If you're wondering if you should get this next album for one of your loved ones this Christmas, the answer is no. This one is for Alice Cooper completionists only.
Disc 343 is...Trash
Artist: Alice Cooper
Year of Release: 1989
What’s Up With The Cover?: Alice Cooper looks down at the floor, no doubt a little embarassed by the wheelbarrows full of cash he would make off this subpar record. He is wearing a shirt featuring...Alice Cooper. The man likes to market himself. Although you can't see in this picture, photos from the same shoot inside the jacket show Cooper isn't even wearing his makeup. How sad that he gave in to the understated but awful social conventions of late eighties hair metal.
How I Came To Know It: I have been an Alice Cooper fan for a very long time. When this album came out in 1989 I bought it on tape. Years later, I replaced it on CD when the opportunity presented itself.
How It Stacks Up: This is one of Alice Cooper's most commercially successful albums ever, but it isn't one of my favourites. I'd say out of my 26 studio albums, it is around 22nd to 24th, so near the bottom.
Rating: 2 stars.
Alice Cooper has been around for a long time, and he's gone through a lot of different creative phases. While always sticking to a hard rock sound, he has explored all the various edges of that genre. Some records are straight eighties heavy metal, others are acid rock, new wave, concept albums and a host of other styles.
"Trash" is produced by Desmond Child, who is a pretty famous producer and songwriter who has worked with a lot of hard rock and pop acts, including KISS, Aerosmith and (regrettably) Bon Jovi. It is fair to say I don't like his production style, which focuses heavily on hooks and radio friendly, but uninventive guitar sound.
Child cowrites every song on "Trash" and the influence is entirely unwelcome. The songs lack Cooper's usual inventiveness in construction and the lyrics are missing any shock value or insight into the human condition; the two things that Cooper lyrics almost always have.
Fortunately, this is Alice Cooper we're talking about, not Bon Jovi, and you can't entirely drown his genius in schmaltz. The songs may have been written for the masses, but Cooper fans will still find enough to get some enjoyment from this record.
The big hit on the record was "Poison" which I have a soft spot for, if only because of the sexy video that went with it. It isn't a great song, but some of Cooper's ability shines through, including a lascivious vocal delivery and some reasonably suggestive lyrics, although he'd usually go a lot farther.
"Only My Heart Talkin'" is the ballad, which can't compare to early Cooper classics like "Only Women Bleed" or even later efforts like "Every Woman Has a Name," but is still listenable, and was no doubt played at many a hair-metal wedding in 1989 when the happy couple took the floor.
I also enjoy "Bed of Nails" but mostly for the laughs. The song is again, OK, but the chorus always cracks me up:
"Our love is a bed of nails
Love hurts good on a bed of nails
I'll lay you down and when all else fails
I'll drive you like a hammer on a bed of nails."
Not only does that sound more uncomfortable than sexy, it barely qualifies as rhyming. A few reviews ago, I demonstrated the complexity of Townes Van Zandt's rhyme schemes. Here we have the preschool version - AABA, with 'nails' rhymed three times with itself. It is fitting that the only rhyme is "fails". Fails indeed.
Also, a bed of nails does not sound like it would pass certification, making this record very unsafe. Just what kind of house would you put that in - a Shaolin temple? Assuming you don't have the resistances of a warrior monk, what could be worse than a bed of nails?
As it happens, Alice fills us in, going beyond the bedroom to making the entire house unsafe on "House of Fire":
"Let's build a house of fire, baby
Not one of wood or stone
Walk through my door of desire, baby
Come on in and make it your home."
Yes, those lyrics again attempt to rhyme a word with itself (this time mercifully just the once). Cooper then tries to slip 'stone' and 'home' by us. If the house doesn't set my hair on fire, the song construction certainly will.
It is funny how this was such a huge album for Alice Cooper, but it is because these songs are very catchy, not because they are very good, and that is an important difference.
I enjoy this record as a guilty pleasure, and I took a perverse joy driving around town listening to it for a couple of days. That said, it doesn't go on my stereo very often and unless you are an Alice Cooper completionist like me, there's no reason for it to ever go on yours.
Best tracks: Poison, Bed of Nails
1 comment:
The tour for this album was the only time I saw Alice Cooper live. The show was OK, but I knew even then, in my nascent musical development, that this was a sub-par phase for Alice. I was on the floor about 8-10 rows back, so I had a pretty good view, and I enjoyed myself despite the lackluster show. The 80s hair-metal musical enema that was Great White opened, and I had great fun booing them at the top of my lungs and giving them the finger at every opportunity. Everyone else around me seemed to feel the same way, and we even got them to leave the stage early. Good times.
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