Tag: Dick Wagner

You Picked It! – Alice Cooper – ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ (1973) – Album Review

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Alright…You Picked It! This one started out close, but one ended up blowing away the rest. Another one had a late batch of votes, but wasn’t enough to get close to the winner. The winner for this month’s picks ended up being Alice Cooper’s ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ and I am real excited about this one. Here are the results.

  1. Alice Cooper – ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ – 10 votes
  2. Rolling Stones – ‘Sticky Fingers – 6 votes
  3. Elton John – ‘Captain Fantastic’ – 2 votes
  4. David Bowie – ‘Diamond Dogs’ – 2 votes
  5. Led Zeppelin – ‘II’ – 2 Votes

Thanks to all for participating. The January choices will be up on Saturday! And the choices are all now from my collection and the next one will be some of the biggest albums of the 80’s. Hopefully you can help me decide which one I should review.

ALICE COOPER – ‘BILLION DOLLAR BABIES’ (1973):

I’ve been wanting to tackle an Alice Cooper album so I am glad this one won the vote. It is Alice’s 6th studio album and Bob Ezrin was still at the helm. Being a Kiss fan, having Bob as producer is a pretty big deal and I could hear a lot of Bob’s influence in the music as there is a lot on here that Kiss tried with Destroyer such as orchestration, sound effects and other magical Bob Ezrin inputs. I’m not Bob is the reason this album is so good, but it did go to #1 in both the UK and the US and sold over 1,000,000 copies giving it platinum status. Who am I kidding, it isn’t Bob that made this album #1 it is strictly Alice Cooper and this amazing band which includes Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith.

The album was recorded in both Connecticut and in London. Band member, Glen Buxton, was sick throughout the sessions as he was suffering from pancreatitis brought on by abusive alcohol consumption. Guitarists Mick Mashbir, Dick Wagner (Kiss ghost guitarist) and the great Steve “the Deacon” Hunter who handled the guitar solos on 5 songs and pedal steel guitar on the opening track. The album was finished and released on February 25, 1973 and helped take Alice Cooper to a whole different level of success. The song is so good, that 4 of the songs are still played regularly in his live sets even today.

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Kiss – “Beth” – 7″ Single (The Kiss Review Series)

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I’m always out searching for Kiss music that I don’t have on vinyl and right now that is mostly singles. The latest time I was out digging, I came across a 7″ Single for the song “Beth” off their 1976 classic ‘Destroyer’. The original single for this album was “Detroit Rock City” as the A-Side and “Beth” as the B-Side. When that went out to the radio stations, the DJ’s ended playing “Beth” which quickly became the most requested songs on a lot of stations.

After that, the decision was made to reissue the single with “Beth” as the A-Side and “Detroit Rock City” as the B-Side. That is the copy I have. It was released in August 1976. Now, my version I found doesn’t have a picture sleeve as shown as the header. I used that to make the post more enticing. My version actually just came in a plain white sleeve but the original at least would’ve had the Casablanca Sleeve that would’ve looked something like the above picture…If I find any singles out there with that sleeve I will buy it (regardless if it is Kiss or not just so I have the correct one).

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Alice Cooper – ‘Guilty/King of the Silver Screen Tour’ (1977) – Tour Program

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In my crate digging, I keep running in to Tour Books and of course, I keep buying them because I think they are cool time capsules of a band. This time around, I found 2 Alice Cooper Tour Books. And these are vintage as they were both from the 70’s and they look it. The first one we have here is from Alice’s biggest and best album, ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’, from 1975. The next one up is the Tour Book for the Guilty Tour also known as King of the Silver Screen Tour which began on June 19, 1977 at Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim, California and ended on August 30, 1977 at McNichols Sports Arena, Denver, Colorado

The Band had a cast of characters and included the following host of people:

  • Alice Cooper
  • Steve Hunter – Guitar
  • Dick Wagner – Guitar
  • Prakash John – Bass
  • Fred Mandel – Keyboards
  • Whitey Glan – Drums

The tour was in support of the Lace and Whisky album and featured a stage set designed as a giant TV. The TV had slits in the screen where Cooper and his dancers jumped in and out along to filmed choreographed sequences during the songs. They even went so far as to have hilarious mock commercials screened in between some songs. When you go see Alice Cooper you definitely get a show!

The average set list on the tour was as follows:

  1. Under My Wheels
  2. Billion Dollar Babies
  3. I’m Eighteen
  4. Sick Things
  5. Is It My Body
  6. Devil’s Food
  7. The Black Widow
  8. You and Me
  9. Only Women Bleed
  10. Unfinished Sweet
  11. Escape
  12. I Love the Dead
  13. Go to Hell
  14. Wish You Were Here
  15. I Never Cry
  16. It’s Hot Tonight
  17. Lace and Whiskey
  18. King of the Silver Screen
  19. School’s Out (Encore)

Are you ready to see the pictures? Well of course you are…And remember this is Alice Cooper and that is what you get in these pictures…a lot of Alice…

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Alice Cooper – ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ Tour (1975) – Tour Program

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic31 Comments

In my crate digging, I keep running in to Tour Books and of course, I keep buying them because I think they are cool time capsules of a band. This time around, I found 2 Alice Cooper Tour Books. And these are vintage as they were both from the 70’s and they look it. The first one we have here is from Alice’s biggest and best album, ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’, from 1975. The Tour began on March 21, 1975, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, making its way across the States and even in to Europe where it ended on September 17 in Antwerp, Belgium.

The Band had a cast of characters and included the following host of people:

  • Alice Cooper
  • Steve Hunter – Guitar
  • Dick Wagner – Guitar
  • Prakash John – Bass
  • Jozef Chirowski – Keyboards
  • Whitey Glan – Drums
  • Vincent Price – Spider Voice
  • Sheryl Goddard – Ethyl
  • Robyn Blythe – Bat Woman
  • Gene Montoya – Voodoo Man
  • Uchi Sugiyama – Frog Man

Yes, it is a cast as Alice doesn’t just put on a concert, nope! He puts on a show. A creep show and this one is all about his nightmares. But the concert is always important and the set list, on average, looked something like this…

  1. Welcome to My Nightmare
  2. Years Ago
  3. No More Mr. Nice Guy
  4. Years Ago
  5. Billion Dollar Babies
  6. Years Ago
  7. I’m Eighteen
  8. Years Ago
  9. Some Folks
  10. Cold Ethyl
  11. Only Women Bleed
  12. Devil’s Food
  13. The Black Widow
  14. Steven
  15. Escape
  16. School’s Out
  17. Encore: Department of Youth
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Kiss – ‘Revenge’ (1992) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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The lack of success for the band’s last album, ‘Hot in the Shade’, had them at a crossroads again as to what to do. They were asked to record a song for Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey in February of 1991, so they brought Bob Ezrin back to record it although Gene was a little hesitant about it after the debacle of ‘Music from the Elder’. But they recorded that song, which was “God Gave Rock And Roll To You II”, and then nothing for awhile. Paul was writing songs with various people, Gene was writing with Bob Dylan (sort of – you can read about that in The Vault series), and then the tragedy of Eric Carr happened. As we discussed in the last post, Eric had heart cancer and died on November 24, 1991 and he had been sick for some time. It was a dark day in Kisstory.

Eric Singer was brought in as the drummer full time now and Kiss went back in the studio in December 1991 with Bob Ezrin back at the helm as the producer probably in part that the Bill & Ted song did so well. The band sought help from an old friend at this time to help with the songwriting. That old friend was Vinnie Vincent. Actually, I think Vinnie reached out to them, but it doesn’t matter. Vinnie had turned over a new leaf and wrote some great songs with both Gene and Paul. And then Vinnie turned back in to Vinnie and tried to renegotiate a contract with them, sued the band and then lost. And Vinnie was again on bad terms with the band. Oh well, at least they tried. There was another Kiss connection on this album as the boys from the band Black ‘N Blue were brought in to help with backing vocals. They would be Jaime St. James and Tommy Thayer. Tommy is now the current Kiss guitarist for the band. This brings the count to 7 Kiss members that worked on the album…Gene, Paul, Eric S., Eric C., Bruce, Tommy and Vinnie. Pretty cool!

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