IT'S REALLY UP TO YOU: The ALICE COOPER"S GREATEST HITS poll

"Eighteen," though "Be My Lover" is most played in iTunes over the past few months or so.

Number Three in Stairway to Hell, by the way.

yeah you can make a better cooper comp but this thing's amazingly solid. voted 'elected' natch.

Gonna go with the title track to one of my all-time favorite albums. Billion Dollar Babies.

"Teenage Lament '74," but ilxor will only let me vote in about half of the polls I attempt these days (in the other half I get an error message), so don't be surprised if that song doesn't get any votes.

another vote for billion dollar babies right here. best one to prefigure the lunatic and brilliant "Welcome to my Nightmare" still to come.

xp Actually, it let me vote (without a "login failed" blurb) only after I posted a comment. Weird.

"Billion Dollar Babies" (and pretty much everything else on this comp) >>>>>>>>>>> "Welcome To My Nightmare" btw.

(Hell, "Only Women Bleed" and "I Never Cry" and "You And Me" and most of the songs on Flush the Fashion >>>>> "Welcome To My Nightmare", too)

challenging opinions

crazy person opinions

ok, i take that back, but still, srsly disagree. also i was being sloppy with my quotes vs italic conventions (was talking about the album, not the song). Still, even on a song level, i still stand by what i said.

I just always thought that song came off like a cornball version of horror-schtick stuff he'd already done way, way better in, say "Ballad Of Dwight Frye." (Never liked the album much, either, especially compared to earlier stuff that rocked a lot harder. Just seemed like a self-parody move.)

I'm with Xhuxk.

when I was a kid Welcome to My Nightmare was the first Alice Cooper I heard, following upon about a year of hearing the rumors and stories (all the stories eventually landed on him: the he-drank-a-bowl-of-spit story, the he-took-a-shit-on-stage story (sometimes attributed to Beefheart/Zappa), kills animals ontage, etc etc). So I was prepared to be frightened by it, and I was, and I liked it more than I wanted to. So I have a soft spot for that album. But when I listen to the earlier Cooper stuff, there's just no comparison, that shit is just solid as fuck.

he's got ALOT better good self-parody ('no more mr nice guy') and ALOT better bad self-parody ('he's back! he's the man behind the mask!'). 'welcome to my nightmare' probably stopped me from checking out the early stuff earlier, i knew the comeback stuff (still take the jason stuff a million times over the desmond child stuff) and it sucked generally and i'd hear 'no really, the early stuff' and see 'welcome to my nightmare' and its corny unitard nonsense and figure 'oh - INFLUENCE yawn' but no need to hear it. it wasn't until i caught that amazing clip of him doing 'i'm eighteen' where he starts 'singing' american pie at the end that i bought in. the only comparison i can think of in my experience is rod stewart where the faces/early solo stuff really did live up to rep and stood head and shoulders over everything after but even there stewart had later (even much much later) hits that were pretty great and probably two or three that hold their own w/ anything else he did and even 'love touch' is better than 'welcome to my nightmare'.

someone (maybe xhuxkx if he can figure out how to work the interweb right) should start a poll on all the old bastards they dragged out during the mid-80s cuz hey hair metals big and these dudes are relevant so maybe buy their album how bout it. cooper and aerosmith seem the big ones (and i'm not gonna compare comeback aerosmith to the original run but if i made a list of 20 fave aerosmith songs there'd but a significant number of post-iran-contra entries). ozzy's not really in there, kiss borderline. who else am i forgetting?

Ozzy didn't need career assistance, though, did he?

yeah that's why i'm thinking he really wouldn't belong there - he was a heavy presence on mtv from the start and it was on the back of the records as much as his legend. kiss were having hits somewhat less steadily and it seems like they leaned more on their history more than ozzy but it's still not a 'jesus christ where did they dig those guys up' like it was w/ alice cooper or aerosmith.

I'm actively campaigning for "Elected".

Everything kicks ass about "Elected", especially its danceability, but I love the brass breakdown in the bridge. It kicks me in the heart, but then goes back into the verses with even louder sneering, and that final "ELEC-TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED" is the K.O.

who else am i forgetting?

slade.

and heart, sort of. (zz top not really connected w/ hair-metal in any notable way; meat loaf too late.)

BOC for a minute there

and, duh - whitesnake. (unless they're disqualified by being so much bigger in the late '80s than late '70s.)

(golden earring comeback too pre-hair-metal to count too, i guess.)

I dunno, I think you can count Whitesnake. Slade wasn't big here in the '70s either, right?

yeah golden earring seems more a 'man these dudes have been around forever and keep popping up and having hits'. whitesnake doesn't really qualify, i don't think any of us knew about anything pre-kitaen and in any case they sure as hell weren't brought to our attention becuz of it. boc's a good one. heart's maybe a great one, they definitely did that 'let's spike our hair up w/ mousse and do some desmond child numbers and pow back on top baby', i like 'alone' and 'in dreams' more than anything on permanent vacation if not as much as at least half of what i remember from pump. o man i just remembered what was like the king of these for me at the time:

http://www.offliners.dk/covers/Iggy%20Pop%20-%20Instinct.jpg

I'm thinking Whitesnake 'cause their copping of apparently the right moves -- that 1987 album sold tons more than either Plant or Page's '88 ones, despite Whitesnake's owing it all to them and Tawny -- fit right in there.

And who did Whitesnake tour with in '87/'88/'89? That'd be instructive.

ha i was gonna mention jimmy page. OUTRIDER. man o man how many times i forced myself to listen to that record. plant never seemed to care about trying to impress 13 year olds, even when he finally made his 'ok YES - i was in led zeppelin' record. whereas page teamed up w/ coverdale without thinking twice.

I voted for "No More Mr. Nice Guy," but all of my favorites from him were yet to come.

"Hello Hooray" then. Bit surprised not to see "Only Women Bleed" here, but I guess this covered Alice Cooper then band only.

Is It My Body

who did Whitesnake tour with in '87/'88/'89?

They had a big tour with Motley Crue in '87 or '88.

Everything on this is great. But comes down to "Elected" vs. "Hello Hooray".

Whitesnake... had a big tour with Motley Crue

They definitely seemed hair-metal to me at the time. (I included them in a lenghty Voice roundup of the stuff, with Crue, Poison, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi. Headline: Whitesnake Can Eat Puke.)

Y & T may or may not belong here, also. (They got a bigger audience in the hair-metal '80s than in the hard-rock '70s, but it still wasn't that big.)

And what about Dio?

golden earring seems more a 'man these dudes have been around forever and keep popping up and having hits'.

Except they only two hits! So it was more like 'man these guys had that song all over the radio eight years ago, and now they suddenly have another one. who the heck do they think they are, janis ian?'

What about AC/DC?
They were fading out until Who Made Who and then Blow Up Your Video.

And if you're gonna count Iggy, it might also make sense to count, uh, Tin Machine.

Slade wasn't big here in the '70s either, right?

A few smaller hits, even smaller than their mid '80s ones. But there was definitely a big gap in between (four Top 100 hits 1972-74, then none until 1984-85, when they had three more thanx to the Quiet Riot effect.) (And actually, Quiet Riot sort of verged on being old guys, too -- two '70s albums -- as did Twisted Sister -- around for years before they recorded -- though neither had much to show for it until MTV discovered finally got around to them.)

"Hello Hooray"...(I've always had a soft spot for songs specifically written to open shows with)..."God I feel so strong" is the line I always summon in the last mile of a long road race...

this was my very first full-length purchase, which I got on 8-track...used to have to scam the car keys so I could listen to it (we only had an 8-track player in the car)...

I've always loved Desperado, particularly for the line "You're a notch and/I'm a legend".

I'm a pretty big fan of Under My Wheels too.

is it my body

alice was a self-parody from the git-go. i saw him in concert summer of 72, it seemed silly even at age 14.

love it to death is even better LP than this greatest hits IMNSHO

i met bob ezrin at a wedding about five years ago! he didn't want to talk about the good old days, too bad.

BML

re: old bands in hair metal era

How about Deep Purple's reappearance-- Perfect Strangers? "Knockin' at your Back Door"

Kiss was retooled as hair metal-- "Tears are Falling" "Crazy Nights"

also see-- Frehley's Comet, Vinnie Vincent Invasion

just the tip, but "is it my body" over "im eighteen"

lol i almost mentioned tin machine except we knew plenty about bowie so tin machine wasn't fooling us one way or the other. deep purple's a great one.

Yeah, Perfect Strangers is really good.

And that's from someone who's never been fully convinced by Deep Purple.

this is one of the best rock records you could ever listen to.

i think i'm gonna go for "hello hooray" just cuz it's my fav right now, but the whole thing is end-to-end burners

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow, good to see the votes spread out like that.

"Muscle Of Love" shoulda gotten at least one vote...always thought that was one of DD's better bass work...