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. 

Motley Crue - Motley Crue

Provenance: Honestly, no idea.

Review: Where does one start with this curio? Perhaps a little context would be helpful.

Until about 1993, US MTV viewers had to put up with a lot of hairspray and decadence. Motley Crue (I'm not bothering with the umlaut, guys), bolstered by albums such as Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain and Dr Feelgood, were one of the earliest and most successful acts from the glam era. They were rich, famous and cool - and then grunge happened.

Unlike the fabled Punk Year Zero that supposedly reset the clock in the UK (lol, no, Genesis still sold bucketloads in the wake of Lydon, Strummer et al), the rise of alt-rock in the US genuinely swept away the spandex brigade almost wholesale. A few of the big boys endured - Guns N Roses were dangerous and credible, Bon Jovi erred close enough to blue-collar likeability - but some, like Motley Crue, didn't. That's not to say that sales entirely dried up, but suddenly they and their peers were chasing a zeitgeist rather than creating one. Bands scrambled to appear hip to the new scene, with Warrant, KISS and Def Leppard all coming out with albums that strove to appear edgier. What it did was make them look desperate. And thus we have Motley Crue, erstwhile-hair farmers reinvented as 1994 alt-metal tyros.

The most immediate difference to that which came before are the vocals - and it's an improvement. I have never been the biggest Motley Crue fan due in large part to Vince Neil's unappealing hooting and yelping. Given the direction the band took here, had he not left in 1992 Neil would've been frankly floundering. John Corabi's grittier, more soulful delivery is a good fit for a collection of tracks that is more mid-paced and downbeat than anything Crue had hitherto deigned to release.

However - the big problem here is that the whole album feels like an exercise in pastiche, as if someone had tasked a competent band to produce an ersatz version of what was lighting up the charts at the time. 'Power to the Music', the opener, is the sound of a group that grasps what's happening at surface level without any deeper level of understanding, and it's frankly laughable to hear good-time hedonists Motley Crue suddenly develop an urge to tackle paedophilia ('Uncle Jack'). That's some dark fucking shit bro!

The missteps continue. In the space of three songs they've used that modish compressed voice effect you hear on Soundgarden's 'Spoonman" (also 1994) twice, although in the second instance it feels less egregious because 'Hooligan's Holiday' is a legitimately fun track, sounding like something that could've adorned Skid Row's Slave to the Grind (which is a compliment, trust me). It mixes tempos and dynamics nicely, a punchy head-nodder that overcomes its ridiculous lyrical content with ease. Meanwhile, 'Misunderstood' threatens to actually lift proceedings through a change of pace and a welcome injection of subtlety. It starts off like the kind of woozy, dreamy ballad that Aerosmith could do and Corabi even sounds like Steve Tyler for the first half of the song. Sadly, as with everything else on Motley Crue any hint of a good idea is bludgeoned to oblivion, in this instance by kicking it up into generic heavy 'rawk'. About the only time Crue break outside of the cage is 'Loveshine', which sounds appealingly like a Tesla ballad. It's light and breezy, and over in two and a half minutes on an album that clocks in at over an hour in run time.

There's one more highlight to come - 'Poison Apples', which sounds like a bouncy, slick Quireboys boogie, albeit with the chorus to the Manic Street Preachers' 'You Love Us' (yes, really) grafted on top. But I like that song, and I like the Quireboys, so it's a winner for me. It's the last time Crue keep things relatively carefree; from then on, signores Mars, Lee and Sixx furrow their brows and do theur best to appear pissed off with the world. And it's boring! It's fucking boring! And that's the biggest sin of all. Motley Crue can be many things - frothy, boneheaded, insubstantial, idiotic, annoying - but not dull. Yet here I am, anxiously awaiting the little zip noise that signals that the CD is over. 'Til Death Do Us Part', 'Welcome to the Numb' (really?), 'Smoke the Sky', 'Droppin' Like Flies', 'Driftaway' - all the different shades of shit are represented here. Call it what you will - a crawl, a plod, a drag - but the last twenty-five minutes of this already flawed attempt at relevance are awful, a purgatory that not even hair metal fans should be subjected to.

It's got its defenders. It's got those who think that it should've been released under a name other than Motley Crue (one I'm sympathetic with). Largely, though, it's got those who saw it on the shelves or caught 'Hooligan's Holiday' on MTV and responded with a collective shrug. I have now listened to Motley Crue twice over the course of two days, hoping that spending a little quality time with the album would reveal its hidden charms to me. That didn't happen. Ultimately I ended up not giving a pig's eye one way or the other. Welcome to the numb, I guess.

A Bit of What You Fancy - Quireboys

Provenance: It's 2002 and I'm at the Bournemouth International Centre to see a package tour called Monsters of Rock. Here's the bill - Dogs D'Amour, Quireboys, Thunder, Alice Cooper. Sensory overload for a seventeen year-old.

In order to steel myself for the gig I had downloaded one or two songs by each artist that wasn't Alice Cooper. If I recall my Napster library correctly, it was 'Love Walked In' by Thunder, 'Spooks' by Dogs D'Amour and 'Hey You' by Quireboys. "Hey You" was my favourite of the bunch.

Every band was on top form that night, and I subsequently saw a couple more Monsters of Rock bills at the BIC. Quireboys would later play a local show at Poole venue Mr Kyps, where my friend Steve almost ran over Spike in the car park. For a few years Quireboys - along with Thunder, it should be said - seemed permanent fixtures on the dad rock festival circuit. Always in the same early afternoon slot, Quireboys would be there to gin up bleary-eyed campers with their energy and bonhomie, and it invariably did the trick. Fine band, and one Christmas I got given A Bit of What You Fancy and Bitter, Sweet and Twisted.

Review: I was five when this came out in 1990 but from what I could tell, a fair bit of noise surrounded Quireboys' entry onto the scene. From what I can gauge, these guys were either the UK's answer to Guns N Roses, the UK's answer to Aerosmith or the inheritors of the Faces' good-time raunch 'n' roll mantle. For once, unlike every band that farts out a blues lick and gets named the spiritual successor to Led Zeppelin, I can hear it.

If I had to plump for the closest analogue, it would however be the Faces. Whilst GNR and Aerosmith strove to project an edgy image, Quireboys give off more of a loveable ragamuffin vibe. The impression given is not so much that of a bunch of degenerates shooting smack in an alley with underage girls, rather a cheery mob roistering their way through a bunch of boozers. It's a good look too, as whenever the hairspray merchants in the US tried to act tough it pushed a risible situation into flat out absurdity. Quireboys, on the other hand, sound credible as toerags.

The Faces comparisons also hold up vocally. Spike has an appealingly raspy voice (one that Classic Rock magazine would no doubt call "whiskey soaked") that seems on the verge of giving out at any moment. It's firmly in Rod Stewart territory and is probably the ace in the hole when it comes to Quireboys' overall sound. It's testament to Spike's gritty delivery that a song about fleeing the depredations of Deep South slavery ('Whippin' Boy') by an all-white London band is delivered with a degree of sensitivity and emotional engagement, though I doubt such a song would be attempted almost thirty years later (rightly so).

"Whippin' Boy" is a rare pensive moment on A Bit of What You Fancy - the rest of the album is pretty much given over to rowdiness, sentimentalism and bacchanalia. Case in point - after "Whippin' Boy" you get the most gloriously on-the-nose track of the lot, 'Sex Party'. It's got about two and a half chords and the subject matter is exactly how you imagine it to be. Here's the chorus - 'Sex party / Sex party / You're all invited to a - / Sex party!'. Bob Dylan this ain't, though bizarrely both Dylan and Quireboys have a drummer in common. In the same vein you've got drinking anthem '7 O'Clock', 'Misled' and the superior 'Hey You', their highest charting single.

What I haven't mentioned so far is that despite an utter lack of originality, it's all great fun - and by and large, extremely catchy. A Bit of What You Fancy could certainly be described as mood music, if the mood you'd sought to capture is a rowdy night out, various parts ribaldry, mischief and misjudgement. Quireboys most certainly do a decent line when it comes to whipping out the onion, though 'I Don't Love You Anymore' teeters ever so fucking close to the acceptable line for schmaltz, with it's sighing regret and saccharine string arrangements. Incidentally, this does sound a fair bit like the kind of crap balladeering that Aerosmith have got down to a fine art. Both ''Sweet Mary Ann' and 'Roses and Rings', kissing cousins to Rod Stewart solo efforts like 'Maggie May', are more effective.

A Bit of What You Fancy doesn't come close to pushing the envelope, nor does it set out to be a startling artistic statement. It is, however, a fine collection of original songs played with heart and gusto. Who would like this? Well, if you can stomach the filigree of late 1980s music production, if bands like the Faces, the Rolling Stones and even Status Quo float your boat, you should give Quireboys a bash. As a bonus, the whole band seems to have adopted Keef's raffish Artful Dodger look too, which I find agreeably matched to their music. Give it a go - this winking little slice of audio debauchery might just be *puts on sunglasses like Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami* a bit of what you fancy...