A Fistful of Alice (1997)
Rating: 1/10
... or a discful of crap?
Here comes Alice again, this time on stage at Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo, still claiming to be 18 even though we all know that his wrinkled, ghoulish ass is actually about 2,000 years old (the scary part being that when they carbon-dated Keith Richards, they found out that he was younger).
All of which would still be alright, were it not for the fact that Alice is showing his age horribly. On FISTFUL OF ALICE, the Father of Shock Rock fairly wheezes over all his old hits plus a couple of the newer ones. Songs like "School's Out" and "Under My Wheels" require a venting madman, but here Alice sounds a deflated and pale shadow of his old self, barely able to cough up even a hint of bile. This sad collapse becomes painfully evident when Alice declares that he needs a little help to sing "Feed My Frankenstein" and his sidekick (who turns out to be none other than Rob Zombie) proceeds to steal the show.
It has to be added that Alice isn't helped at all by a mix whose quality is about on par with that of cheap bootlegs. The guitars sound small and tinny and the drumsticks may very well have been played on cardboard boxes. Of the entire set, only "Desperado," with the song's eerie mexican guitar inflections accentuated, survives the underwhelming performance and production.
The new studio track that's tagged to the album, "Is Anyone Home?" is unfortunately a bloodless and uninventive rehash of the old Cooper cliches... some crazed kid stuck in the basement of a dark house singing about his rodent pet. You hear echoes of "Steven," "The Ballad of Dwight Frye," and even "Wind-Up Toy," but alas, it's pretty obvious that Alice doesn't live here anymore.
Gerald Tan 1998
Comments about the Album or Review
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Visitor's Comments:
FROM: alcooper00@aol.com (Ryan Nagle)
FROM: tobym@windnetcs.com (Toby Mielke)
DATE: Thu, 3 Dec 1998
SUBJECT: what??
COMMENTS: the review of the album made no sense whatsoever, the album was a very good one
and alice doesnt show his age at all, as for the last studio track it had some
meaning in it, now im sorry to dissapoint the beavis and butthead generation
,reviewer gerald tan obviously belongs to, but not all songs are senseless
violence, is anyone home had deep meaning behind it, it stated that "people
become so involved with the net and their computers that they forget there is a
real world out there and when they finally realize it it is too late and they
are left "alone in a big dark house" obviously your reviewer didnt understand
the difference between a "rodent" and a computer mouse but hey what do you
expect? i think alices fistfull album was very good and i dont expect your slow
witted reviewers to understand that, people deserve to have there own oppinions
no matter how shallow or the lack of research done on the man or the album. my
rating A+ perfect 10 way to go alice the king of shock rock and the one who
started it all by plowing through a cold dark world and leaving a trail of
creative genious for all of us other wannabes to follow
DATE: 14/10/98
SUBJECT: Comments on Cooper Review
COMMENTS: I've been a Cooper fan all my life and own all the CD's so it hurts me to say
that this CD blows. I concur with your review.
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