Trash - Alice Cooper

 

Provenance: By the time I bought Trash I was already a big Alice fan. I was deep in the Cooperverse.

I will say this, though - I vividly recall hearing the song 'Trash' for the first time at my friend Chris' house. It was Chris who pointed out that Jon Bon Jovi provides backing vocals, and delivers the immortal line "If my love was like a lollipop, would you lick it?", on the bantering outro. Odd, as said outro is structured as a dialogue between Coop and Jovi.

Review: There's a time and place to revel in sumptuary; likewise there exists occasion to ponder the sublime. And then, there are those instances in life where all you want to do is yell along to "And when you hit the sheets you just turn to - trrrrraaasssshh!".

In many ways, this imperative sums up much of the appeal of Trash. The verses to each song range from the catchy to the workaday but essentially act as a series of previews to some absolutely huge choruses. That's what Trash is - an album of massive choruses. There are ten songs here, and I could sing you eight of the choruses, easily, before giving this its most recent spin.

The act of listening again has really driven home this point - Trash is one of the lesser-played Cooper albums in my collection, and I reckon I haven't listened to it straight through for maybe three years, at least. So, the first twenty to forty seconds of every song bamboozle me, and then the chorus hits and I go "ah! It's this one!". Rinse and repeat nine times; if nothing else, Trash has been a gentle ride featuring a succession of miniature surprises.

Now, I say this process happened nine times, because there's no mistaking opener 'Poison', a song so ubiquitous that even non-rock fans have a fighting chance of knowing it. I certainly heard 'Poison' more than once at Student Union nights. It has an instantly identifiable riff, but - whisper it - I find 'Poison' a little pedestrian. Without totting up the figures I believe I've seen Alice Cooper more than any other live act, and common to all these gigs is my impression that the band drag the tempo of 'Poison' somewhat. But upon review, nope, it really is this plodding. But - crucially - it does have a big dumb chorus!

As, indeed, do the next three tracks - 'Spark In the Dark' (maybe my favourite?), the poppy 'House of Fire' and the bratty 'Why Trust You' - as decent a sequence in the mature (a term I use advisedly where hard rock is concerned) Cooper oeuvre as you'll find. However, because this is hair metal era Alice we have two ballads, 'Only My Heart Talkin'' (featuring Aerosmith's Steven Tyler doing that weird 'bum-de-duppa-do-way' scat that I can't unhear) and 'Hell Is Living Without You'. I suppose you needed a cigarette lighter moment or two, despite the air being freighted with Aquanet hairspray, and these are...serviceable, I suppose. By the books, you could say.

Probably the biggest shame is that Trash cleaves so closely to hair metal tropes, including the key change emotional bump (key changes that present-day Alice probably regrets now, given his limited vocal prowess) and squealy guitar soloing. Chief among the disappointments are the lyrics. If Last Temptation is his grunge-light, Mephistophelean Christian rock record (and a very good one too) and Brutal Planet is his belated stab at high-alienation nu-metal (also pretty good), then Trash is his "I'm a good sex man" album. The late 1980s was rotten with performance braggadocio, replete with fire/desire rhyme schemes and almost-threatening promises about what's gunna go down when the bedroom door closes. No exception here.

At least he doesn't quite reach the nadir of 'Feed My Frankenstein', which is on successor album Hey Stoopid (still a great song in spite of its clunky single-entendre lyric sheet). I only highlight lyrics because, once upon a time, Alice Cooper was such a good and strange writer; think of the ground covered on Killer, Billion Dollar Babies or, hell, the first Alice Cooper solo (as opposed to the band) record Welcome To My Nightmare. Cooper is credited on every song - but then again, bar 'Only My Heart Talkin'', is Desmond Child. Now, Child's facility with writing slick, radio-friendly hits is unquestionable - his track record speaks for itself - but by being able to bottle a type of rock 'n' roll everyman appeal, he smooths away the interesting, quirky aspects of the performer's art. Perfect for Bon Jovi and Ricky Martin, with whom he's had huge success, but his contributions dilute the essence of artists like Alice Cooper. 

Saying that, what did Cooper himself have in the tank at this stage? 'Poison' signalled a career resurrection of a kind for, after all.

In summation, then; if you're after the wild and woolly Alice Cooper of the Alice Cooper Band days, you're not going to find it here. Not a jot. Outside of muttered sexual imprecations you're barely able to detect the shock-rocker Coop who scared a bunch of Top of the Pops-viewing grannies in the 1970s. What you will find is well-executed, punchy and extremely catchy hair metal, and I will say, probably at the top end of the hair metal spectrum in terms of quality. It's lightweight fun, but so what? Dump your brain for forty minutes and rock out, my dude. 

Greatest Hits - Molly Hatchet

 

Provenance: Does anyone recall that you could message people you were torrenting from in Napster? Some guy in the USA was downloading an Alice Cooper track from my account (this was around the turn of the twenty-first century, kids), and asked me what else I listened to. 

Being a mere stripling I didn't have a huge amount to say, but on the basis of my tastes he recommended three acts to me; Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and Molly Hatchet. I downloaded tracks from all three - 'Free For All', 'Old Time Rock 'N' Roll' and 'Flirtin' With Disaster' (a process that took about two days).

The Molly Hatchet track, with its twisty turnarounds and twin-lead breaks, was the standout. Evidently I couldn't shut up about 'em, because my girlfriend at the time bought me this - Molly Hatchet's Greatest Hits - for Christmas!

Review: Molly Hatchet, what a band.

I went to see a version of them with one original member (very good, by the way). They still tour today with zero original members. They have a mortality rate higher than Hot Shots: Part Deux, the Hatchet lead singer position akin to that of the drum stool in Spinal Tap. The Frank Frazetta album covers promise blood-soaked heavy metal, but what you get is southern-fried boogie. Bobby Ingram has two haircuts.

Yet, and yet, and yet - on the evidence of Greatest Hits, Molly Hatchet absolutely smoke ass. They're a southern rock band alright, lyrics replete with tall tales of desperadoes, whiskey drinkers and bush-dwellin 'gators - but a pretty heavy one, leaning more towards the Blackfoot end of the spectrum than, say, Lynyrd Skynyrd. (On the basis of their first three albums alone, Skynyrd should be considered one of the great classic rock acts, full stop. Up there with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. I'm being serious.) The riffs are bluesy but beefed-up, solos are flashy and trim, and selling all this is a whole load of cornpone aggrandisement about southron life.

There are two covers here, the first being a pretty good version of the Allman Brothers' 'Dreams I'll Never See'. I may even prefer it to the rather churchy original. The other is a  superb live version of cowboy saga 'Edge of Sundown', which was originally a Danny Joe Brown Band number (DJB was the singer of Molly Hatchet, quit due to diabetes, released a solo record and rejoined two years later). Two of the four songwriters were in Molly Hatchet at one point or another, but frankly, having been in the same room as them for two hours I may have briefly been a member.

That leaves ten joints of pure Hatchetry, and they're all pretty strong. You've got songs about the wayward town floozy ('Shake the House Down'), a thinly-veiled car-as-metaphor-for-woman stomper ('Ragtop Deluxe'), a swaggering number about drinking too much ('Whiskey Man') and so forth. Without listening to a single note of music, on the basis of these song titles alone try imagining what they sound like, and I guarantee you're pretty much on the money. The only element you might not have considered is Brown's quirk of whistling the guitar solo in, like he's directing a sheepdog. 

Now, 'Gator Country' is a song that has taken a few years to work its charms on me, but I now fully appreciate it. Virtually every southern rock band does a song about how cool it is to be from the south, or if not, they've recorded its related cousin, having a pop against critics. Skynyrd did it. Charlie Daniels did it. Drive By-Truckers did a whole album about it. In many ways Molly Hatchet, natives of northern Florida, outflank everyone on 'Gator Country' by picking off nearby states (and their associated musicians) and bodying them one-by-one. Nothing like a bit of internecine cattiness, eh? In fact, 'Gator Country' is almost the complete inverse of the Charlie Daniels' band earlier number 'The South's Gonna Do It', virtually namechecking every musician that Daniels saw fit to praise. (Daniels later expressed resentment that the Ku Klux Klan used 'The South's Gonna Do It' on radio commercials - that such a thing existed is, frankly, sad and bizarre.)

Speaking of southern rock tropes - ever since 'Free Bird' it feels like every southern band (bar, perhaps, ZZ Top - but are they really southern rock? Answers on a postcard...) feels the imperative to write The Big One, a lengthy song that shows off their chops. Molly Hatchet are no exception, and it comes in the form of album closer 'Fall of the Peacemakers'. A nice enough tune with a fair sentiment alright, but after forty minutes of shit-kickin' and raising hell, it feels like a slightly anaemic way to bring proceedings to an end. I just want one more whammer-jammer about some narrow-eyed dude living outside of the law, y'know?

Listen, if you like hokum about bounty hunters and bar brawls, you're gonna lap this up. If you're seeking musical complexity and refined sentiment, it ain't here, hoss. Good drivin' music. Good grillin' music. Good for any activity where an apostrophe suffices in the present continuous tense. Hellllllll yeah!!!