{"id":174,"date":"2017-12-15T16:10:34","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T16:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2017-12-15T16:10:34","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T16:10:34","slug":"alice-cooper-welcome-to-my-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Alice Cooper – Welcome to my Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Joe Vig Top 40\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/joevigtop40.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Welcome to My Nightmare Special Edition<\/a> \"cooper<\/a><\/p>\n

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Welcome to My Nightmare\u00a0Special Edition\u00a0\u00a0DVD<\/b><\/div>\n
Live in Wembley Stadium, September 11, 12 1975\u00a0 concert film, cinema release<\/b><\/div>\n
In Concert TV Special April 1975\u00a0 with Vincent Price\u00a0<\/b>
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Review by Joe Viglione
Copyright (C)2017 all rights reserved<\/b><\/div>\n
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Alice Cooper, when he re-emerged from the ashes of the Alice Cooper Group, backed by Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal band, was a major event.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How do you top the edgy excitement of the original Cooper five which probably felt as abandoned as Big Brother and the Holding Company once Janis Joplin left for the Kozmic Blues tour?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Cooper clan, like Big Brother, was a special unit, but Hunter\/Wagner were their own touring equivalent of the famed Wrecking Crew, perhaps only equaled by Janis Joplin\u2019s Pearl set of musicians, the Full Tilt Boogie Band.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0These were the musical equivalent of cosmic storms that come by once in a lifetime.\u00a0\u00a0Cooper had the right combination in mind for this tour, as exhibited on this DVD, it was simply that his change in direction for his fan base that was more of a jolt than Joplin fronting a kinda sorta clone of Blood, Sweat and Tears.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Welcome to My Nightmare musicians – Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner\u00a0\u00a0– were a larger-than-life presence, and as potent as Keith Richards \/ Mick Taylor, making for the two best rock and roll guitar duos on the planet.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And though the Kozmic Blues was to this critic\u2019s ears an amazing transformation for Janis (yes, I\u2019m a huge Big Brother fan too, for different musical reasons,) it was the songwriting on Welcome To My Nightmare that took itself too seriously and veered off from the specialized rock that was generated on the Love it to Death and Killer albums by Cooper, as easy a comparison to make as Jethro Tull\u2019s Aqualung vs Ian Anderson\u2019s concept, The Passion Play.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Do you want to hear Passion Play or Aqualung?\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s as rhetorical a question as asking if you want to spin Love it to Death and\/or Killer over Nightmare.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Alice Cooper gets an A for effort with both the cinema release of the Wembley Stadium shows and the television movie, but where Lou Reed revisited the Velvet Underground, the tried and true “new” band (as in Lou’s band -Hunter, Wagner, Glan and Prakash John replacing Peter Walsh)\u00a0 bringing the Killer album\u00a0\u00a0to life on the big screen would have been a sure-fire hit…and far more welcome for this writer\/reviewer and millions of fans as well.<\/p>\n

As a concept Welcome\/Nightmare\u2019s script was the actual misfire in 1975 and this supporter\/advocate\/disciple of both Cooper and Reed feels the same (semi disappointed) way today as when I first purchased the album and then saw the show at the Boston Garden April 24, 1975.\u00a0\u00a0But having the performances professionally recorded and preserved give that A for effort an A plus for posterity. \u201cOnly Women Bleed\u201d shows what a gifted singer Alice is, the ability to play to a rock crowd with growls and screams, and middle of the road radio with a hybrid of Perry Como and Mick Jagger, competing with Kenny Rogers, Helen Reddy and the Bee Gees on the soft rock airwaves.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0This TV special airing three years after Alice’s mesmerizing performance on the very first In Concert ABC special in November of 1972, is \u2013 as stated – historic, but lacks the excitement of both that amazing first In Concert special where Cooper’s riveting extended “I’m 18” (as the band was said to have originally performed it before it was truncated for Top 40 radio)\u00a0certainly ushered in the new ABC concert show on Friday nights with more than a proverbial bang.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s just that the Broadway feel of \u201cWelcome to my Nightmare (the song) was not what the fan base expected; it reflects Alice\u2019s love of films (West Side Story in particular, screen version from the 1950\u2019s play of the same name) as with the original Cooper group\u00a0\u00a0invoking Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cJet Song\u201d (“Gutter Cat vs The Jets,” on School\u2019s Out) \u2013 it was outside of their\u00a0 \u201dsphere of operations,\u201d if you will, and not what Warner Brothers was promoting to the world.\u00a0\u00a0(Nightmare was released on the Atlantic label rather than Warner, a change of labels but still under the WEA umbrella.)<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As I review this forty two years later the best tracks on Welcome to My Nightmare live are “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “I’m 18,” “Billion Dollar Babies,” and “School’s Out” as re-interpreted by the Lou Reed band, a group that did the same for the music of the Velvet Underground with Reed in 1973, two years prior.\u00a0The fluid guitars of Hunter and Wagner on “Billion Dollar Babies” are as eloquent as they were with Reed in Sheffield at Oval Hall, September 9, 1973.\u00a0\u00a0Find the tape on YouTube or Wolfsgang\u2019s Vault, very worth listening to,\u00a0especially if you want to explore the nuances of this DVD and its musical pedigree. \u00a0 With two years and a week on the road, the band that was magnificent when it first launched with Reed, September 1, 1973, is efficient, but more restrained by the cinematic and television duties.<\/div>\n
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\nMy favorite all-time concert today is still the very first gig by this “Rock n Roll Animal” group – the September 1, 1973 Lenox Massachusetts (Berkshire county) show where Wagner\/Hunter and Reed put on an explosive, experimental night that was a once in a lifetime experience.\u00a0\u00a0The sun setting at the Lenox Music Inn\u00a0 (see the Inn’s history here:\u00a0http:\/\/www.musicinn.org\/1970s-concert-schedule.html<\/a>\u00a0 ) and this band that emerged from the Berlin sessions, augmented with Peter \u201cPops\u201d Walsh of Seatrain on the bass, Steve Hunter on guitar,\u00a0\u00a0the late Dick Wagner (RIP July 30, 2014) on guitar, the late Pentti \u201cWhitey\u201d Glan on drums (RIP Nov 7, 2017) and \u2013 most likely at this show \u2013 the late Ray Colcord (Feb 5\u00a0\u00a02016) on keyboards.\u00a0 With the passing of Lou Reed October 27, 2013 – (his wake December 13, 2013 at the Apollo Theater)\u00a0\u00a0 it is important to get the history of this unique and inspiring \/ influential crew documented properly. Would John Cougar ever have even put together his 1978 Australian hit “I Need a Lover” in the fashion that we know it without “Intro\/Sweet Jane” from the 1974 Rock n Roll Animal album?\u00a0 (as recorded in New York on December 21, 1973 – two days after the Boston show – see Cougar-Mellencamp information here:\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I_Need_a_Lover<\/a>\u00a0)<\/b><\/div>\n
\nThe ultraviolet lamp on Lou\u2019s face as the twilight descended on the open-air venue, folk and slide guitar renditions of \u201cPale Blue Eyes\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ll Be Your Mirror\u201d from the Velvet Underground, a folk version of \u201cHeroin\u201d which had the band enter and start building over Lou’s simple guitar strums into an explosive unit, so much more exciting and involved (and complex) than when the band returned to Boston on December 19, 1973 \u2013 two nights before the recording of Rock and Roll Animal at Howard Stein\u2019s Academy of Music in New York, it was a sort of a let down.\u00a0\u00a0Sure, the concert was great, RR Animal went gold in 1978 (must be platinum now?) \u2013 as did Welcome to My Nightmare \u2013 which did go platinum as the sales increased. Ultimate Classic Rock notes that the\u00a0 “Nightmare” critics at the onset weren\u2019t as thrilled about the transition …but have warmed up over the years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>http:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/alice-cooper-welcome-to-my-nightmare\/\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This critic hasn\u2019t\u2026it still is not the first Cooper lp I will pull out of the vault to play for fun…<\/p>\n

BUT\u2026with so many great Alice Cooper DVDs out there covering his amazing theatrics, having a true Halloween movie such as Welcome to My Nightmare is essential.\u00a0 \u00a0Even if the concert footage directed by David Winters comes off somewhat awkwardly like Rollin Binzer\u2019s direction of Ladies and Gentlemen The Rolling Stones (also on Eagle Rock) –\u00a0 which, as with my first thoughts seeing that film in theatrical release, is good but not great.<\/p>\n

So too with Welcome to my Nightmare, more important to me as a moment in Cooper time than something to watch repeatedly, but not to be quibbled with too much: it did inspire Michael Jackson to put Vincent Price on his Halloween film, Thriller, did it not?<\/p><\/div>\n

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From the Joe Vig Top 40\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/joevigtop40.com\/ Welcome to My Nightmare Special Edition   Welcome to My Nightmare\u00a0Special Edition\u00a0\u00a0DVD Live in Wembley Stadium, September 11, 12 1975\u00a0 concert film, cinema release In Concert TV Special April 1975\u00a0 with Vincent Price\u00a0 Review by Joe ViglioneCopyright (C)2017 all rights reserved Alice Cooper, when he re-emerged from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicbusinessmonthly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}