Alice Cooper

After the hit-packed Killer, Cooper used this next record to challenge his audience. "School's Out" is certainly the most played song of his oeuvre today, but the album itself is full of interesting curve balls -- Broadway, faux jazz and less hard rock than people were used to -- making this one of those Alice Cooper records that bears many repeated listenings.

The question before us is whether Alice Cooper is a threat to civilization itself or merely to
our beloved rock & roll. Both parents and kids commonly see Alice as eroding the former,
which they respectively deplore and celebrate. Alice is variously an actor, rocker, comic,
madman and exorcist, the culmination of rock's subversive tendencies. This is the
reputation he carefully nurtures. What School's Out confirms is what I have long... More >

With its all-time ugly vocal, kiddie chorus turned synthesizer, and crazy, dropped-out thrust, the title hit is as raw and clever as it gets, but this album is soundtrack. Some of it's even copped--with attribution, yet--from West Side Story. For a while I comforted myself with the thought that West Side Story is more a rock musical than Hair, at least in spirit. But the orchestral homages to Uncle Lennie ruin the effect. (Grade - B-)