Rock Muppets

I'm thrilled about the new Muppets show coming to TV this fall, and of course I'm hoping they'll continue to have metal guest appearances--Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne and Dave Grohl are among the headbangers who've performed with Kermit's gang in the past. Maybe this time they'll even create a metal muppet, something they've never done in the past (as far as I've known). But two hard rock themed performances come close.

"ZZ Blues" is a catchy blues-rock song lamenting the lack of z-words, performed by ZZ Top-inspired Muppets. Whoever put this together was clearly an old school fan--notice how the song plays on the band's blues-based '70s tracks and not their more popular synth-heavy '80s hits. The green screen background suggests every generic '70s rock TV studio performance, and the creators even got the beardless drummer right. "ZZ Blues" is as worthy of the Top as "Haw-haw-haw" and the famous hand gesture.



"Rebel L" honors Billy Idol as deftly as "ZZ Blues" gets ZZ Top, with a "Rebel Yell" parody that chronicles a renegade letter making noise outside the Idol Muppet's house. I'd love to know how many kids learned what a rebel was from this video, or bothered their parents by reenacting the events. Bonus points for being the only '80s music video I can think of where the cops are as badass as the singer and the title characer.

Alice Cooper, "Pretty Ballerina"

The Left Banke's Michael Brown, who died last week at age 65, wrote two songs that everyone should know--"Walk Away Renée", his biggest hit, and "Pretty Ballerina", my personal favorite and a song I've loved ever since seeing Eels cover it ages ago. It's not heavy by any means, but it's eerie enough for Alice Cooper to cover it, which he did beautifully on Dirty Diamonds ten years ago. He honors the baroque-pop of the original surprisingly well, and even some of the prettiest singing he's ever done provides creeps, like a G-rated David Lynch movie. If that pretty ballerina will give Alice Cooper a date, there must be something off about her.

For Birthday Boy Rifkin

For Birthday Boy Rifkin

1. The Jesus Lizard, "Boilermaker"
2. Shining, "I Won't Forget"
3. Blur, "There's No Other Way"
4. Janet Jackson, "Rhythm Nation"
5. Alice Cooper, "Clones (We're All)"
6. AC/DC, "Riff Raff"
7. Q-Tip, "Move"
8. Pailhead, "I Will Refuse"
9. Goatwhore, "Apocalyptic Havoc"
10. Marsha Hunt, "(Oh, No! Not) The Beast Day"
11. Stevie Wonder, "That Girl"
12. Squeeze, "Goodbye Girl"
13. Tinie Tempah, "Pass Out"
14. Shuggie Otis, "Strawberry Letter 23"
15. Killing Joke, "Requiem"
16. Bill Withers, "Grandma's Hands"
17. David Axelrod, "The Human Abstract"
18. Living Colour, "Solace of You"
19. Ozzy Osbourne, "No More Tears"

Happy birthday, JR.

Monster Dog

You always learn something new at the Lucky 13 Saloon. The other night, my friends and I were admiring the promising title of the film Monster Dog (set to the Lucky 13's jukebox soundtrack, of course) when we were startled to see that the film's star looked just like the former Vincent Furnier.

It turns out that in 1984, in the depths of his commercial and artistic decline (before his comeback), Alice Cooper starred in a Spanish horror movie, as a rock star ("Vince Raven") dealing with a slew of, yes, monster dogs. To dedicate another sentence to the plot would give it more credit than it deserves, but it is a blast to watch Cooper, the film's sole good actor, ham it up among the b-special effects. He even gets a song, "Identity Crises," which proclaims "I've got an image out of control," as if anyone with a passing interest in this movie didn't already know that about Alice. But no matter how much he feels like "James Bond...Billy the Kid...Sherlock Holmes...Jack the Ripper," there's no escaping the fact that he's Alice, a first class rock star who shines in every role, even Monster Dog.

Back to School

Back to School

1. Brownsville Station, "Smokin' in the Boys Room"
2. Van Halen, "Hot for Teacher"
3. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, "School Days"
4. Chuck Berry, "School Days"
5. The Replacements, "Fuck School"
6. Nirvana, "School"
7. Kanye West, "School Spirit" 
8. Otis Redding, "Stay in School (Radio Spot)
9. "MC5, "High School"
10. James Brown, "Don't be a Dropout"
11. Lulu, "To Sir With Love" 
12. Rockpile, "Teacher Teacher"
13. The Smiths, "The Headmaster Ritual"
14. Fela Kuti, "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense"
15. Cheech and Chong, "Sister Mary Elephant"
16. Pink Floyd, "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)"
17. The Ramones, "Rock 'n' Roll High School"
18. Alice Cooper, "School's Out"

Alice Cooper, "Weclome to My Nightmare"

For Dick Wagner.

The Ungeziefer

"I've got a story that's scarier than anything you've ever heard."

I had barely known Mr. Thompson for a few hours. I still didn't really know anything about him, except that his daughter was in my class and I was in love with her. My friends and I were huddled up in our respective sleeping bags, reeking of campfire smoke and pretending to not be cold. We figured that after the grown up had left our tent we could talk about girls or play Truth or Dare, but until then we were telling variations of the same scary stories we'd been spinning over our last few years of camping trips.

Most of our stories were about serial killers or ghosts, and about a third of them ended with the storyteller abruptly grabbing someone else in the tent and screaming. None of our stories were scarier than the idea of four boys camping in West Virginia with an adult none of us knew particularly well, but we were all too young to realize that.

It was an elementary school version of the Fisherman's Argument ("I caught one this big." "Yeah, well mine was this big!"). Pulling from various sources--sometimes Alvin Schwartz, Goosebumps, Tales from the Crypt or someone's dad's Twilight Zone tapes--we'd tell each other the most horrifying stories we could come up with, each of us trying to be scarier than the previous narrator and braver than the other listeners. It wasn't something we consciously planned to do, just something that happened, as naturally as roasting s'mores, hiking up to the bald or Travis falling into the marsh. Little tests of bravery for a gang of prepubescent miscreants whom, as far as I knew, had never actually encountered the Mad Axeman or received a call that turned out to be coming from inside the house. But if any of us ever did, we would be prepared.

Daniel was smarter and more well-read than the rest of us, and his retelling of The Masque of the Red Death the year before had put me in permanent awe of him. But Travis' parents let him watch Child's Play and Nightmare on Elm Street, so there was no telling who would have the best stories. Jeff was too laid back to compete with the rest of us, but he seemed completely unaffected by our stories, pointing out to Travis that a serial killer's spirit actually couldn't inhabit a boy's Chucky doll, or correctly guessing that my protagonist was a ghost all along minutes before I got there. It was a game in itself to come up with something that could hold Jeff's attention and live up to his standards.

I hoped no one remembered that I'd already told the one about the aliens who wanted "to serve man" last year. Maybe I'd embellish the details this time, though that never seemed to help before. The more creative I would get with the plot, the less effective my stories would be. I could try the one about the bank robber who tried to sneak out of prison in a coffin, but Jeff was sure to know how that one ended.

"I've got a story that's scarier than anything you guys are talking about," Mr. Thompson said. I didn't even realize he'd been listening to us. "You're too young to know it now, but maybe when you're older you'll get into it."  

"Is it Edgar Allan Poe?" asked Daniel.

"Scarier than Poe."

Daniel, like the rest of us, wouldn't admit that anything scared him, but he was still willing to test Mr. Thompson.

"Is it Michael Crichton?"

"Scarier than Michael Crichton."

"It's not as scary as Freddy Krueger," said Travis.

Jeff, who had been quiet up until now, turned over and sat up in his sleeping bag, smiling at Travis. "I thought you said Freddy Krueger didn't scare you," he said. Jeff always had the right thing to say.

"Shut up, Jeff," said Travis.

I would have been happy to watch Jeff and Travis duke it out for a few minutes, but Mr. Thompson squashed the whole issue. "Different from Freddy Krueger," he stated. "Freddy Krueger's scary when you're a kid. This is something for grown ups."

"What is it?" I asked.

Actually, I wasn't sure I wanted Mr. Thompson to tell us what it was. I had hoped to stay up talking with my friends, but I did want to get at least some sleep. None of my friends' stories had ever given me nightmares before. Maybe grown up scary stories were different.

"I'll read just a little from the first page, because it's late and you guys have to go to bed," Mr. Thompson replied.

He opened the book, a small, white paperback that looked older than any of us. I tried to get a glimpse of it, but I couldn't make out the long word or the illustration on the cover. Mr. Thompson found the page and began to read.

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes."

Mr. Thompson closed the book. "That's all you get tonight," he said. "It's called The Metamorphosis. It's by a guy named Kafka, who lived a long time ago. Maybe you'll read the rest of it when you're older."

"Goodnight. Sleep well boys--I'll be in the other tent if you need anything."

Mr. Thompson climbed out and zipped up the tent from outside. We heard him walk away until the crickets drowned out his footsteps.

I didn't know what to say.

"Jeff, truth or dare," said Travis.

"Dare."

"I dare you to tell us who you like."

I was trying to remember everything Mr. Thompson had read to us. Was that really scarier than anything I'd ever heard? What had I missed? Was I going to suddenly get it later on in the night and be petrified? Was it going to take me years to understand what I had just heard? What had Mr. Thompson left out of the story? Maybe things got even worse for Gregor, but Mr. Thompson had known it would be too much for a bundle of fifth graders to handle.

I had already forgotten the name of the author. It felt like the moment when you're desperately trying to remember everything that happened in your dream, right when you're waking up and can already feel it evaporating. Had we really just heard that?

Jeff had gotten Daniel to admit he liked a girl he met at summer camp. Daniel swore us all to secrecy, but with Travis in the tent we all knew that everyone in school would know by fifth period Monday.

I wondered if the other guys had been scared. If they weren't, maybe they didn't want to admit it either, unable to let the adult know that we didn't understand what we had just heard.

I really wanted to read that book.

Alice Cooper, "Under My Wheels"

This is my favorite Alice Cooper song.



He wrote hit songs, which means he isn't considered as hip as his Detroit Rock City brethren like the Stooges or the MC5. But "Under My Wheels" proves that Alice was just as crucial in the rise of punk and metal, and that he rocked as hard as anyone else making music in the 70s.

There's a horn section, which usually dilutes rock 'n' roll into easy listening territory, but here it makes the song seem deadlier, giving Alice's rage the proto-Rocky Horror sensation of a musical going off the rails. Everyone from the New York Dolls to Rob Zombie would go on to write music in this vein, but when Alice is onstage, they're all still under his wheels.

Alice Cooper, "Elected"

"We hated politics, but the idea of Alice, the scourge of the entire world, being president was just too good," the former Vincent Furnier once said of "Elected."



Despite political leanings that would alienate many fans of his music (and a presence that would probably scare off most people he's voted for), Alice Cooper would make a great politician. He brought revolutionary ideas to the mainstream and kept them there. His business and leadership skills are unquestionable, and have kept him in the spotlight decades after his music stopped putting him there. Finally, no matter how much he asserts that he's a scourge and a party animal, we all know by now that he's actually charming and hard-working.

By Billion Dollar Babies, Alice had already written hits ("I'm Eighteen," "School's Out") but hadn't given up on his underground years, digging out a song from his undercooked debut ("Reflected," from Pretties for You) and drastically rewriting it for his new audience. "Elected" is funnier, sharper and catchier than the original, with the bombast of a stump speech and the bite of Detroit garage rock. Like any great presidential candidate, Cooper knew how to fire up his fan base ("And if I'm elected I promise the formation of a new party, a third party, the Wild Party!") and manipulate the media, filming a theatrical promotional video for "Elected" ten years before MTV launched. By the time the horns and piano kick in, I'm ready to put up signs and host phone banks.

Alice Cooper, "Is it My Body?"

Kim Gordon has an essay collection called Is it My Body? out now, released the same month that her ex-husband Thurston Moore named the Alice Cooper track as one of his 38 favorite songs.



It's a weird song for sure, not as well-remembered as "School's Out" or "No More Mr. Nice Guy." But I like how accidentally weird it is. After two poorly-received albums, Alice aimed for hits on Love it to Death, hiring producer Bob Ezrin and narrowing down the psychedelia of his earlier work. Yet even when he's trying to write a hit, he gives every verse a different vocal melody and sounds like he's made up the chorus on the spot. If he had been weird on purpose (like "Welcome to My Nightmare") or written a successful pop song (like "Poison,") I doubt Kim Gordon would have named her book after it.

A Band Called Death

Faithful readers here have probably seen quite a bit about Death, the Floridian death metal pioneers lead by the late Chuck Schuldiner. But before Scream Bloody Gore, and more impressively before the Ramones, there was another band called Death.



The earlier Death, a Detroit garage band from the '70s, star in the stellar documentary A Band Called Death, which is now streaming on Netflix Instant. The film has been getting positive comparisons to the Oscar-winning hit Searching for Sugar Man, but unlike Sixto Rodriguez, interest in Death had been noticeably picking up before the film's release. Seven songs from the band's unfinished first album were released on Drag City as ...For the Whole World to See, and Jack White cited Death as a influence in a New York Times article. The surviving members have even reunited for a few performances.

The fact is, as Henry Rollins, Alice Cooper, Questlove and Kid Rock all testify in A Band Called Death, that this is a band that deserves your ears. Songs like "Keep on Knocking," "Let the World Turn" and "Politicians in My Eyes" hint that the band could have found a place in history alongside fellow Motor City protopunks as Cooper, the Stooges and the MC5 had they just been able to stick around. In one scene of A Band Called Death, the musicians remember being offered a deal with Clive Davis at Columbia Records, on the condition that they change their name. The band turned it down, and we're left to wonder what could have been.

Motörhead, "(We Are) The Road Crew"

A guitar teacher friend of mine was telling me about a student who brought in "The Load-Out," Jackson Browne's interminable ode to his roadies that's best-known for the live version that works in Maurice Williams' doo-wop staple "Stay."

I can't tell why anyone likes this song. Its melody and arrangement are the worst of dad rock sap, making the Eagles sound like Alice Cooper. The lyrics are even worse, coming across like a third-rate, unintentionally funny "Turn the Page" (Jackson's noble roadies are "working for that minimum wage"--well, who's paying them that?) One can imagine Richard Pryor, whom Browne proudly claims to have "on the video," gagging in earshot of this tripe.



Thankfully, it took just a few years for someone else to give roadies the tribute that they deserve.



"(We Are) The Road Crew" was written in the studio in ten minutes and recorded almost as hastily. Guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clarke accidentally crashes into feedback halfway through the solo, but the band kept it in the studio version. Lemmy, a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd before he'd earned his metal god status, sounds like he's been itching to scream this one since his days of unpacking Hendrix's Fender. His restless delivery is perfect for the stories of Another Town, Another Place, Another Girl, Another Face, Another Truck, Another Race. As Mr. Kilmister remembers in his autobiography:

"One of our road crew cried when we first played that song for them. I'm not going to say who it was. We took the lot of them up to the studio one day and played them the track. And this one guy cracked and broke down right then and there. He was weeping, 'Oh, that's a great one. That's great.' It was really nice that it affected somebody that deeply. Bands as a rule don't treat their crews too well. I try to."

Alice Cooper, "I'm Eighteen"

There are two reasons why more music is written about adolescence than any other period in a human's life.

1. Being a teenager sucks, and like many horrendous things, it can inspire great art.
2. In general, teens have awful judgment. More than any other age group, they are likely to spend money on something targeted at them.

Therefore, an abundance of teen music exists, and the majority of it is garbage. Just when you're feeling less relatable than you ever have before again, the music, movie, tv, clothing and cigarette industries (and who knows what else, these days) are all lining up to relate to you. How does anyone ever find their Teenage Wasteland or Teenage Riot without gagging on all the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul being marketed at them?

Eternal teen Alice Cooper is one of the only artists to ever make being a teenager sound cool without romanticizing it. Bridging his early psychedelic era to his first success as a hard rock, glam, punk and metal pioneer, Alice sounds razor-pointed yet just as lost as the character he brings to life. "I'm eighteen and I don't know what I want," bad enough to say it twice in a row. It makes songs like "You're Sixteen" and "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" sound pretty silly.

A self-made antihero who once claimed he wanted to be Captain Hook to the Beatles' Peter Pan, Cooper was inspired to write "I'm Eighteen" by the US Government's policy of drafting kids who were still too young to vote (I like to think that "I'm Eighteen" played a part in passing the 26th Amendment, lowering voting age.) But Alice also knew, long before Tony Soprano, that an antihero is most relatable when he's vulnerable. "Eighteen/I get confused every day, Eighteen/I just don't know what to say Eighteen/I gotta get away...I'm eighteen and I like it," Cooper shouts to no one who believes him.

Alice didn't pretend that being eighteen was a blast, even in a delinquent way. Nor did he have any pretenses about knowing how all the kids felt. Instead, he gave us an honest, unsympathetic depiction of one of the worst years in anyone's life, something to enjoy and revisit long after the year itself.

Nine Inch Nails, "Everything"

"I'm happy with who I am now," the guy who named his first three albums Pretty Hate Machine, Broken and The Downward Spiral told Spin this month. "I feel fortunate to be where I am. We tried arranging the new songs with loud guitars, and it sounded false. Instead, we approached those old emotions in new ways that are subtler, and I think just as powerful."

It's the kind of answer people dread from their favorite artists. We often talk about how artists go bad once they get rich, sober up, get married and/or responsibly raise their kids--see Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica. We applaud the insatiable few artists who never settle down (Motörhead, Pantera, Matt Pike). We're happy when they make angry, angst-ridden art, even when it's at the expense of the artist's happiness, or worse, the artist's family and friends. We'd rather that bands never get rich, but we're OK if they die trying. 



A lot of people are going to hate "Everything" a single from Nine Inch Nails' awesome new album Hesitation Marks. It's in a major key, has a throbbing, invigorating beat and has the tightest vocal harmony that Trent Reznor has ever released.  I haven't been able to get it out of my head all week, and I hope it stays there. It makes me want to exercise, and I don't even like exercising. Then again, I didn't want to deal with Hurt, The Fragile, Survivalism or a Terrible Lie either.

Alice Cooper's Elvis Story

KISS, "Detroit Rock City"

The Motor City's influence on rock n' roll is unquestionable. The last 60 years of popular music are unthinkable without Motown, and with The Stooges, MC5, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent and even Grand Funk Railroad, Michigan's largest city almost had a monopoly on early '70s hard rock and proto-punk. But when I think of Detroit, the first thing that comes to mind is a group of headbanging New Yorkers singing its praises.



For a band that gets mocked for being so unabashedly commercial, "Detroit Rock City" is a pretty weird song. The album version starts with a prolonged intro of background noise, which is still the only part on Destroyer that I skip over, and it ends with a car crash sounds that is terrorizing for anyone who listens while driving. The song's title, one of the best things about it, gets left out of most of the choruses. "Detroit Rock City" doesn't even get KISS' standard structure (the verse-chorus-verse is twice disrupted by that awesome bridge) or subject matter (quick: name another KISS song that isn't about girls or being in a rock band.) For once, Gene Simmons sounds like he cares about playing bass. Ace Frehley, sometimes thought of as the band's only musician, plays it pretty safe during the solo.

Yet it sounds utterly great all together. KISS hadn't learned to stay in their comfort zone yet, and that innocence rewarded them with a stone cold classic, putting them in a league with Black Sabbath and Queen. But this is still KISS, and of course "Detroit Rock City" is best heard from the stage. I love this performance here, captured at the end of the film of the same name.



Listening to "Detroit Rock City" today, I'm reminded of a Bruce Campbell anecdote from a horror convention. During a Q & A, one attendee asked the lantern-jawed Evil Dead star if he had any advice for an aspiring B movie actor. "You don't aspire to be a B movie actor," said Campbell. "You aspire to be an A movie actor, and if you're lucky you end up in Z movies."

It's no secret that KISS wanted to the biggest band in the world, in particular the Beatles--four distinct rock star personalities, run by the guitarist and bassist, with occasional songwriting from the lead guitarist and a few songs written for the drummer to sing. Like everybody else, they didn't quite get there, and "Detroit Rock City" isn't the Beatles. KISS were trying to be an A band, and maybe they'll never be The Fab Four or The World's Greatest Rock N' Roll Band. But in "Detroit Rock City," they're The Hottest Band in the World, a truly incredible B band.

How Crazy is Too Crazy?

I saw Axl Rose perform twice this week--once in a club that Mungo Jerry is headlining next month, and again atop a sprawling, three-day music festival, which, as Chris Weingarten aptly put it, Axl could headline "if he was backed by a Discman and a sparkler."  The main tying factor between these shows was the pre-show discussions--how late would Axl be? Would he show up at all? Would he play for only 15 minutes? Maybe at midnight, if we were lucky?

Yet no one, even those who paid $150 to be in a 600-capacity room with a singular rock star, seemed frustrated. It was all part of the show, part of the crazy, wild experience that comes with following one of the most mythical artists of the past 30 years. If he was late (20 minutes the first night) or surprised us (early?! the second night?!), we got the Axl Experience. The course of true Axl never did run smooth.

Also this week, Dave Mustaine released Megadeth's 14th album, Super Collider, and ejected a fan in England with a series of homophobic taunts. His words weren't anything you wouldn't hear on any middle school playground in America. But coupled with Mustaine's past year of praising Rick Santorum, outing himself as a birther, denying both gay rights and evolution, and spouting that the Aurora shooting were staged by our President to pass gun laws, his banter emphasized his status as an utterly deplorable human being. And this week, Super Collider is on track to sell 30,000 copies, Megadeth's lowest first-week numbers in decades.

Super Collider also received poor reviews, but that didn't stop Countdown to Extinction, which was a rightful smash and is now a metal classic, 20 years later. Metalheads, except for the ones who also write, famously don't pay attention to reviews anyway. But nobody wants to buy Megadeth albums anymore because Dave Mustaine is crazy. He has a supremely loyal fanbase, some of us whom have picked up the previous thirteen albums through artistic missteps, the advancement of file-sharing and even Mustaine's own horrific behavior. All of his most misguided and malicious nonsense is separable from the perfect thrash metal masterpiece he gave us in the '90s. But with his God-fearing preaching and conspiracies showing up in his lyrics and stage banter, fewer and fewer people want to support him. Every time I see him talk about politics, I half-expect him to keel over like the William Jennings Bryan character in Inherit the Wind.

But why is it this way? Why is it still OK to like one inflammatory, redheaded metal icon and not the other?* Why is Axl's use of the word "faggot" attributed to white trash ignorance and mental illness, but Mustaine's is attributed to homophobia? Because Axl performed with Elton John at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert? Because he's a sexually abused child who doesn't know any better? Because, unlike Mustaine, he doesn't have the pretenses of being a Christian? Because his music is more popular than Dave Mustaine's? Even watching the videos above, two shots of great metal frontmen going off on fans, one of them seems insecure to me and the other looks like a bully.

People tend to forgive their idols. Folks who complain about Vince Neil's behavior might forgive Gene Simmons, who is mercilessly mocked by Lars Ulrich fans, who might get called out by someone willing to forget that Kerry King just kicked out Dave Lombardo. I'd like to think that I forgive Axl and not Dave Mustaine based on how far their actions go. If Axl goes on two hours late or leaves a show early, that's something I considered when I bought the ticket. Dave Mustaine's bigotry isn't something I bargained for. But plenty of people have more patience for homophobia than tardiness. I'm sure a lot of people find Rose's mental eccentricities more appalling than Mustaine's, or maybe they just like Rust in Peace more than Appetite for Destruction**.

But no matter whose music you prefer, or how well you distance the art from the artist, there's no denying that an artist's behavior affects the response to the art. Maybe Axl's newest version of Guns N' Roses would sell more seats if he didn't have a reputation for starting two hours late. Maybe more people would buy Super Collider if Mustaine actually turned the other cheek, as his religion urges. It's a shame when either of them get a chilly response for creating something spectacular, like Chinese Democracy or Endgame, respectively. I'd hate to think of how much those responses had to do with the bandleader's attitudes.

The fact is, though, that those attitudes count. Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent, who were roughly equally popular in the '70s are both politically conservative. But only one of them ever gleefully threatened to assault Hillary Clinton, or boasted about his own draft-dodging. This summer, Alice Cooper is co-headlining arenas with Marilyn Manson. The next time Ted Nugent performs in your town, remind yourself why they're selling tickets half-off during the week of the show.

*Brent Hinds is potentially the third.
**Someone should ask Mike Clink, who produced both of them.

GWAR, "School's Out"

Alice Cooper's "School's Out" is the unchallenged, definitive end of the school year anthem. Each June, every classic rock station in America puts it in heavy rotation. It's soundtracked enough films, TV shows, commercials and montages to make it possibly the most internationally-heard hard rock song of all-time, up there with "Iron Man" and "Back in Black." It's been on The Muppets Show and two different episodes of The Simpsons. It's also been performed by the casts of Glee, American Idol and even Alvin and the Chipmunks, although the latter diffused the "School's been blown to pieces" lyric with "School's ancient history."

But for the sake of contrarianism, let's celebrate the end of school this month with GWAR's version. 



Even GWAR's biggest fans, like yours truly, will tell you that they're not great songwriters. If KISS put the show first in their career, GWAR made it the only thing that matters in theirs, releasing albums for the fun of it between tours and video collections. Yet it's a blast to hear them romp through "School's Out," by far the catchiest and most reverent thing they've ever recorded. Said reverence doesn't stop them for amending the lyrics to be even more offensive ("We've got no metal detectors!") but like the best covers, they manage to be faithful while putting their own filthy stamp on the original. The music video is also a gem, featuring a suspiciously adult-looking class and a quick tribute to class Eddie Van Halen in the "Hot for Teacher" video. Class dismissed.

Heavy Meddle

Like a lot of males, I was fascinated with Pink Floyd throughout middle school and high school. The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall and Wish You Were Here were all beautiful and profound to me. But listening now, they sound thoroughly adolescent, and not in a cool, AC/DC-like way. It's more like a high budget version of the kind of well-meaning but self-serious art that you'd see in a high school talent show.

   

When people compare Pink Floyd to bands like Radiohead or Tool, I can only think that it's because they're both weird and arena-famous at the same time. When people compare Floyd to Porcupine Tree or Dream Theater, I can only think that it's because they're both boring. For lack of a better term, most of their songs leave me comfortably numb.

But listening to Dub Side of the Moon, the audacious Pink Floyd reggae tribute album that's somehow more enjoyable than most Pink Floyd or reggae, I was reminded that Floyd have some lovely songs. It's not really their music that I have a problem with--it's their heavy-handed delivery. Roger Waters compared himself to Picasso in Rolling Stone a few years ago, but anyone who'd ever made it to side four of The Wall could already tell he had an astronomical ego that his talents didn't quite live up to. Yet when removed of his band's self-importance and wankery, Pink Floyd's songs lend themselves well to interpretation. 

1. Voivod, "Astronomy Domine"

Pink Floyd got bigger without Syd Barrett, but they never released anything better than Piper at the Gates of Dawn, their 1967 garage-psych debut. The world was still catching up to it in 1989, when Voivod dropped Nothingface and crashed Headbanger's Ball with their version of "Astronomy Domine." I think Voivod's is more haunting than the original--playing the chorus melody on guitar instead of keyboards was a good idea, as was getting rid of the space rock sound effects. Had it not been for this song, Elektra Records might have never taken a chance on Kyuss.

2. Alice Cooper, "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" 

I'll take Alice Cooper's anti-school anthem over Pink Floyd's any day of the week--it's easier make the case that you don't like school when you don't sound like a child pretending to be an adult. But on his recent tours, Cooper's been slyly acknowledging his own influence on Floyd by quoting "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" at the end of "School's Out." It's amazing how much a little verve and humor transforms that song. There's not an HD version online, but the thrill of Alice's show could even come through on a shaky cell phone video.

 

3. Guns N' Roses, "Mother"

Like "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)," "Mother" is best heard in a small dose, out of context. I usually can't sit through it's overwrought lyrics, or David Gilmour's schmaltzy solo, but the melody is actually quite sweet, proven by the sparse, minute-long reading that Axl and Slash gave it near the end of their Use Your Illusion II video from the Tokyo Dome. Subtlety is not something that one usually equates with Guns N' Roses, but "Mother" proves that when called to the task, they delivered.

 

Five Great Videos of Fans Meeting Musicians

1. Crazy Russian Guy flips out over Dave Mustaine

Be sure to watch this one with subtitles. My favorite part is when he re-enacts one of Mustaine's legendary alleged fistfights. How often is Dave Mustaine the second-craziest guy in the room? Maybe not even here.



2. Black Sabbath Super Fan

This video of a Chris Farley-type meeting Dio-era Sabbath went viral a few years ago, to the point where if you yell out "THE GODS ARE HERE!" at a metal show, at least half the attendees will know what you're talking about.



3. Acrassicauda meets James Hetfield

All of you need to watch Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the tense and touching doc about four Iraqi headbangers fighting the Hussein dictatorship's ban on heavy metal in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Thankfully, the boys were granted refugee status in the United States, where they met James Hetfield and made some of the greatest faces that I've ever seen.



4. Crashing with Andrew W.K.

This could be an entire list of Andrew W.K. encounters, who even hosted his own MTV2 show specifically about meeting and helping fans, Your Friend, Andrew W.K. That concept, however, may have stemmed from Crashing with Andrew W.K., a special where our host spent a few days in a girls' dorm at North Carolina Central University. This idea deserves a full-length movie.





5. The Red Hot Chili Peppers on FANatic

Nobody talks about FANatic anymore, but in the late '90s it was one of the last watchable programs on MTV. Every episode gave a few megafans a chance to meet their heroes, and of course the craziest fanatic was there for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Keep an eye on that clipboard, and be sure to stick around for the ending. If any of you can track this guy down, please tell me what he's up to.