Alice Cooper

I remember Alice Cooper in the early to mid 1970s when I went to high school. This guy was every mother's nightmare. He was this ghoulish apparition with running makeup and an evil stage show that borrowed from everyone from Judy Garland to Marcel Marceau to the performance magicians (you know, those that cut a woman in half) from an earlier age.

Vincent Furnier could be called one of the first performance artists, and the rock world started to take notice when the band Alice Cooper morphed and became the performer Alice Cooper.

Cooper racked up a number of hit records during the 1970s, but by the 1980s, he was as current as 78 rpm record. For awhile he acknowledged this fact, even going new wave in the early 1980s.

But in 1986, he went back to his old ways, and "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" is as much about Alice Cooper as it is about Jason, the iconic murder in the "Friday the 13th" movie series, of which this is the title song to "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives." The B side is from some un-named concert.

Since the mid-1980s, Cooper has never looked back. He has the occasional hit record, aligned himself with the heavy metal big hair bands in the 1990s, and today puts on about the same show as he has been putting on for the past 40 years or so.

And having witnessed one of these shows, nobody does it like--or better than--Alice Cooper.

Alice Cooper - He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask).mp3
Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies.mp3