From Power Pop to Shock Rock

We caught a terrific show this past Saturday at the Larimer Lounge – Brendan Benson. I have raved about this guy to anyone who would listen to me since he released Lapalco in 2002 (easily my favorite record of the last 5 years), and his latest The Alternative to Love has been in heavy rotation in our house since it came out earlier this year. A few years ago, a brief snippet of his tune Tiny Spark was used in a Saturn commercial – every time that commercial would come on, the li’l woman would yell “Brendan Benson!” from wherever she was in the house. Since then, she’s done the same thing whenever the first notes from one of his CD’s plays. Here’s another example of how huge this guy is with us – last year, A.C. Newman’s release Slow Wonder was a big favorite of mine. Until Em could remember his name, many times she asked me to “play the CD by that guy who is almost as good as Brendan Benson.” High praise, indeed!

Needless to say, we were pretty excited about the show, and he didn’t disappoint us. His band was tight, and they played a great set of his catchy power pop tunes that had us singing along and grinning like idiots. All of our faves were played – Good to Me, Tiny Spark, Folk Singer, You’re Quiet, Spit It Out, the truly weird Insects Rule…heck, we love ‘em all and enjoyed the whole set. I had never heard the openers, Robbers on High Street, but they were really good as well – a very enjoyable evening, even if I couldn’t get my wife to yell “Brendan Benson!” when he hit the stage.

In a totally different vein, I ended up watching 2 (!) Alice Cooper DVD’s over the weekend. I bought these when I first got my DVD player, back in the early days of internet shopping when coupons were plentiful - and idiots like me felt that you needed to use every coupon you could find. Somehow, I had never gotten around to watching these, so I decided to give them a try.

The first was Welcome To My Nightmare, a 1975 concert filmed in Britain. Despite being “remastered,” the film quality was pretty grainy and at times downright terrible. While not a bad performance, its not exactly exciting either – in fact, some of it is downright corny. There are lots of dance numbers, and extras crowding the stage in goofy rubber monster masks. This stage show was considered an elaborate triumph at the time, but it’s not so impressive now. Also, this tour was the first without the original Alice Cooper group. The backing band, who play well (I think this is the same band Lou Reed used on his terrific live album Rock N Roll Animal from 1974), pretty much stay in the background and let Alice lead the show. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d recommend it. My favorite part – a British fan refers to the Coop as “the king of pop.”

Prime Cuts, a documentary from 1991, was the second DVD I watched. I found this one a great deal more enjoyable. This was a history of the Alice Cooper group from its early beginnings (first as The Spiders, then as The Nazz) up through their peak (when Alice Cooper was the name of the band, not just the singer), then through the solo years up to the then current early 90’s. It’s amusing to learn that the genesis of the original group was friends who were all long distance runners on their high school track team – yep, the group that had parents shocked and outraged in the 1970’s was started by clean cut athletes. There is a lot of great footage of the original band performing such classics as Levity Ball, I’m Eighteen, Black Ju Ju, School’s Out, and Billion Dollar Babies. The original Alice Cooper band was terrific and visually fun to watch as well - where is a concert video of this lineup? Alice shares many stories about the original band and what each member brought to the music, how he devised the “character” of Alice Cooper, plus old interviews and home movies are shared. He’s also very frank about his problems with alcohol, which eventually led to committing himself to an asylum. Once the solo years start things start to get less interesting musically, although he still released some decent material. Luckily, his late 80’s/early 90’s comeback doesn’t take up too much time – as nice as it was that Alice got some overdue recognition, the music he released then wasn’t very good. Throughout it all, the former Vincent Furnier comes off as a really nice guy, and you can’t help but have a bigger appreciation for what he and the original lineup did. Highly recommended to fans - or to anyone who might be interested in an unlikely group who really did change people’s perceptions of what rock n’ roll could encompass and achieve.