00.001-07:00

From Buffalo, New York comes a death metal monster that has yet to be tamed: Cannibal Corpse. Comprised of George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher, Alex Webster, Paul Mazurkiewicz, Jack Owen, and Pat O’Brien, the quintet has been ravaging the landscape with picturesque stories of death and many processes by which death can be achieved. At first glance, it seems morbid and repulsive. Ironically, that is just what Cannibal Corpse has aimed for since its birth.

Beginning in 1989, Cannibal Corpse was formed from the remnants of three local Buffalo bands, Tirant Sin, Beyond Death, and Leviathan. The original lineup, consisting of vocalist Chris Barnes, guitarists Jack Owen and Bob Rusay, bassist Alex Webster, and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, recorded a self-titled demo. Unbeknownst to them, they were about to be signed to Metal Blade Records to create the primitive yet uninhibited 1990 release, ‘Eaten Back to Life’, produced by Scott Burns (Sepultura, Deicide). Although it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a best-seller, it certainly got their names in the public with songs like ‘A Skull Full of Maggots’ and ‘Born in a Casket'.

Next came 1991’s ‘Butchered at Birth’, an album with a refined (but still fairly primitive) death metal sound. Songs such as ‘Meat Hook Sodomy’, ‘Covered With Sores’, and ‘Vomit the Soul’ grabbed the attention of the average passer-by…that is, if they weren’t thrown off by the ultra-violent album cover by none other than Vincent Locke of Dead World Comics. 1991 was also the first year Cannibal Corpse went on tour, eventually spreading their music to Europe (where they weren’t well received by many countries).

A year later, Cannibal Corpse released ‘Tomb of the Mutilated’, a death metal classic sporting perhaps the most popular Cannibal Corpse song, ‘Hammer Smashed Face’. Other classics, including ‘I Cum Blood’, ‘Addicted to Vaginal Skin’, and ‘The Cryptic Stench’, as well as yet another offensive album cover by Vincent Locke put this album at the top of the death metaller’s must-have list. ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ later appeared in the soundtrack to the 1994 film ‘Ace Ventura: Pet Detective’, a decision made by Jim Carrey himself (who turns out to be a big Corpse fan).

A note about the first three albums: Germany has banned Cannibal Corpse from playing material from the first three albums.

In 1993, Cannibal Corpse released their ‘Hammer Smashed EP’, containing ‘Hammer Smashed Face’, and two unreleased cover songs, ‘The Exorcist’ by Possessed and ‘Zero the Hero’ by Black Sabbath.

1994’s ‘The Bleeding’, Cannibal Corpse’s best-selling album, brought in a new era, as founding guitarist Bob Rusay was fired from the group and replaced by Malevolent Creation guitarist Rob Barrett. Barrett joined the group as a welcome and contributing addition to the death metal team, helping record malicious classics to include ‘Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead’, ‘Fucked With a Knife’, and ‘Stripped, Raped and Strangled’, which contests to be the most popular Cannibal Corpse song against ‘Hammer Smashed Face’.

Next, in 1995, Cannibal Corpse vocalist Chris Barnes was fired due to ‘musical differences,’ and replaced by former Monstrosity vocalist George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher on the band’s follow-up to ‘The Bleeding’, entitled ‘Vile’ (originally entitled ‘Created to Kill’). Corpsegrinder made an instant impression on the death metal audience with the 9 second scream heard in the album’s opener, ‘Devoured by Vermin’. ‘Vile’ is proof that Cannibal Corpse’s fate doesn’t rest on one person’s talents alone.

In 1997, after recording the Monolith of Death Tour VHS, Rob Barrett decided to leave the band to pursue other fields of interest, and was replaced by Nevermore guitarist Pat O’Brien to record their 1998 release, ‘Gallery of Suicide’. ‘Gallery’ also marks the first time recording without long-time Cannibal Corpse producer Scott Burns, who was replaced by Jim Morris (Iced Earth, Morbid Angel). Labeled as their most technical album, ‘Gallery’ retains the tried-but-true standards of relentless pounding, intense riffs, and guttural vocals that keep the fans coming back for more. O’Brien proves to be a powerful force, marking his abilities in the song ‘From Skin to Liquid,’ the album’s instrumental track.

The following year, 1999, was the year of ‘Bloodthirst’, their first album working with producer Colin Richardson (Fear Factory, Carcass). This was the first time in five years that Cannibal Corpse had consistent band members spanning two albums. The feverish pace of ‘Dead Human Collection’, the adrenal flood created by ‘Pounded into Dust’, and the skull-crushing symphony ‘Unleashing the Bloodthirsty’ caught the attention of more death metal fans across the globe.

In 2000, Cannibal Corpse released their second live recording, entitled ‘Live Cannibalism’. A compilation of most of their classic tracks played at two venues (the Rave in Milwaukee, WI and Indianapolis, IN), Colin Richardson managed to produce one of the finest raw live albums ever recorded, capturing the true essence of a brutal Cannibal Corpse show.

Come 2002 and Cannibal Corpse returned with producer Neil Kernon (Queensryche, Hall and Oates) to release ‘Gore Obsessed’, another violent episode in the quintet’s saga. Opening with the vehement, impulsive ‘Savage Butchery’, entrancing the listener with the ferocity of ‘Pit of Zombies’, and closing the album with the Metallica classic ‘No Remorse,’ ‘Gore Obsessed’ is a whirlwind of violence and bloodshed, accounting methods of one’s own demise (‘Hung and Bled’) to unconscious mass murder (‘Grotesque’).

Later that year, Cannibal Corpse released the six-song ‘Worm Infested’ EP featuring two unreleased original songs (‘Systematic Elimination’ and ‘Worm Infested’), ‘The Undead Will Feast’, and three cover songs: ‘Demon’s Night’ by Accept, ‘Confessions’ by Possessed, and ‘No Remorse’ by Metallica.

‘15 Year Killing Spree,’ released in 2003, is a collection of some of their best material over the years, a CD featuring demos and cover songs, a DVD of live shows and recording sessions, and a bundle of other goodies (to include a comic based on ‘Unleashing the Bloodthirsty’ drawn by Vincent Locke) to satisfy the Cannibal Corpse fanatic’s palate for death metal.

Cannibal Corpse’s latest effort, ‘The Wretched Spawn’ was released in February 2004, again with producer Neil Kernon. Perhaps the most anticipated of the CC releases, ‘Wretched’ delivered powerful imagery coupled with fast, intense musicianship in many of the albums’ tracks, namely ‘Severed Head Stoning,’ ‘Frantic Disembowelment,’ and ‘They Deserve to Die.’ They also struck a chord or two with two of the slower tracks on the album, ‘Festering in the Crypt’ and the title track, not to mention the album’s single ‘Decency Defied.’

Shortly after the first U.S. Tour of the Wretched, founding member/guitarist Jack Owen decided it was time to say goodbye, and was replaced on the following tours by Jeremy Turner (Origin). Now Corpse fans are waiting to see whether Jeremy will continue to play with CC in the years to come or if someone else will enter the fray. In any case, there’s sure to be another chapter of brutality for the masters of death metal - Cannibal Corpse!

Bullet For My Valentine Biography

2009-05-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

“Where the fuck have all the riffs gone?”

That's what Matt Tuck wants to know. He and his fellow Bridgend band-mates have been listening to the radio, going to shows, and – for the last 7 years – answering that often-asked question with their own metal-clad minstrelsy known as 'Bullet for My Valentine' – one of the most intense acts to come out of Wales since mega-groups Funeral for a Friend and Lostprophets put that outer-rim of the musical galaxy on the map. But make no mistake: geography is where their similarities end. Chalk it up to teenage years spent worshipping the likes of Metallica, Testament, and the almighty Iron Maiden.

“We were all kind of bewildered by how huge those bands got,” continues Tuck. “It wasn't jealousy, but we didn't see a reason why that couldn't be us.”

In fact, there is no reason, because this fearsome foursome's supercharged riffage and soaring vocalsharken back to a time in the UK when how good you were had to do with how well you played – something they're convinced is lost on too many of today's flash-in-the-pan upstarts.

“We're proud to say that there isn't a single indie band in South Wales ,” says guitarist

Michael 'Padge 'Padget. “I don't see how a band can stand there for 40minutes and just sing bollocks. What's the point? It's about putting on a show!”

And that attitude's already won Bullet' a coveted support-slot with American metal-beasts Chimaira on their recent stint in the UK, a tour gave them an unforgettable taste of life on the road, not to mention a bit of intimate time with each-other.

“There was the four of us stuffed in the back of arider,” laughs Tuck. “We didn't mind though, we're completely committed to this, even if that did mean knowing each other a little better than we should.”

But what really mattered was getting known on the road, and it wasn't long before they got the call they'd been waiting for: an opening slot at the 2004 Download Festival. But where many bands would see their invitation to the legendary home of metal as a crowning achievement, these Welshmen saw it just the beginning. Not to say they didn't “appreciate” a chance to obliterate the Barfly stage, but they've set their sights higher.

“We drove up there at dawn with music cranked right up to 11,” beams bass-man Jason James. “There we were at 10 in the morning, standing on the main-stage with beers in our hands. It was like, 'well, this is it boys. This is where we're meant to be.”

If that sounds arrogant to you, think again. This foursome have already experienced the kind of setbacks that would have left a lesser-band in ruins. Bullet for my Valentine were formed from the ashes of Jeff Killed John, a band that – name aside – had everything going for it; great friends, good songs, and enough experience playing 'shitty gig after shitty gig with everyone telling us to fuck off' to last them a lifetime. That is, until one day two years ago their bassist decided to quit. His timing couldn't have been worse.

“We were due to go in the studio on Saturday, and he quit on the Friday,” sighs Tuck. “Everything went completely tits up, and it was a really big kick in the balls but it made us stronger.”

Strong enough to recruit a new bass player, and strong enough to take a critical look at themselves and see what had gone wrong. The result was a new sound based on what they wanted to play rather than what the then nu-metal-loving media wanted to hear, a new name to fit Matt Tuck's darkly romantic lyrics, and a new lease on a career they're determined to pursue 'til the end of their days.

“Everyone's been dumped, sure they have,” says Tuck. ” Not everyone's been dumped by a psycho. Some of our music's actually quite uplifting, but a lot of it isn't. This IS supposed to be fun, right?”

Certainly fun enough to write songs like 'Hand of Blood', a chugging, fist-throwing, chorus-laden anthem that's already received a stunning visual treatment. Lacking the funds to put on the kind of big-budget Hollywood production they'd envisioned, the band unanimously opted for the next-best thing. That is, getting 150 people to crowd into a garage and have fake-blood rained down on them in a disco-bloodbath inspired by a scene from the Wesley Snipes Vampire flick 'Blade'. Indeed, Slayer would be proud. But like the classic-metal masterpieces that inspire them, Bullet for my Valentine don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. They've discovered the power of the riff, and they've got the balls and the bravado to see that no one soon forgets it.

Bright Eyes Biography

2009-05-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

In the past few years since the release of Bright Eyes’ fourth full-length album, Lifted or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground, the Bright Eyes tale has taken many unexpected twists and turns. Conor Oberst and his ever-changing line up of musical comrades appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” and were a prominent addition to the MTV2-televised 2003 Shortlist Awards. In October of 2004 he was invited to join Bruce Springsteen and REM on an arena tour of swing states in advance of the presidential election. His performance at those shows sealed his reputation as a creative force, able to command the attention of thousands of rock fans with, at times, just his voice and an acoustic guitar.

Over the past two years the young musician has found himself hurled from his indie rock enclave onto the world’s stage. While reaching new heights of commercial success, he was hailed by fans as the finest songwriter of his generation. But he remained, and remains, an artist unwilling to leave his hometown label for any major label’s promises.

All the while, critical acclaim has spread far and wide with Bright Eyes selling out several hugely lauded tours and finding an ever swelling and ravenous audience throughout the world. Since Lifted, Oberst has released an almost constant stream of new material for collaborative EPs, tribute albums, and charity records. He ventured into the studio with Nebraska folk-pop outfit Tilly And The Wall, co-producing their debut album Wild Like Children and then releasing it on his newly established record label, Team Love. And yet, despite all of this recording and performing, it is his songwriting that has taken unmitigated precedence.

Conor’s new songs are undeniably his finest to date. These new compositions have been rolled into two separate, cohesive records: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, which will simultaneously be released on January 24th. While a plethora of this new material was born from an early 2003 relocation to Manhattan, 2004 saw Conor’s return to Presto! Studios in Lincoln to record with long time collaborator and producer Mike Mogis.

Recording since the age of 13 and tagged “rock’s boy genius” by the music press for the past few years, these two albums provide unequivocal proof that the now 24 year-old Oberst belongs to the lineage of great American songwriters. These albums are a soundly articulated slice of modern American life rolled into two very different records. The new songs are bursting with all of the heartfelt poetry for which Bright Eyes records have earned their acclaim. The rough edges are still there — the splintering of a note held too long, the crack of the voice as it reaches slightly too far, the inadvertent thump of a thumb against a fret — but there is a glorious new level of depth and texture to the writing and delivery. Recorded back-to-back and scheduled to be released simultaneously, more out of necessity than any grand art plan, the two albums work in tandem to elucidate both sides of Conor’s recent creative output.

The first (as in, the first to be laid down on tape) is titled I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning; a country-tinged mélange of Conor’s finest acoustic songs, featuring guest vocal appearances from Emmylou Harris and Jim James (My Morning Jacket).

The second album Oberst recorded, Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, is a more produced, band-centric album featuring cameo appearances by Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

As has become expected of Bright Eyes recordings, the albums feature an array of talented comrades: Jesse Harris, Jason Boesel of Rilo Kiley, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis, Nick White of Tilly And The Wall, Matt Maginn of Cursive, Clay Leverett and Andy LeMaster of Now It’s Overhead, former The Good Life member Jiha Lee, Maria Taylor of Azure Ray, Clark Beachle of The Faint, Alex McMannus of The Bruces, Jake Bellows of Neva Dinova and Jimmy Tamborello of The Postal Service.

On October 24th, Saddle Creek will release Noise Floor, a collection of Bright Eyes singles, one-offs, unreleased tracks, collaborations and covers recorded between 1998 and 2005. Variously recorded to cassette four-track, minidisc, reel-to-reel tape machine, ADAT and computer, these songs trace Bright Eyes' evolution from basement project to band of international repute. Many of these gems previously lost to out-of-print obscurity are hereby resurrected.

News of this release should thrill fans eagerly awaiting the follow up to 2005’s breakthrough albums: I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning & Digital Ash In A Digital Urn. 2006 has been a comparatively quiet year for Conor Oberst + co. There were no US or European tours, although the Canadians were treated to a lengthy tour in the early part of the summer, and the band made a couple of blistering festival appearances - Bonnaroo and their own free concert at Memorial Park in Omaha on June 17th. The comparative inactivity has allowed Conor and producer Mike Mogis to spend much of the year in the studio, recording in such exotic locales as New York City, Portland, Oregon and Lincoln, Nebraska. The Bright Eyes line-up for the new record includes full-timers Conor, Mike and Nate Walcott, as well as guest appearances from Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney and the wonderful Gillian Welch. Fans will have to wait until Spring of 2007 for the next proper full-length.

Alice Cooper Biography

2009-05-05T22:25:00.000-07:00

"The sicker our fans get, the sicker we'll get."
--Alice Cooper

Of course, when Alice said that, he knew full well that he was sowing the seeds not only of North America's cultural demise but also of the world's. Laugh if you will, but once you've finished drying your eyes, take a good look at what's going on around you and try telling me that Alice Cooper wasn't there first.

DecaSexual gender bending? Hey, any guy can dress like a girl these days, but it took a real man to change his name to Alice and have it accepted the world over as one of the most masculine monikers in the history of popular culture.

Sex and violence? Are you kidding? Everyone takes a back seat to Alice when he unleashes the dark and sinister side of his personality, everyone. When's the last time you saw anyone else chopping up babies with an axe? Or defiling a deceased dame in front of an open fridge?

However, if that's not stomach-churning enough for you, then consider this, perhaps his sickest outrage: Alice Cooper actually ran for President of the United States against that other paragon of perversion, Richard Nixon. What's really sick, though, is that Alice lost.

Face it: there are few trends in modern music that Alice Cooper didn't anticipate; fewer still that weren't incorporated by this innovative showman into one of the most bizarre and entertaining rock attractions of all time.

The audacious, precedent-shattering, inspirational, taboo-defiling hoodlum flamboyance of Alice Cooper did more than forever alter the face of rock 'n' roll as we now know it. He virtually invented rock as theater, created new fashion trends, sparked a new sexual revolution, established higher standards for teenage decadence, and found time on top of all this to write and record a library of classic rock 'n' roll albums. The fact that Alice Cooper is rock 'n' roll's foremost legendary statesman of outrage is far beyond reproach. Any act worth its weight in rock 'n' roll, theatrics, makeup, and in-your-face, kick-ass punk attitude owes more than just a passing nod of respect in the direction of this malignantly macabre culprit.

And if you need proof, just ask Kiss, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, the New York Dolls, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Iggy & The Stooges, Mötley Crüe, Lou Reed, Hanoi Rocks, Boy George, Slade, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Tubes, T. Rex, Elton John, The Runaways, Guns N' Roses, Gary Glitter, Aerosmith, the Dead Boys, Adam Ant, Poison, Prince, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Twisted Sister, Devo, Megadeth, the Plasmatics, Madonna, Gwar, Cheap Trick, Zodiac Mindwarp, Alien Sex Fiend, W.A.S.P., The Rolling Stones, The Cramps, Rob Zombie, Ozzy Osbourne, David Lee Roth, or even Elvis (the next time you see him at a White Castle)--to name only a few.

And no less a personage than Bob Dylan (who's been known to dip into the mascara himself from time to time) publicly proclaimed in a January 26, 1978, Rolling Stone cover story: "I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter."

PART ONE: READY, WILLING, AND UNSTABLE

The Alice Cooper story begins on February 4, 1948, in Detroit, Michigan, when Vincent Furnier, displaying the ear-splitting vocal calisthenics that would serve him well in the decades to come, came kicking and screaming into an unsuspecting world. After several years of living in the oppressive shadow of massive automobile factories, the family decided to change their environment by relocating to the desert ambience of Phoenix, Arizona.

This fortuitous move meant that Vincent would be fated to enroll at Cortez High School, where his naturally abundant supply of cheap wit landed him the opportunity to write for the school newspaper. "Get Outta My Hair," his wise-guy column, brought him the friendship of two fellow student journalists: soon-to-be lead and bass guitarists Glen Buxton and Dennis Dunaway.

As luck would have it, all three were looking for a way to score with the female Cortezians. And, hey, what better way to get to first base than by forming a rock `n' roll band, right? Not quite. Instead, Vince and Dennis decided to join the Cortez track team, of all things, whereupon their marathon running prowess made them instant varsity heroes.

This first exposure to fame was sufficient enough to embolden their self-confidence to the point where, along with fellow marathoner John Speer (on drums), Glen, and Glen's pal John Tatum (on lead guitar), they decided to don wigs and enter their lettermen's talent show as a Beatles parody. They even went so far as to hire several of the once-elusive Cortez beauties to scream for them from the foot of the stage during their mock performance. That little display of adulation, however bogus, was all it took to convince the future anarchists that this was the life for them.

So what if they didn't know how to play their instruments yet? Since when was musicianship a prerequisite of forming a rock 'n' roll band? They would learn. They were 16. They called themselves the Earwigs.

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Michael Bruce, meanwhile, was making his own athletic mark as a member of Cortez's football team. An ace axe maniac, who liked nothing better than to run rampant over the frets as well as the turf, Michael was frustrated with his role as rhythm guitarist for a rival band called Our Gang. What he was looking for was music that better suited his more aggressive personality. He found it when he joined the 'Wigs, who were now calling themselves the Spiders.

With Michael replacing John Tatum, The Spiders began their evolution into a Stones/Yardbirds garage band, who were adept enough to actually record two singles--one of which, "Don't Blow Your Mind," was a big enough hit in Phoenix to establish the band as a minor attraction in the Southwest.

Fresh from this success, with high school now nothing but a memory (albeit a lasting one that would come back to haunt AM radio for months in 1972), The Spiders changed their name once again, this time to The Nazz (inspired by the Jeff Beck/Yardbirds classic "The Nazz Are Blue"), and began making treks to Hollywood to perform.

Like all up-and-coming bands, The Nazz suffered and starved for a long time. Their attempts to establish themselves on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles were offset by the reality of having to return back home to Phoenix from time to time in order to pay bills and ease severe ego deflation.

Despite their new surroundings and the somewhat encouraging fact that they were landing the occasional gig as the opening act for the likes of booze buddy Jim Morrison and The Doors, as well as The Yardbirds themselves (for whose audience they played nothing but Yardbirds covers), The Nazz had not yet even reached glorified bar-band status. Eventually, however, Hollywood became their new home.

By this time, due to creative differences, John Speer was replaced by Phoenix Camelback High alumnus Neal Smith. With Neal as their new drummer, the stage was now set for the unleashing of a phenomenally twisted and grandiosely incendiary rock 'n' roll assault on decency itself--a sharp, satiric bite from the dark side of life, the likes of which middle-class America had never seen before.

Still, there was one vital piece of the puzzle missing. When news from Philly arrived that a young whiz kid by the name of Todd Rundgren had the temerity to name his new band the Nazz, necessitating still yet another name change, that last piece finally fell into place. For little did Arizona's Nazz know that this time their new name would soon become universally synonymous with outrage, delinquency, and immorality on an international scale.

It was 1968, and it was about time.

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Just as there are a million stories in the Naked City, so are there at least as many theories as to how Vincent Furnier transmogrified into the legendary entity doomed to be revered and reviled the world over as Alice Cooper.

First and foremost of these is the story of what happened late one night while the group was visiting Dick Phillips (aka Dick Christian), their manager at the time. Phillips, a colorful character in his own right, had been urging the group to break out of their run-of-the-mill mold. That evening, just for laughs, his mother pulled out a Ouija board to do a reading. As soon as it began, however, the letter indicator began wildly skipping across the board, spelling out the name A-L-I-C-E C-O-O-P-E-R.

From that little incident, the boys concocted a tale that would only serve to enhance the Alice Cooper legend in the years to come: that Vince was the reincarnation of a young woman of the very same name--a woman who had been burned alive at the stake hundreds of years ago for being a witch!

Then again, Alice has been known to change his stories from time to time. . .

Sometimes he claims to have chosen the name because it had "a Baby-Jane/Lizzie-Borden-sweet-and-innocent-with-a-hatchet-behind-the-back kind of rhythm to it." At other times, he maintains: "Alice Cooper is such an all-American name. I loved the idea that when we first started, people used to think that Alice Cooper was a blonde folk singer. The name started simply as a spit in the face of society. With a name like Alice Cooper, we could really make 'em suffer."

Regardless of which story you choose to believe, of far more importance is the fact that the word suffer doesn't even begin to describe the damaging, senses-shattering assault that these guys inflicted on the mores of common decency. The Alice Cooper manifesto was an unrelenting, rampant commitment to the wholesale slaughter of every civilized tenet known to society. They created a designed-to-shock dynasty of decadence by pushing the limits of both rock 'n' roll and theatricality. The Alice Cooper Group's relentless pursuit of a higher level of satirical sonic brutality took outrage to its inevitable extreme.

Keep in mind that, back in 1969, the only excuse a couple of rednecks needed to blow away Captain America and Billy at the end of Easy Rider was the fact that they both looked like a couple of hippies. Given how that was the climate across much of middle America at the time, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how well the spectacle of five tough lookin' cross-dressin' guys (one of 'em named Alice) with hair down to their waists, wearing mascara and jewelry--and grinding out a sonic exuberance of noise to boot--was likely to have gone down a full year earlier.

And just how they didn't end up with their brains shotgunned across some steaming macadam in one of the Southern towns they were so fond of invading is anyone's guess.

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Which isn't to say that the reaction in Los Angeles was any more open-minded. By now, the group was performing an alarming Dadaist din that gained them the reputation of, in Alice's words, "the most hated group in Los Angeles." No less a connoisseur of chaos than Frank Zappa deemed the group's auditory abrasiveness to be so sufficiently twisted that it deserved a spot on his new record label, Straight, alongside such esteemed labelmates as The GTO's and Wild Man Fischer.

How corrosive was the Alice Cooper Group? Just ask any of the Los Angeles audience who were inside the Cheetah Club the night Alice Cooper took the stage as the first act to perform as part of a memorial concert in honor of haunted monologist Lenny Bruce.

All it took was a couple of songs before the throng, almost as one, stood up and headed for the door in disgust. When the feathers had settled from the group's onstage pillow fight, there were only four people left. Alongside two of The GTO's and Zappa was an aspiring entrepreneur who was more than impressed by what he saw. Shep Gordon realized that any group capable of evoking so negative a reaction that it could clear a room of 2000 people in the space of a few songs was not only a force to be reckoned with but also a group destined for truly great things.

Consequently, along with Joe Greenberg (his partner at the time), Shep introduced himself to the group and offered to become their manager. When he promised them that he wouldn't give up hustling on their behalf until they were all millionaires, the fact that he knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about how to manage a rock group didn't matter.

He knew enough.

Just as the Coopers bucked tradition by being unconventional musicians, so was Shep an equally unconventional manager. Together they forever altered the dynamics of the traditional manager/artist relationship by reinventing the rules of how to generate outrage and create spectacle. Simply put, they were blissfully ignorant of the customary constraints the music business had placed in their way.

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You are the only censor. If you don't like what I say, you have a choice. You can turn me off. That was the message heard at the beginning of the final track on Easy Action, the group's second recording for Straight. It was a sage piece of advice that the majority of record buyers across North America had already taken Alice Cooper up on. They stayed away from it--as well as their debut Straight release, Pretties For You--in droves.

Part of the reason was because both albums were too freakishly experimental and just plain weird to wade through. Some numbers, such as "Living," "Reflected," "Levity Ball," and "Return Of The Spiders," exhibited more than adequate proof of the group's songwriting potential. Others, however, had far too many key and tempo changes, which were beyond the audience's tolerance at the time.

Under the watchful eye of Zappa, the group, relying on its own ornate, twisted, and highly unconventional arrangements, self-produced their first album. And while it's true that Neil Young producer David Briggs managed to marginally improve the sound of their second album, there nevertheless was something else that was being lost in the translation from studio to stereo: the purity of the group's vision. Shep began looking for the right producer--someone who would be enthusiastic enough about the group to allow their ideas room to breathe, but tough enough to be able to nurture their strong points.

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It was at this critical juncture in the group's fledgling career that three key events occurred in rapid succession--events that would lead to the group becoming a worldwide phenomenon of legendary proportions. The first of these events was the decision to relocate the group to Alice's own hometown of Detroit.

At this time, the Alice Cooper stage show (as preserved forever in a brief appearance in the 1970 film Diary Of A Mad Housewife) was one of free-form anarchy that, in the beginning, was just too intense an experience for most concert-goers to endure. As Alice would later explain: "We literally had nothing to lose. We couldn't afford anything, so a lot of our props would be things we'd steal from hotels, like fire extinguishers and bed sheets. In fact, we'd use anything we could get our hands on." Inevitably, with each new performance, word began to spread across the Midwest that the Alice Cooper Show was not your average evening in an auditorium.

Nowhere, though, were they taken to heart more than in the Motor City. For years Michigan had spawned a formidable array of its own legendary local talent: most powerful bands such as The Stooges, The Amboy Dukes, MC5, and Grand Funk Railroad. What better place, then, for Alice and his gang of noise boys to settle down in than the real Cooperstown--Alice's actual birthplace.

"The reason our music changed when we got to Detroit was because the audiences there were literally raising fists at us instead of making peace signs," recalls Alice. "That's the difference right there. I've said it before, and it's absolutely true: we were the group that drove a stake through the heart of the love generation."

The second event concerned the group's notorious Varsity Stadium appearance at the 1969 Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival when, during their set, a live chicken was thrown on the stage by an audience member. As he patiently explains each and every time the subject comes up--and as evidenced in the documentary footage featured in the Alice Cooper career retrospective video/DVD, Prime Cuts-The Alice Cooper Story--Alice, believing that chickens could fly, swooped up the hapless bird in mid-waddle and gracefully arced it into the air, fully expecting it to take flight. Alice was mistaken. The chicken landed somewhere within the first ten rows, whereupon it was promptly torn to pieces by rabid fans.

Alice's protestations notwithstanding ("Believe the humor, not the rumor"), once the press got hold of the story, they ran with it. The next morning you couldn't pick up a newspaper without seeing the sordid story of how a sick, depraved male rock star with a woman's name bit a chicken's head off onstage and drank its blood.

As a result, the ASPCA began monitoring the group's performances to safeguard against possible future fowl atrocities. The truth of the matter, however, is that the inadvertent chicken sacrifice was never repeated again. That is, until Ozzy Osbourne "borrowed" the idea years later when he allegedly bit the head off a live dove.

In any event, it was the kind of myth-making publicity that legends are made of. Thus began an unprecedented spate of press items that would continue unabated for several years. It may have been the first time, but it certainly wouldn't by any means be the last time in his career that Alice Cooper would become notorious for something that he didn't actually do.

Of course, not everyone was gullible enough to believe such a story. One person who did fall for it, though, was Who guitarist Pete Townshend. Shocked about what had supposedly happened, a misinformed Townshend literally went on record to denounce the group by writing, "There are bands killing chickens" in The Who's "Put The Money Down."

Over a decade later he once again returned to the subject in a June 24, 1982, Rolling Stone cover story entitled "Stone Cold Sober." In it, Townshend claimed: "I remember being horrified seeing Alice Cooper beheading live chickens onstage. And it didn't really redeem him that I had smashed guitars, you know? Somewhere, there was a line. I don't know whether it was because it was live, or because it was real blood. But the fact that he later went on to make some great records didn't redeem him, either. He's sick, tragic, pathetic--and will always be that way. I'll say hello to him on the street, but I'll never tip my hat to him."

Beliefs such as these are indicative of the kind of extreme reactions that the Alice Cooper Group brought out in people. Many other rock bands, rock journalists, and, yes, even rock fans hated the group because of how they looked, what they sounded like, and what they stood for.

Although bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were to pose a serious threat to the idle complacency of the rock 'n' roll hierarchy in the years to come, there was a big difference between the negative reaction garnered by those bands and the savage abuse that the Coopers received. By the time the punk movement arrived, the world was no stranger to the bizarre, having already lived through the shock theater of the glitter/glam era. The Alice Cooper Group, however, in kicking open that particular door, had to take the brunt of their peers' narrow-mindedness.

Under these circumstances, it isn't hard, then, to imagine the reaction that ordinary parents all across the land had to this . . . this . . . monster that was fast gaining the rapt attention of their impressionable young children.

The third and most vital event involved an appointment that Shep Gordon had made while the group was in town. Toronto's Nimbus 9 was world-renowned as the recording studio where The Guess Who cranked out hit after hit. In a desperate attempt to get someone to help the group attain a more palatable sound that would appeal to a wider audience, Shep hoped to secure the services of Nimbus 9's in-house producer, Jack Richardson.

Like it did everywhere else Shep went, the group's reputation had preceded him: Richardson wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the Alice Cooper Group in any way, shape, or form. Shep, however, wouldn't take no for an answer. In a last-ditch attempt to get Gordon off his back, Richardson asked his production assistant to go to New York and see the group perform live, knowing full well that the resultant negative review would finally get rid of the manager, once and for all. What Richardson hadn't counted on, however, was that not only would his assistant be totally captivated by the group's stage act, but he'd also want the assignment of producing them himself. His name was Bob Ezrin.

Their days at Cortez and Camelback may have been over, but the bell was just about to ring for the most important class the Alice Cooper Group would ever attend. For months the group went to summer school--first on a rented farm in Pontiac, Michigan, and then in a studio in Chicago. Under Ezrin's tutelage, they were re-educated in the Three R's: rehearsing, writing, and recording.

Concerning the role Ezrin played in the group's restructuring, Alice says, "He helped create Alice Cooper. He took us apart and put us back together again, even though he didn't know exactly what he was doing."

He knew enough.

At the end of the semester they emerged with two things they'd never had before: a stage show so tight you could bounce a dime off it and a master plan for world domination.

They called it Love It To Death.

PART TWO: NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS

Love It To Death was the foundation for an astonishing and unparalleled ascent that, within two years, would culminate in the crowning of Alice Cooper as the undisputed #1 heavyweight champion rock 'n' roll act in the world.

The very first song, "Caught In A Dream," perfectly encapsulates many of the themes that audiences have come to expect from Alice Cooper: the punk attitude ("I'm caught in a dream, so what?"), the greed ("I need everything the world owes me. I tell it to myself and I agree"), the confusion ("Thought that I was living but you can't really tell. What I thought was Heaven turned out to be Hell"), and the insanity ("When you see me with a smile on my face, then you'll know I'm a mental case").

Other familiar Cooper topics also rear their heads: religion ("Hallowed Be My Name," "Second Coming"), resurrection ("Black Juju," "Sun Arise"), and the ever-shifting battleground of relationships ("Is It My Body," "Long Way To Go").

There was something else, as well. Teenage years are never the easiest of times, which is why "I'm Eighteen" was such a revelation. Never before had anyone ever talked to teens on their own level about the awkward pain and loneliness of growing up and mutating into something altogether . . . different. But Alice did. And this time, when Alice talked, the youth of the world listened. And what they heard was that Alice understood. And the reason he understood was because he was just as messed up as they were! He was one of them. It was that bonding between artist and audience that helped "I'm Eighteen" climb to #21 on the pop singles chart.

At the time, Steve Demorest wrote in his Alice Cooper biography: "Vincent Furnier's anthem had been The Who's `My Generation.' But for a whole new generation, that anthem would be `I'm Eighteen.'" Echoing that sentiment years later, Detroit journalist Gary Graff explains: "With `I'm Eighteen,' Cooper created a `Smells Like Teen Spirit' for the posthippie generation." The Village Voice proclaimed: "`I'm Eighteen' changed Alice Cooper from the group that destroyed chickens to the group that destroyed stadiums." And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has enshrined the anthem as one of the 50 most important songs in the history of rock 'n' roll.

But if "I'm Eighteen" was the tender morsel that first drew people into the Alice Cooper web, it was "Ballad Of Dwight Fry" that paralyzed them into staying longer than they had planned. "Ballad" is named after character actor Dwight Frye (the actual spelling of his name) who, in 1931, appeared as a lunatic in both Universal Pictures' Dracula and Frankenstein. A six -and-a-half-minute harrowing descent into one man's madness, "Dwight Fry" is a torment made all the more chilling by Alice's superb vocal stylizations and adept skill at concocting various personas.

Bob Ezrin explains: "I always considered Alice to be as much an actor as a singer. With many of his songs, he was playing a role; sometimes multiple roles within one song or multiple facets of a single role. And one of the best ways for us to portray that was through the use of a different subscore. Just as you would shoot scenes in a movie by using different lighting or lenses, on the records we would use different microphones, different vocals sounds, and different styles of delivery. We'd also surround Alice with different-sounding tracks. Switching from vocal to vocal or sound to sound signified that there was something going on with this character."

In the group's new stage show, Alice portrayed the ultimate insane asylum inmate--a raving mad lunatic who sang "Dwight Fry" from the confines of a straitjacket, only to break out of his restraints during the song's climax and strangle the nurse assigned to look after him.

For all the bloodletting prevalent in the group's performances, however, it must be remembered that at the center of the action was a morality play: Alice was always executed at the end of each show. At first, during the Love It To Death tour, he went to the chair and was electrocuted. Then, as his transgressions escalated from bad to worse, so did the punishments: on the Killer tour he was hung nightly from the gallows; by the time of the Billion Dollar Babies tour, he was being strapped into a life-size working guillotine and beheaded.

Of course, Alice had to die as a way of absolving the audience from the sin of vicariously reveling in his crimes. No one, however, ever said that, having been killed, he had to stay dead. Keep in mind that resurrection is an important element of the Cooper oeuvre. Accordingly, Alice always rose from the dead just in time for the encore.

With their new success, it was decided that Warner Bros. Records, who up until then had been merely distributing the group's albums, would now become their sole label. With the considerable support of Warner Bros. now behind them, Ezrin and the group returned to Chicago to record the group's next album.

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From lady killers ("Be My Lover") to baby killers ("Dead Babies"), the Cooper's fourth album was an extremely conceptual one. A veritable soundtrack for the calculated outrage and disruptive, corruptive congestions of their stage show, Killer focused on the alienated outcasts of the world, either through premeditation for gain ("Desperado") or as a result of society's neglect ("Killer"). From the bludgeoning metasonics of "Under My Wheels" and "You Drive Me Nervous" to the extended disciplined meanderings of "Halo Of Flies," Killer had something for everyone.

With increased sales, the Coopers could now invest more time and money into making their stage production bigger and better. Their goal: to give their audience the most creative show they could imagine.

They succeeded.

Alice's wardrobe evolved from thrift shop trash 'n' drag rags to attire more befitting a hard-working master agitator. Torn tights, thigh-high boots, and leather bondage vests were now the new issue. The most important change, however, was in the evolution of Alice's eye makeup from mincing to menacing. The fem-demented spider-eye design was gone. In its place were now two dark, malevolent orbs of death, which--along with a newly carved on clown frown--would instantly become known as Alice's trademark visage. Accordingly, his new persona was as chief atrocity exhibitor of a new brand of dementia: Evil as a commodity.

And speaking of commodities, there was one additional accessory that the group required. "No one in the group did drugs," Alice explains, describing the onset of the group's hyperextended lost weekend. "We drank beer."

Actually, they didn't just drink beer. They drank a lot of beer. So much, in fact, that by 1972 the group was spending over $32,000 a year on suds alone. "It had a weird kind of all-American sickness to it," Alice says of the time. And because the group's unofficial motto was "Nothing in Moderation," the Alice Cooper juggernaut began fueling itself with an additional high-octane blend of Budweiser and Seagram's V.O.

For lesser mortals, the first reaction to an addiction is to deny. For Alice, it was to publicize. Eventually, it seemed like you couldn't open up an issue of Creem, Hit Parader, or Circus without seeing a photo of Alice with his leather-gloved hand wrapped around a Bud. Indeed, by 1973, when Creem's readers voted Alice "Punk of the Year," the magazine ran a cover story on the group featuring "The Alice Cooper Alcohol Cookbook," for which each group member submitted his own favorite booze-laden recipes.

These monumental lapses in good taste didn't get past the media watchdogs. As early as July 1971, Albert Goldman in Life magazine was pillorying Alice as a "frightening embarrassment" who also just so happened to be a "shrewd operator."

While the Coopers were making headlines as social misfits and world outcasts, they were also doing something else that, at the time, went quite unheralded. As a touring act, they were single-handedly expanding and raising the standard of rock concert productions. In addition to their innovative introduction of props, makeup, and costuming, their very concept of staging--which involved the use of tiers, platforms, and runways--went far beyond the usual bare-stage standard that everyone in the concert business was accustomed to.

The innovative techniques of their original lighting director, Charlie Carnal, who designed and operated the lighting set-ups, contributed visual emphasis to the Alice Cooper stage show. Given the group's unbridled strum und drag style, it's hard to imagine what rock 'n' roll would look like today had the Alice Cooper Group not been there first to pave the way to theatrics.

Go back and take another look at that long list of performers who owe a debt to Alice Cooper. Study it carefully, for they all had their greatest successes after the advent of Alice. David Bowie may have worn a dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World in 1971, but Alice had already flirted with transvestism in 1969. Marc Bolan admirably defined Gangster Glam on Bolan's Zip Gun in 1975, but Alice had already been there and gone by 1973. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood may have refined the punk rock look in 1977, but guess who invented it by wearing S&M gear as well as the slashed 'n' shredded safety pin look as early as 1972? The freshly dug-up Gothic gloom 'n' doom look of Siouxsie And The Banshees? Alice. The grease-paint personas of Kiss? Alice. The bloodletting of Gwar? Alice. Marilyn? Alice. Everyone else? Alice, Alice, Alice.

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters put it this way: "No one in this band can play a guitar like Eric Clapton or a stage like Alice Cooper." Nobody ever before looked like him, sounded like him, or acted like him. And nobody could shred the speaker of an AM transistor radio like Alice Cooper. He was a first-class hit disturber--and his greatest class disruption exploded onto the airwaves in the summer of 1972 with all the subtle impact of ten fingernails shrieking across a classroom chalkboard.

Ever the television addict, Alice was sitting around watching a Dead End Kids movie one night. The Kids were the gang who were to become filmdom's favorite juvenile delinquents, The Bowery Boys. When gang leader Mugs, using his own unique brand of diction, told his pal Sach to wise up, Alice heard the words that would result in the internationally biggest-selling single in the history of Warner Bros. "Hey Sach," said Mugs, whacking him in the head with his hat. "School's out!"

A teen paean to indelicate delinquency and academic insurrection, School's Out was an album that contained more hoods than a used car lot. From the brass-knuckled back alley brawls of "Luney Tune," "Street Fight," and "Public Animal #9" to the wistful lawless mobocracy of "Alma Mater" and "Grande Finale," there was something for every reprobate and miscreant--including a real cool ersatz jazz make-out piece ("Blue Turk"), as well as one of the greatest apocalyptic songs ever recorded ("My Stars").

And then there's the title track itself, "School's Out," the #1 single that Entertainment Weekly deemed one of the Top 10 Greatest Summer Songs ever, right behind The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City" and The Beach Boys' "California Girls." Not bad company for a song that contains some of the rawest, snarkiest, punkiest, and wittiest rock lyrics ever written--including the brilliant: "Well we got no class! And we got no principles! And we got no innocence! We can't even think of a word that rhymes!"

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BITCH BITCH BITCH read the muscle shirt Alice wore for the School's Out class photo, and bitch bitch bitch is exactly what everyone was doing about Alice. If there was something wrong with the world, chances are that the Alice Cooper Group was being blamed for it. When you're a fast moving target, however, you can afford to give your enemies lots of ammunition. And that's just what happened when the Alice Cooper Show invaded millions of North American homes via television on ABC's very first In Concert program.

So disturbing, in fact, was Alice's performance that a station manager in Cincinnati actually yanked the show off the air and replaced it with an episode of Clint Eastwood's Rawhide. Interestingly enough, the identity of the offended station manager was a man who would later go on to become head honcho of The Walt Disney Company--none other than Michael Eisner.

In the midst of all this sensationalism, the School's Out tour flew across the pond to England. Alice's way of saying hello to the U.K.? By accidentally-on-purpose stalling a flatbed truck smack in the middle of Piccadilly Circus during rush hour. A truck that just happened to bear a double-sided billboard featuring Richard Avedon's photo of Alice wearing nothing but his boa constrictor.

Back home, there was the flap concerning the pink panties that were wrapped around the first pressing of School's Out. That's right, every copy of School's Out contained a pair of women's panties with 12 inches stuffed inside it. It wasn't the first time that Alice would raise temperatures because of his innovative album packaging, nor would it be the last.

First, there had been the exposed panties in the cover painting on Pretties For You, a problem easily corrected by the application of a large yellow sticker--not just on the shrink-wrap, mind you, but on the actual cover itself. This was followed by the come-hither con of Easy Action, whereupon what appeared to be five topless babes with long hair on the front cover turned out to be five ornery male freaks on the back. Next, there was the small matter of Alice's finger slyly poking out from between his legs on the cover of Love It To Death, prompting the immediate airbrushing out of said offending rigid digit. Then came Killer's controversial detachable full-color 1972 calendar depicting a beaten and bloodied Alice hanging, quite dead, at the end of a noose.

By the time of School's Out, fans were treated to a Grammy®-nominated album cover that folded out into an actual school desk, complete with fake metal legs, vandalized hinged lid, and a depiction of interior contents such as a slingshot, a switchblade, marbles, a copy of MAD magazine opened to a comic strip about Liberace, credits written in the style of a true or false quiz, and a photo of the group as a hard-drinking gang of high school toughs taped to the inside lid. There was even a slab of chewing gum stuck to the bottom.

As for those panties: no doubt it was the first time that many a male fan managed to literally get his hands on a pair, but it almost wasn't to be, for the materials the panties were made of were flammable. In a rush, fire-proof panties were hurriedly manufactured so that they could be shipped across state lines (prompting headlines once again).

As it happens, 1972 was also an election year--and what better sacred cow for Alice to slash to ribbons in the middle of Main Street, U.S.A., than that much-vaunted symbol of democratic pomposity, the American electoral system? "I hate politics, it's boring," Alice proclaimed. Following their leader, his fans responded by casting their votes for "Elected." Ironically, one of its strongest showings, given the song's rampant Americanism, was in England where it blitzed straight to #1.

On the subject of the U.K., much has been written about how the Sex Pistols were at the vanguard of extolling nihilism as a way of life with their official slogan, "We Don't Care." Alice, however, accurately reflected the ruling apathy of the times when, half a decade earlier in "Elected," he issued this Declaration of Indifference: "I know we have problems. We have problems in the North, South, East, and West. New York City. St. Louis. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago. Everybody has problems. And personally, I don't care."

"Elected" was also one of the first rock videos in history to portray a rock band acting out a narrative situation, as opposed to having them merely playing their instruments. In it, Michael, Neal, Dennis, and Glen flank Alice as he campaigns for President, presses the flesh with the man on the street, and bathes himself in money delivered by his chimpanzee campaign manager.

As Alice often explains: "We always made fun of three things, and that's sex, death, and money." So far, they had the first two bases covered in spades. Now it was time to steal third and head home.

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Rock journalist Ben Edmonds said it best when he wrote, "Money talks, and 1972 was the year that Alice Cooper found their voices." The video for "Elected" foreshadowed what was about to come, but the title of their next album screamed it out loud and clear with a typically defiant and brazen shamelessness.

Billion Dollar Babies was the #1 album, which confirmed that the Alice Cooper Group was the biggest and most spectacular rock 'n' roll band in the world. This time around, the album packaging (which garnered a second Grammy nomination for album graphic design) was in the shape of a giant snakeskin wallet, complete with a one billion dollar bill and detachable signed photos of the group. In addition to "Elected," the album also contained the hit singles "Hello Hooray," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and the PsychoErotic title track.

"The whole idea behind the album," said Alice, "is to exploit the idea that everyone has sick perversions. But they've got to be American perversions; we're very nationalistic, you know."

Although Alice was pumping up the economy by blowing his wad all over the place, money wasn't the only thing on his mind this time around. Reverse sexual harassment was another taboo subject that Alice tackled as the victim who was left "Raped And Freezin'." He also proved that he could still genderbend with the best of them (the uneasily hilarious ballad "Mary Ann"), stick his finger deep into the pulse of the prepunk zeitgeist (the precognitive "Generation Landslide"), delve into pulseless nocturnal defiling (that NecroExplorative double dosage of disgust, "Sick Things" and "I Love The Dead"), and then top it all off with "Unfinished Sweet," a song about that scariest of all experiences: a trip to the dentist.

Alice also set yet another lasting trend when he teamed up with Donovan to record "Billion Dollar Babies," the world's first duet between two rock 'n' roll superstars.

Nobody knew better than the Coopers that you've gotta spend money to make money, so they poured in excess of 1.2 million smackers into their brand-new brain-boggling stage show. It was cash well spent: the Billion Dollar Babies tour reaped a cool 4.6 million bucks--1.4 million more than the Stones' Tour Of The Americas pulled in the previous year. All in all, the group raked in an astounding 17 million dollars that year: big numbers for 1973.

And although he was still every rock rag's favorite cover felon (having already appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone twice), now everyone else--from Time to Cosmopolitan and 16 to Penthouse--was vying for Alice's attention. Twenty years before Mick and Keith were given their chance to grace it, Forbes magazine, the bible of capitalism, put Alice on their cover for a story about the big business of rock 'n' roll entitled "A New Breed of Tycoon." "I'm the most American rock act!" Alice bragged with justification. "I have American ideals: I love money!"

Indeed, just as he had predicted in "Elected," tycoon Alice was taking the country by storm. Those who were fortunate enough to attend a show on the Billion Dollar Babies tour were exposed to an extraordinary display of astonishing inventiveness, shock, and outrage.

The success of the stage show was due in part to Joe Gannon, the Coopers' stage designer. Expanding upon creative input from the Coopers and Shep, Joe was responsible for turning the Alice Cooper vision into a tangible, three-dimensional nightmare reality of magic and wonderment. Their set designs resulted in the most elaborate stage and light presentation of any rock show ever, setting the standard in terms of sheer massive size.

The new and improved Cooper hellbox of unearthly delights contained a guillotine, swords, whips, mannequins, hatchets, baby dolls, blood, fist fights, leopard skin platform boots, balloons, giant teeth and dental drills, free posters, free money, smoke machines, bubble machines, snakes, and ladders . . . everything, in fact, but the proverbial kitchen sink.

During the Christmas leg of their tour, columnist Bob Greene joined the group dressed up as Santa Claus, only to get beaten up onstage by the Coopers each night as a reward for his trouble. In his book about the experience, Billion Dollar Baby, Greene wrote: "The reason Alice Cooper is currently the biggest of all rock 'n' roll bands stems from the Cooper stage show. A combination of leering sexuality and blood-drenched simulated violence that has prompted in-print reactions labeling the group as sick, perverted, obscene, and `Nazi-like.'"

Indeed, British member of Parliament Leo Abse requested that the government ban the group from performing in England, claiming that Alice was "peddling the culture of the concentration camp." Said Abse: "Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are quite another."

But as Brown, Esbensen, and Geis state in the textbook Criminology: Explaining Crime And Its Context, their 1991 treatise on the subject: "Crime and deviance continually test societal constraints, thus forcing an ongoing evaluation of group norms. This confronting of the legal limits introduced the possibility for social change. Think, for example, of the changes in society brought about by such `criminals' and `deviants' as Socrates, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Alice Cooper."

Strangely enough, it was at this point that, despite coming off the greatest success of their career, cracks were beginning to form in the group. For one thing, there was the matter of Glen Buxton's continuing health problems. To further complicate matters, some of the group members felt that the theatrical aspect of the act should be toned down, if not dropped altogether. Alice, though, feeling that this would be a big mistake, disagreed. His reasoning was simple: if these were the very elements that had brought them to the top, why abandon them now?

The album that came out of this unplanned uneasiness was Muscle Of Love. Ostensibly about sex in the big city, at first glance it seemed to have all the cohesive unity of their previous albums. The packaging--a grease-stained cardboard box complete with Institute Of Nude Wrestling book cover--was as innovative as ever, and there was no denying that many of the album's songs --"Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo)," "Never Been Sold Before," "Working Up A Sweat," and the title track--were all worthy additions to the Cooper canon. Still, something was missing.

Supplementing their stage show with selected songs from Muscle Of Love, the group embarked upon a brief East Coast Billion Dollar Babies Holiday Tour, as well as a South American jaunt that smashed world records for attendance.

By 1973 various manifestations of glitter, glam, and flash rock were in full swing. The exotic musical wilderness, which Alice had so successfully trailblazed, had now become a beaten path down which many others were following to fame and fortune. And although few would've blamed him for feeling ripped off by the scores of imitators appearing in his wake, Alice himself was unmoved. His unique brand of shock rock was always intended to be not merely a means unto itself but also an open door through which other bands could expand their horizons.

During this period, the Cooper camp successfully marked time by releasing their Greatest Hits album. Fittingly, its cover portrayed the public enemies as James Cagney-styled gangsters billed as the "hit men of rock." Prophetically, the album would also prove to be the Alice Cooper Group's last stand as well. Michael and Neal decided to begin recording their own prospective solo projects, which, in turn, prompted Alice to begin working on one of his. Contrary to popular belief, though, they were never fired by Alice. Instead, like many other popular bands before them, Alice, Michael, Glen, Neal, and Dennis simply went their own separate ways.

It was at this point in his career that Alice decided to pull his most infamous scare tactic yet by declaring in interviews, "Alice is just a character I play. Offstage, I'm just a normal guy!" This set the scene for the King of Shock Rock's most horrifying role. It wasn't played out, however, before tens of thousands in a sports arena. Rather, it was enacted before a television audience of millions when Alice Cooper showed up on a couple of episodes of The Hollywood Squares game show.

This was Alice at his most subversive, and, in an ironic way, it made him as twisted as ever. Most fans, though, didn't get the joke. Indeed, many still regard this period as the low point of Alice's career. The punch line to these appearances, of course, was the fact that, by now, there truly was no escaping Alice. No matter where you went, there he was. Parents who screamed at their kids to turn down his records now couldn't avoid the rock star themselves--not even in the supposedly safe sanctuary of their favorite TV show.

After all, what could possibly be worse for straitlaced contestants with a hate-on for the long-haired freak than to have them end up being forever in Alice's debt because he was the one who had provided them with the grand prize-winning answer?

Meanwhile, determined to raise his game to the next level, Vincent Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and embarked on a solo career. If Mr. & Mrs. America had found his TV stint unsettling, it's a sure bet that nothing could prepare them for what Alice had planned next. Nothing in their wildest dreams . . .

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Incorporating film, dance, theater, and rock 'n' roll, Welcome To My Nightmare was the pioneering theatrical extravaganza that Alice had always dreamed of staging. In terms of content and production values, the tour transcended anything Alice had ever achieved before and far surpassed anything anyone else had ever attempted. It was rock's biggest spectacle yet, and it solidified Alice Cooper's status not only as one of the biggest rock and entertainment stars in the world but also as that rarest of personalities: someone who has become a household name.

Alice's new persona was Steven, an evolvement of his Dwight Fry character, who was trying to come to grips with not only his guilt but also his rapidly eroding sanity. Nightmare was a morality play that touched on all of the classic Cooper themes. It also provided Alice with enough latitude to utilize all manner of special effects and costume changes. He was tormented by giant web-climbing black widow spiders, fought a duel to the death with a giant Cyclops, and encored with "School's Out" after exploding from a giant toy box.

The most stunning visual effect came towards the end of the show during a filmed dream sequence that was projected onto a large screen onstage. The on-screen Alice, being chased by demons through a cemetery, escapes by literally running out of the movie, through the screen, onto the stage, and then back into the screen again. Alice used his illusion to astound audiences with great success every night.

In addition to the title track, Welcome To My Nightmare also contained such other Cooper classics as the anthemic "Department Of Youth" and the coolly satiric "Cold Ethyl," a song that so totally offended advice-slinger Ann Landers with its theme of NecroSexuality that she devoted one of her syndicated newspaper columns to it, railing against its vulgarity. Good thing Ann didn't listen carefully to Alice's massive hit single "Only Women Bleed." This was his most deceptive song yet, not just because it was a ballad but also because of its neo-feminist subtext.

Alice also enlisted horror master extraordinaire Vincent Price to do an eerily effective narration for "The Black Widow." It was a nice touch, but if you want a second opinion just ask Michael Jackson. He liked the idea so much that he "borrowed" it and had Price do the exact same thing, less than ten years later, for his album Thriller.

While he was in Toronto recording the album, Alice filmed The Nightmare: the world's first full-length video concept album, which was subsequently shown on national TV. And even though the home technology wouldn't exist for it to be released on videocassette until 1984, The Nightmare nevertheless garnered another Grammy nomination when it finally was. It's worth noting that both album and show featured the guitar tag team of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, whose unique dueling style perfectly complemented the edgy schizophrenic tone of Alice's new project.

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Although he was now more famous than ever, events were slowly conspiring to wear Alice down. For one thing, the constant grind of having to record and tour was beginning to take its inevitable toll. For another, subsequent albums such as Alice Cooper Goes To Hell (an "Alice's Inferno" purgatory saga), Lace And Whiskey (Alice as boozy gumshoe), and The Alice Cooper Show (a live album), were all introduced into an oversaturated marketplace reeling from the rapid ascendancy of two new trends: a dreaded abominable aberration called disco and a cacophonous wallowing of disenfranchised youth that was being marketed as punk rock.

When Alice heard that John Lydon had sung along to his recording of "I'm Eighteen" for his Rotten audition, he wasn't the least bit surprised. After all, the punks were doing little more than heavily appropriating the outrageous tricks that he'd created years before. And although they'd learned their lessons from him well, the fact remained that Alice was still the original biggest and baddest punk around. Still, like so many others, he found himself intrigued and amused by this new breed of bands.

To paraphrase one of Alice's fans: the times, they were a-changin'.

PART THREE: I ROCKED WITH A ZOMBIE

The stylistic musical gridlock that disco and punk created was making it increasingly difficult for Alice and the rest of the hard rock community to effectively slug their way onto the radio. Always one to go against the grain, his instinctive survival solution was to continue releasing ballads, and the strategy worked. "You And Me," from Lace And Whiskey, became one of Alice's biggest hits ever, while "I Never Cry" was a certified million-selling single.

Of special interest to Alice Cooper Group fans was the fact that, around the same time that Alice released Lace And Whiskey, Michael, Neal, and Dennis reunited as the Billion Dollar Babies for an album entitled Battle Axe.

In keeping with Cooperian tradition, the Lace And Whiskey stage show featured a stage designed like a giant TV set--a concept later "borrowed" by U2 for their Zooropa tour. It was dubbed the King Of The Silver Screen tour in tribute to film noir private eyes like Sam Spade and, especially, the habitually-imbibing Nick Charles. In fact, as the album title suggests, the whole album was hazed by Alice's alcohol intake.

"Disco drove me to drink," Alice would later say in jest, but his battle with the bottle was no joke. Alice's penchant for hitting the sauce had evolved from being a harmless pastime and diversion to being a serious hindrance and problem. This was also when fans next saw Alice in the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie. Committing himself into an institution served two purposes. First, it allowed Alice to dry out in suitable surroundings; and second, those surroundings inspired his next album, From The Inside.

Working with producer David Foster and collaborating with drinking pal Bernie Taupin, From The Inside features some of Alice's most personal lyrics. From "Jackknife Johnny" and "Millie And Billie" to that object of intimate inmate desire, "Nurse Rozetta," every character study on the album came from an actual inpatient Alice met while incarcerated. Only the names were changed to protect the deviant dipsomaniac.

Once again, Alice hit the road to bring his latest album to life with a manic stage show dubbed the Madhouse Rock tour. The new Cooper extravaganza was performed on a stage decked out as an insane asylum, upon which, in addition to dealing with his fellow mental ward psychos, Alice chillingly dramatized his bout with the bottle by literally duking it out with giant bottles of scotch and rye.

Another film role found Alice appearing in the comedy Roadie, which itself was inspired by "Road Rats," one of the hot rockers off Lace And Whiskey.

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By 1980 disco had already begun its slow maturation into all forms of hybrid dance music. Punk, meanwhile, proved to be far too raw and radical for mainstream tastes after all. Accordingly, it was immediately castrated by the major record conglomerates who called their new neutered version new wave.

Alice entered the new decade under a banner declaring "Alice Cooper `80." Flush The Fashion was a direct response to the musical climate of the era. This time, the concept was that there was no concept. Alice performed with a mean, lean, and streamlined image sans makeup on the album as well as on the new tour.

The follow-up album, Special Forces, was a continuation of this "new" Alice but taken a step further with the unveiling of his next twisted sartorial statement: military drag. The album's theme and tour had the Degenerate General adopting a Field Marshall Cooper persona, replete with lipstick, leather, and false eyelashes. Next up was Zipper Catches Skin, an album that might best be described as featuring songs that displayed a lyrical stream of consciousness style, wherein Alice explored a myriad of topics ranging from throat-slashings to alien life forms to fanciful dark fantasies of Zorro.

Alice's early '80s foray was completed with the surreal cerebral musings of DaDa. Loosely based on the peculiar story of a character named Former Lee Warmer, DaDa is a traumatic study of a cannibalistic elderly man locked up in an attic by his brother, who is subsequently forced to supply the old gent with a steady supply of fresh victims.

Although considered cult classics by some Alice aficionados, these albums seemed a bit too abstract and personal to attract and keep the typical rock fan's attention. It was a lesson that wasn't lost on Alice.

Once again, he found himself releasing albums into a rapidly changing marketplace where hard rock itself was floundering as a viable commodity. Everyone from Aerosmith to Kiss was feeling the effects as rock 'n' roll underwent yet another transformation. It was during these turbulent times that Alice successfully recovered from a little-known relapse into alcoholism. Quitting the bottle once and for all this time afforded a welcome respite, which also allowed Alice the opportunity to lay back and assess the situation.

After an extended hiatus, he signed with MCA for his next two albums. With Shep still by his side (who continues to be at the helm to this day), Alice then joined forces with Kane Roberts, a particularly adept guitarist who just happened to have the freaky attraction of looking like a professional bodybuilder. Alice made Kane his new foil, and together they began creating the music that ultimately would result in Alice's return to the roar of heavy metal.

Alice also sought out new metal-oriented producers to help put some solid meat onto the bones of his new musical excess. Producer Beau Hill tightened up Constrictor, while ace metal mixmaster Michael Wagener helped Alice to Raise Your Fist And Yell.

Once again, the famed Alice Cooper road show was back in its full gory glory. As always, Alice could expect his longtime fans to be in attendance. This time, however, a whole new slew of MTV-weaned headbangers--who, up until now, had only heard fabled rumors about Alice--showed up to actually see the legend perform in person for themselves.

The Nightmare Returns is how the new tour was billed, and it was an advisory not to be taken lightly, for Alice had concocted his goriest and most violent stage show yet. "We make sure that the first 20 rows are soaked in blood," Alice bragged as he went from town to town. And he made good on his threat. The opening night concert was broadcast live from Detroit as an MTV Halloween special, and a year later the tour climaxed explosively with a final show headlining at the Reading Festival in England.

On the movie front, Alice became musically involved in the sixth installment of the Friday The 13th series, while in John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness, he stole the show with his ominous portrayal as the leader of the deranged homeless. Of course, it goes without saying that millions around the world have been entertained by Alice's worthy appearance in Wayne's World.

Much to everyone's surprise, even in 1986, the man who invented controversy and turned it into an art form found himself once again in the crosshairs of countless numbers of grassroots organizations who, all around the world, had mobilized with the sole fanatical mission of trying to ban Alice from appearing in their town. In 1988 the German state of Bavaria actually did manage to censor Alice's doll chopping performance of "Dead Babies" by threatening him and his cohorts with imprisonment should he proceed with his act as planned. Meanwhile, back home in the land of the free, Tipper Gore's record-rating PMRC immediately installed Alice at the top of their Most Wanted list. As always, Alice wore their disgust as a badge of honor.

With these performances, Alice Cooper once again reclaimed his rightful position in the pantheon of rock 'n' roll.

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Having strongly re-established himself as one of the premier live rock 'n' roll acts in the business, Alice (who by now had worked the blood 'n' guts of the MCA years out of his system) signed with Epic Records and trained his creative sights on the making of what would become one of his biggest successes ever. Once again, he turned his attention to a familiar subject that had served him well since the days of "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" and "Is It My Body." There was no denying that the old dynamics of sex and romance had, over the years, severely mutated into something scarier than even Alice could ever have envisioned. It was a source of inspiration just waiting to be used.

Enlisting esteemed hitmaker Desmond Child to cowrite and produce his new album, Alice once again headed into the studio, accompanied by Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, both of whom were recruited to sit in on a few tracks. The result was Trash, which spawned the megahit "Poison" and became the biggest-selling album of Alice's career.

Alice Cooper Trashes The World was the new tour's theme, and the title was more than a fair description. Upon its completion, Alice went to work on the follow-up, Hey Stoopid. Included in the sessions this time around were special guests Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Mötley Crüe. Also making an appearance was Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, thus continuing an association that dates back to the first time Alice and the Gunners toured together in 1988--tandem teamwork that includes two collaborations: a hot-wired version of "Under My Wheels" and Use Your Illusion I's "The Garden."

Their respect for Alice, however, is by no means an isolated incident; countless others in the music business have also showed their appreciation by covering Alice Cooper material. A double-CD tribute entitled Welcome To Our Nightmare features the talents of numerous alternative bands, while Humanary Stew is a tribute CD that includes, among others, Roger Daltrey and Megadeth.

The Last Temptation, a harrowing theological account of lost innocence, rounded out Alice's trilogy of terror for Epic Records. From Dave McKean's disturbing cover photocollage to Sandman author Neil Gaiman's accompanying graphic novel, it was more than apparent that this time Alice Cooper wasn't fooling around. "The Last Temptation is the first album I've done in a long time that's a true concept album," says Alice. "In the '90s, there are certain words we avoid or think we've outgrown. Words like temptation, sin, redemption. These words are old words, but they're not dead. These are words that I wanted to explore with this new album."

In addition to hard-edged fan-favorites like "Lost In America" and "Bad Place Alone," The Last Temptation also made good use of the unique songwriting ability and corrosive vocal cords of Soundgardener Chris Cornell, who helped nail home Alice's various points of view on the dual duets "Stolen Prayer" and "Unholy War."

Next came a new live album, A Fistful Of Alice, specifically designed to update his only prior in-the-flesh offering, 1977's The Alice Cooper Show. Recorded at Cabo Wabo, Sammy Hagar's infamous Mexican watering hole, the album was aided, abetted, and ably executed by guest guitarists Sammy and Slash. Even everybody's favorite cool ghoul Rob Zombie (who'd also teamed up with Alice to record the Grammy-nominated X-Files track "Hands Of Death (Burn Baby Burn)" crawled out of his casket and braved the harsh Mexican sun, just to hang out and perform with his horror hero.

But of all the indignities Alice Cooper has inflicted upon an unsuspecting public over the years, arguably none has had as wide-ranging an impact in tight-laced conservative circles as his well-publicized unholy alliance with the symbol of All That Is Good--that white-bucked denizen of decency, the Anti-Alice himself, Mister Pat Boone.

When Pat earned his merit badge in hipness by recording his own good-natured version of "No More Mr. Nice Guy," some wondered if he actually realized just how potent a force for social disruption Alice Cooper truly was. Needless to say, the humorless religious right was quick to repeatedly bring this fact to Pat's attention, publicly rebuking him at every opportunity. Pat wore their disgust as a badge of honor. To his credit, he told them to get a sense of humor and didn't back down in the face of their relentless indignant fury.

Meanwhile, 30 years after first performing in those small Phoenix nightclubs and bars, the man responsible for Pat's personal purgatory continued his ongoing march to the millennium and beyond. As the ruinous Ringmaster of Alice Cooper's Rock 'n' Roll Carnival, he embarked upon a new world tour that took him across the U.S., through Europe, and into Australia.

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It was with great sadness that fans the world over learned of the untimely death of Alice Cooper Group founding member and lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died October 18, 1997, at a hospital in Clarion, Iowa, as a result of complications from pneumonia.

"I grew up with Glen and started the group with him. He was one of my best friends," says Alice, recalling his crony in crime. "I think I laughed more with him than with anyone else. He was an underrated and influential guitarist--a genuine rock 'n' roll rebel. Wherever he is now, I'm sure that there's a guitar, a cigarette, and a switchblade nearby."

On a happier note, it's heartening to know that Glen had the opportunity--on various occasions--to spend time with all of his Alice Cooper bandmates before he passed away. For regardless of any sporadic differences which may have arisen along the way as a result of the group's breaking up, the guys remained friends over the years and still kept in touch.

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Insolent, impertinent, and impudent, the lineup of Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, Michael Bruce, Neal Smith, and Alice Cooper--also known as the Alice Cooper Group--was that rarest of entities: an aggregation of five uniquely distinctive personalities, who together not only sounded great but also looked great as a rock 'n' roll band.

There can be no denying that this is nothing less than the gripping story of one of rock 'n' roll's most exciting heroes. The chronicle of Alice Cooper's vastly influential career is as sensationally spellbinding as the very life it depicts.

His accomplishments herald Alice Cooper as a true original in an era where originality is disdained. The triumphs and tribulations heard on Alice Cooper's albums continue to thrill millions all over the world to this day, with his name and image remaining an inextricable part of our language and culture, as familiar as they are enduring.

Indeed, no better example of Alice Cooper's timelessness can be found than in the fact that he still sings "I'm Eighteen" with all the passionate fervor and belief that he first brought to the song. For as long as there is a part of us that will always remain 18, we will all have far more in common with Alice Cooper than we might realize--or dare to publicly admit.

After all, you're still here, and so is Alice. Rocking out like all get out. And ain't that what it's all about?

Remember The Coop, huh?

Jeffrey Morgan is a freelance journalist and rock critic who specializes in all aspects of historical and contemporary popular culture. From 1975 to 1990 he was the Canadian Contributing Editor of Creem magazine.

Alanis Morissette Biography

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Along with counterparts Jewel and Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette was one of the most successful singer/songwriters to ride in on the second wave of grrrl rock in the mid-'90s. Born on June 1, 1974, Alanis Nadine Morissette and her two brothers were raised in Ottawa, Canada by French-Canadian and Hungarian parents. By the age of 10, the precocious Morissette had landed a role on the Nickelodean TV show "You Can't Do That on Television" and recorded her first single, "Fate Stay With Me." She spent most of her pre-pubescent years performing throughout Canada, singing "O Canada" at sporting events and even making the de rigueur appearance on "Star Search."

The hard work paid off and at 14 Morissette was offered a recording contract with MCA/Canada. Her debut, Alanis, a collection of dance-pop songs, was released in 1991 and went platinum in Canada. That year, Morissette won the Juno award (Canada's Grammy) for Most Promising Female Vocalist. Her sophomore effort, 1992's Now Is the Time, was recorded and released before Morissette graduated from high school.

However, this album -- another collection of teeny bop dance tunes -- sold only half as well as her debut, and at age 17 it looked as if Morissette's career was on the wane. After high school, Morissette moved to Los Angeles where she had the good fortune to hook up with songwriter/producer Glen Ballard, known for his work with Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul and Wilson Phillips. The creative chemistry between Ballard and Morissette was evident from the beginning. Ballard pushed Morissette to pursue darker, edgier themes in her music, venturing away from the cutesy teenager and toward the introspective young woman.

"Most of the songs are, in a roundabout way, actually addressed to myself," says Morissette of her work with Ballard at this time. "There's a certain aspect of the songs that's very confessional, very unadulterated...It was a very unfettered, spiritual experience."

The resulting demo tape was shopped around to the major labels and Madonna's Maverick imprint eventually signed Morissette. Jagged Little Pill, was released in the summer of 1995. On the strength of the break-out single "You Oughta Know," the album reached platinum status and the Top 10. Follow-up singles "Hand in My Pocket," "All I Really Want" and "Ironic" kept Jagged Little Pill on the album charts the next two years, ultimately selling 28 million copies worldwide.

Morissette was showered with industry awards for Jagged Little Pill, including Grammys for Album of the Year, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Album. Her much-anticipated follow-up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, was released in November 1998 on Maverick has sold over 7 million copies worldwide.

David Basham After finishing her recent tour with Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette has headed to New Zealand and Australia for a month-long tour, though she took time out to tape an episode of "MTV Unplugged" scheduled to air next month. Morissette's stripped-down set was recorded at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in mid-September, during which the Canadian songstress performed acoustic versions of such songs as "You Oughta Know," "Uninvited," and a cover of the Police's "King of Pain." The Alanis Morissette "Unplugged" is currently scheduled to be broadcast on MTV on November 1. Morissette also plans to release an accompanying "Unplugged" album via Maverick Records on November 23, and a version of "That I Would Be Good" from the taping is tentatively set to be issued as a single in early November. The song originally appeared on last year's "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie."

A.F.I. Biography

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Davey Havok - vocals
Jade Puget - guitar
Hunter - bass
Adam Carson - drums

When you're playing a style of music that doesn't really fit anywhere, you run a risk. You're challenging people to leave their niche, to leave their predetermined ideas of what they're supposed to like. Luckily, we have a lot of people who just focus on the music and appreciate us for what we are. So we get fans from all different genres of music, the jocks, the spooky kids, skaters, college kids, punk rockers, hardcore kids, metal kids, all that"

- Davey Havok

The origins and history of AFI are as humble as they are passionate, beginning with the meaning and philosophy behind the acronym now known to an ever-growing legion of fans the world over: A Fire Inside.

Over 10 years on and counting, the same inner flame that fueled four teenagers making a primal noise in a Ukiah, Calif., garage has propelled AFI to unforeseen musical and professional levels, as evident on Sing The Sorrow, due out March 11, 2003, on DreamWorks Records. "We've been doing this for a long time, and we love it more than anything," says AFI singer Davey Havok"To play music you're passionate about every night - it's like a dream. Sometimes you get sick; sometimes you get really tired, but I can't imagine doing anything else with my life"

If Sing The Sorrow is any indication, Havok won't have to worry about doing anything else for a long time. Co-produced by Jerry Finn (Rancid, Green Day, Jawbreaker) and Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins), the record retains the Bay Area outfit's signature aggression and pathos - forging ever forward into uncharted territory like the virtuoso guitar intro of "The Leaving Song Pt. 2" or the industrial-leaning break and Dead Can Dance-worthy outro of "Death Of Seasons"

Meanwhile, from its sublime intro through beautifully subdued verses and infectious choruses, first radio track "Girl's Not Grey" is a standout that both recalls AFI coming into its own on 2000's The Art Of Drowning and hints at a myriad of future directions. For the purists, "Dancing Through Sunday" and "Bleed Black" come strapped with generous chant-along opportunities and heavy-as-hell, bolt-tight riffs and rhythms. And as with virtually every track on Sing The Sorrow, these are all imbued with alternately brooding and celebratory lyrical imagery of rebirth, resurrection, apocalypse, all somehow deeply personal - in other words, classic AFI. "We've always been able to do anything we want," says guitarist Jade Puget. "The credit for that goes to both the band and our fans: to us for striving not to sound like anyone else, and to our fans for embracing those changes and looking forward to the new directions each new record will take"

"It also comes from never having any other choice but to do everything ourselves," Havok adds. "We never planned or had any expectation of assistance from anyone else. And thanks to that work ethic, we were able to grow slowly and naturally so that when others gradually took an interest in what we were doing, whether it was Nitro [Records] or DreamWorks or whoever, they realized they couldn't change us even if they wanted to"

Although AFI first surfaced in 1992, on Dork, a split 7" with fellow Ukiah High School students Loose Change (featuring future AFI guitarist Jade), it wouldn't be until the band's third full-length, 1997's Shut Your Mouth And Open Your Eyes, that bassist Hunter (ex-The Force) would enlist. And it would be later still that the present AFI lineup would coalesce, with the addition of Jade (by then ex-Redemption 87) on the defining and now-classic fourth album, Black Sails In The Sunset, and the subsequent All Hallow's EP. The latter would give AFI its first taste of exposure beyond its long-cultivated cult following when the Offspring's cover of the EP's "Totalimmortal" appeared on the Me, Myself & Irene soundtrack and, in turn, on Modern Rock playlists nationwide. A year later, "Days Of The Phoenix," from The Art Of Drowning, would do the same, albeit with the band playing its own composition this time.

"I was completely in awe then - and still am now - to hear any of our songs on the radio," says Hunter. "The fact that radio would pick up on us based solely on the quality of the music is still difficult for me to fathom, as is everything positive that's happened for us. It all seems to have come naturally from our efforts, and honestly, that's really hard for me to comprehend"

In the meantime, AFI's live draw increased exponentially, and with good reason: To witness the AFI live experience is to understand both that unique internal chemistry and the undeniable bond between band and audience that has been honed and strengthened through nearly seven years of non-stop worldwide touring. Favorites from Black Sails, The Art Of Drowning and the All Hallow's and A Fire Inside EPs typically find the band fighting to be heard over the din of the chanting crowd, every song received with a rabid enthusiasm that possesses the players, the songs and the audience alike. It's a primal, almost tribal experience, one that via word of mouth has tickets for the band's already sold-out early 2003 shows eliciting eBay bids of more than $300 a pair.

"Touring has always been the most important thing for us," says drummer Adam Carson, who co-founded the band with Havok in the early '90s. "We basically created our fan base by touring non-stop" "I've been touring since I was 19 years old," Havok continues. "We were always of the mind that if two people showed up the first time we played somewhere, we'd go back until there were 10, then 30, then hundreds or thousands. We would keep coming back until they were forced to take notice"

As regaled as their live show has been, however, the members of AFI make it clear that there was no attempt to replicate it on Sing The Sorrow. "That's a big priority for so many other bands," says Jade, "but it's never been a concern for us. If anything, it's the other way around; at least for me, it's about creating the song in the writing and recording process, then hoping it'll translate live, rather than road-testing the new songs, then hoping we can 'capture the live vibe' in the studio" Instead, the band prioritizes making the best and most adventurous record possible time and again, this time with the more-than-able assistance of the aforementioned Finn and Vig (both of whom Jade recalls as "so cool and affable from the very beginning," explaining, "There was never any kind of 'star producer' vibe"). "I think the progression from The Art Of Drowning to the new record is similar to the leap between Shut Your Mouth and Black Sails," says Havok. "People familiar with our previous records are going to notice a marked growth. The songs are far more complex, the performances are superior, there are some ambient and electronic elements, which we've never done before, and vocally, I pushed myself to extremes I'd never achieved before, both in terms of aggression and melancholy"

"Everybody says, 'This is our best record yet!' every time they come out with something new," Jade concludes. "I know it's a total cliché, but in our case, we're always pleased with our latest record because each one is different from the previous one. The fact is, this time we had more time and put more effort into writing and recording and I believe that really translates"

Biography of Michael Savage on Newsmax

2009-05-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

This biography of Michael Savage is from his columns on Newsmax.

By sizzling with passion at KSFO Michael Savage soared to #1 in Arbitron ratings among both adult men and all adults 18+ during afternoon drivetime in San Francisco and to be top talk host in his timeslot in Northern California. Now America is turning to "The Michael Savage Show," on Talk Radio Network.

"I guess people love my show because of my hard edge combined with humor and education," he says. "Those who listen to me say they hear a bit of Plato, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Moses, Jesus and Frankenstein. I pull from many of my life experiences, including that of father, son, husband, brother, ice cream factory worker, busboy, lifeguard, writer, scientist, and my huge library of books." Listeners also hear top-flight guests and, in keeping with the fact that talk hosts attract the audience they deserve, listeners hear literate callers with intelligence, wit, and energy.

An independent-minded individualist, Michael Savage fits no stereo-type. He attacks big government and liberal media bias, but champions the environment and animal rights. Trained as a scientist, he holds Master's degrees in medical botany and medical anthropology and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in Epidemiology and Nutrition Science. Along with his book The Savage Nation and CD Best of The Savage Nation, he is author of the book Herbs That Heal and 17 other books.

Savage is threatening to sue Texas Gov. George W. Bush for use of the "Compassionate Conservative" label Savage began using in 1994 and marketing with the first of four hugely successful Bay Area conventions bearing that name in 1995. Savage has consistently drawn sold-out audiences to hear him live. For Savage, these words describe a "firewall of balance" that limits how far to the right his opinions go.

The word Compassion means "with feeling," and that's the magnetic attraction Michael Savage has proven he has by pulling top numbers in one of America's biggest trend-setting markets. Give your audience a chance to hear why for the past two years Talkers Magazine named Savage as one of America's top talk radio hosts. He knows how to explore issues, entertain, stimulate, and promote in ways that boost the ratings and profits of every station lucky enough to carry him. Michael Savage is one more good reason America is turning to TRN.

Biography of Michael Savage

2009-05-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

Michael Savage was born in the Bronx, New York City, USA, in 1942. His birth name was Michael Alan Weiner. His family is from Russia.

Michael attended Queens College, City University of New York, graduating in 1963 with a B.S. in Biology. He also went to the University of Hawaii, achieving a Master of Science in medical botany, 1970, and a Master of Arts in medical anthropology, 1972.

He earned a Ph.D. in Nutritional Ethnomedicine from the University of California, Berkeley, 1978. His dissertation was on “Nutritional Ethnomedicine in Fiji.”

He is a renowned expert on herbal whose work in this field is highly regarded.

Michael Savage is the author of 18 books and is a three-time best-selling author.

His books include:

Herbs that heal : prescription for herbal healing - with wife Janet (1994)

The herbal bible : a family guide to herbal home remedies (1992)

Earth medicine--earth food : plant remedies, drugs, and natural foods of the North American Indians (1980)

Plant a tree : a working guide to regreening America (1975)

Secrets of Fijian medicine - with Irving Stone (1970)

The Savage Nation (2002)

The Enemy Within (2004).

He has been a columnist for Newsmax since 1999.

Michael Savage’s show, The Savage Nation, is a nationally syndicated radio program heard by millions of listeners every Monday through Friday.

His radio show began in 1994 on KSFO in San Francisco, where Dr. Savage lives. “The Savage Nation” is a part of the Talk Radio Network. It is currently the third highest rated talk show in the country. "As Michael continues to challenge his audience and himself, the show and the ratings will just continue to grow," says Mark Masters, CEO of Talk Radio Network.

Michael Savage has a pet dog, Teddy, who has become one of the most well-known pets in the country.

Savage created the phrase "Compassionate Conservative" in 1994, and formed The Paul Revere Society.

"Savage coined the terms "Compassionate Conservative" and "Islamo-Fascist," which have been hijacked by Republican speechwriters and spread like wildfire." -- MichaelSavage.com

Mr. Savage is married to Janet and has two grown children, a son and daughter.