Most of the miles I traverse are in my Chevy Cruze; it is
comfortable, economical, and easy to park. Yet, I do have a GMC 1998 Sierra
2500 pickup that this year at age 20 technically becomes a “classic.” There are
fewer than 76,000 miles (122,000 km) on it and the only hint of rust is (just a
bit) is on the rear bumper, which I’ll sand out sometime soon. Though it’s not
my primary transport, I like having a pickup for building supplies (I do many
of my own repairs such as re-roofing the barn) and other cargo, and the truck’s
4-wheel drive is a boon in the winter. During recent winter storms it was my vehicle
of choice. My Cruze never would have made it up my driveway on some days.
Because it’s my back-up vehicle most of the time, however, I tend to forget to
change such things in it as the clock for Daylight Savings (it’s still an hour
off as I write this) and whatever happens to be in the CD player. During the
March snowstorms it was The Best of Alice
Cooper: Mascara and Monsters as it is still at this moment. By default I’ve
been listening to a lot of Alice.
Alice Cooper’s first hit song I’m Eighteen was released in 1970, the year I turned 18, so he was
very much a part of the music scene in that span from age 15 to 25 that always
has an outsized influence on a person’s life. Yet at that time I wasn’t much of
a fan. I didn’t dislike him. I regarded a few numbers such as School’s Out, Elected, and No More Mr. Nice Guy as catchy, but the
only album of his I ever bought in the 20th century was Welcome to My Nightmare and I didn’t
play it much. The theatricality of his performances put me off though
it inspired other bands from Kiss to Marilyn Manson. My revisit to his music
during my week of GMC jaunts convinces me I underestimated him.
Cooper (Vincent Furnier) is best known for his anarchic hardcore
rock, but most of his songs really are not that. They often are thoughtful,
Freudian, and full of genuine sentiment – dark and twisted sentiment perhaps,
but sentiment. Sometimes they are tongue-in-cheek, sometimes not. The “Alice
Cooper” persona makes sense, too. All rockers have stage personae that are largely
put-ons; Vincent is just up front with it, and he can write lyrics for Alice that
would be hard to pull off as himself. Nor does he sit back and live off
royalties from the 70s. Welcome 2 My
Nightmare, the 2011 sequel to 1975’s Welcome
to My Nightmare, contains some of the best and most amusing work he’s ever done.
So, too, the 2017 Paranormal, his 27th
studio album that my truck rides last week prompted me to purchase. The septuagenarian
is still out there playing up to 100 shows per year. OK, Alice is never going
to follow in the footsteps of Bob Dylan to Stockholm to pick up a Nobel for
literature – though he does play Stockholm sometimes – but give his lyrics a
listen. They may surprise you. Even after decades of my presumed familiarity
with Alice, they surprised me.
All the same, it’s time for me to swap out the contents of
my GMC CD player for something else – perhaps another band to which I should
have payed closer attention decades ago. I’m thinking maybe Concrete Blonde.
Clip from 2012 movie Dark Shadows set in 1972: “Ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.”
Cooper can be pretty good & I can respect him for what he is. My moods shift frequently in the car. I generally have changed things out for jazz or classical. Where you are located you might could get that over the radio. Light jazz goes pretty well. Down here all we get is classic rock and that gets old pretty quick just due to hearing so much of it.
ReplyDeleteYes, the radio gets to play too. There are a lot of options locally even without the SiriusXM channels that the company keeps bugging me to buy. (No sale: I’m irked enough at paying for TV, which would have been unthinkable when I was young.) Just as 200 TV channels sometimes offer nothing appealing, however, the radio often (not always but often) prompts me to sigh and hit the CD button instead. That method would be considered Paleolithic by my quasi-niece, of course; she links her phone to the car stereo and plays her own vast playlist.
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