Alice Cooper: Easy Action

Alice Cooper: Easy Action

1970

Straight Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1.  Mr. & Misdemeanor  2. Shoe Salesman  3. Still No Air  4. Below Your Means  5. Return of the Spiders  6. Laughing at Me  7. Refrigerator Heaven  8. Beautiful Flyaway  9. Lay Down and Die, Goodbye



It's weird...Out of all the musicians that were so vital in shaping my longtime love of rock music as a kid, Alice Cooper is the one I probably listen to the least now...I don't really know why...I always enjoy it when it's on and it has all the right ingredients, but for some reason I only own a couple of his records now...Maybe I find his discography daunting at this point, maybe it's the lingering stench of hair metal from the "Trash" days, who knows...I didn't start the Friday Night Record Party to answer questions...I started it to give me something to do at the computer besides wanking it to pron all day...

 Wankity wank wank...

The reason I fell so deeply in love with Alice Cooper 100% originates from the 1986 videocassette release "Alice: Cooper the Nightmare Returns"...



This thing blew my head off the hinges when I first saw it back in the 80's...I was a weird kid who always loved horror movies and other morbid shit, so this was manna from heaven for me...Among the indelible images that stuck with me for a lifetime...Alice impaling a cameraman with a mic-stand, Alice getting his head chopped off in a guillotine, Alice wiping his ass with money, and last but certainly not least, Alice building a robot and then fighting it...

 Hard not to love...

So I was a humongous Alice fan growing up...I thought I had heard it all, but one day in the early 90's, my friend Cory brought me this weird, old Alice Cooper cd with a bright red cover called  "Easy Action."

 "Refrigerator Heaven"? What the hell was this?  I borrowed it for about a month, played it about a zillion times and returned it, proclaiming it was one of the coolest things I've ever heard and decided it was the best Alice Cooper album...Then I didn't hear it again for about 20 years...

I was at FYE a year or so ago and saw a vinyl copy of "Easy Action" in the used record bin for just a few bucks, so I was happy to relieve them of it...I couldn't remember a lot about it, other than I had once liked it...

Listening back to it, I think I may have overstated its stature as a "great" album...It's certainly good and it's beyond great at times, but it has its problems...

The biggest problem boils down to two songs, really...Unfortunately those two songs take up over a third of the album..."Below Your Means" starts off promising enough with a moody, dry psychedelic first section that's within spitting distance of prime Alice, but regrettably gets bogged down in one of the most boring long jams I've ever heard...It doesn't help that it fades out over two full minutes (with about a minute of it almost inaudible)...Drying Paint Rock...

"Lay Down and Die, Goodbye" sounds a little more interesting to my ears, but it's even longer and probably more likely to drive the average listener out of their mind...This time it's not so much a jam as 7 and a half minutes of random noises and feedback...Or  "filler" as it's more commonly known...

Without those two (loooong) songs, they would have been left with an ep, but what a killer EP!!

The remainder is a very interesting album that's worth a listen to any die-hard Alice Cooper fan, and to oddball music enthusiasts in particular...I find this period of their work the most interesting, because it's not just hard rock or ballads, there's a whole wide, weird world of grimy and mind-bending music here, from English music hall to freak-wad noise-rock...There are also some excellent rockers that foreshadow "Love it to Death," most notably the cryogenic blues-rock of "Refrigerator Heaven," but to me, the album's real strength lies in the pair of fluffy soft-rockers...

"Shoe Salesman" is maybe one of my favorite songs by the band...Whimsical, Beatlesqe country rock with a creepy, blood-freezing undercurrent...Sort of a cross between "Rubber Soul" and a heroin withdrawal nightmare...Also in this vein, is "Beautuful Flyaway" which is a dead-ringer for "Face to Face" era Kinks, which always a good thing for me...Happy, plastered, music hall that's notable for not being sung by Vince Furnier...Instead guitarist Michael Bruce takes the mic, and does a wonderful job...It's probably worth a mention that Michael went on to be the lead singer for the short lived Alice Cooper Band reunion "Battle Axe" by the Billion Dollar Babies...

Actually, it's not worth mentioning at all, I just wanted to post that cool album cover...

Anyway, think of "Easy Action" as a mighty fine EP by Alice Cooper, with two lousy bonus tracks at the end of each side, and you'll enjoy this (if hard art-rock is your thing)...

Anyway, let's check out "Shoe Salesman" by Alice Cooper...Enjoy...