Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies
Artist: Alice Cooper | Album: Billion Dollar Babies | Style: Rock | Year: 2000 [1973 original] | Quality: DVD-Audio (MLP 5.1 96kHz/24Bit, MLP 2.0 96kHz/24Bit, Dolby AC3 5.1) | Bitrate: lossless | Tracks: 10 + 5 bonus (live) | Size: 5.29 Gb | Recovery: 5% | Covers: in archive | Release: ©2000 Rhino | Warner Archives (R9-76663 USA) | Note: Watermarked

With Billion Dollar Babies, Alice Cooper refined the raw grit of their earlier work in favor of a slightly more polished sound (courtesy of super-producer Bob Ezrin), resulting in a mega-hit album that reached the top of the U.S. album charts. Song for song, Billion Dollar Babies is probably the original Alice Cooper group’s finest and strongest. Such tracks as “Hello Hooray,” the lethal stomp of the title track, the defiant “Elected” (a rewrite of an earlier song, “Reflected”), and the poison-laced pop candy of “No More Mr. Nice Guy” remain among Cooper’s greatest achievements. Also included are a pair of perennial concert standards — the disturbing necrophilia ditty “I Love the Dead” and the chilling macabre of “Sick Things” — as well as such strong, lesser-known selections as “Raped and Freezin’,” “Unfinished Sweet,” and perhaps Cooper’s most overlooked gem, “Generation Landslide.” Nothing seemed like it could stop this great hard rock band from overtaking the universe, but tensions between the members behind the scenes would force the stellar original AC band to split up after just one more album. Not only is Billion Dollar Babies one of Cooper’s very best; it remains one of rock’s all-time, quintessential classics.

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Alice Cooper – Welcome to my Nightmare
Artist: Alice Cooper | Album: Welcome to my Nightmare | Style: Rock | Year: 2001 [1975 original] | Quality: DVD-Audio (MLP 5.1 96kHz/24Bit, MLP 2.0 96kHz/24Bit, Dolby AC3 5.1) | Bitrate: lossless | Tracks: 11 | Size: ~4.15 Gb | Recovery: 5% | Covers: in archive | Release: Atlantic | Rhino (8122-76785-9), 2001 | Note: Watermarked

With the 1974 disintegration of the original Alice Cooper group, Alice was free to launch a solo career. He wisely decided to re-enlist the services of Bob Ezrin for his solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, which was a concept album tied into the story line of the highly theatrical concert tour he launched soon after the album’s release. While the music lost most of the gritty edge of the original AC lineup, Welcome to My Nightmare remains Alice’s best solo effort — while some tracks stray from his expected hard rock direction, there’s plenty of fist-pumping rock to go around. The disco-flavored, album-opening title track would be reworked on the stage as more of a hard rock tune, while “Some Folks” dips into cabaret territory, and “Only Women Bleed” is a sensitive ballad that became a Top Ten hit. But the rockers serve as the album’s foundation — “Devil’s Food,” “The Black Widow,” “Department of Youth,” and “Cold Ethyl” are all standouts, as is the more tranquil yet eerie epic “Steven.” Despite this promising start to Cooper’s solo career, the majority of his subsequent releases were often not as focused and were of varying quality. (more…)