Alice Cooper - Killer

"Trust me on this, I'm a true audiophile.  I can't listen to anything but perfect sound, and these Monster headphones are even better than the Beats.  What kind of mp3 player do you have?"

I actually overheard this conversation in a store last night.  Now, I'm no audiophile, but if I were, I'm pretty sure I'd never bother a stranger that just wants to buy some headphones for his kid with some blather about how golden my ears are.  Hell, I know how the lady must have felt with this guy going on and on, because the last time I was in a room with speakers to audition while my wife was looking at something else, some dude took up all my Me Time and tried to convince me that some Bose 301's were the best speakers in the room, whether that was what I was interested in or not.  I think our friend the audiophile doesn't quite understand that kids that asked for Beats headphones probably like the brand and don't particularly care if they sound great or not.  Mr. Audiophile also doesn't seem to understand that mp3's generally sound like shit anyway.  I'm not some analog purist, either.  I've heard plenty of great sounding cd's and while I listen to a lot of vinyl, I actually don't need it to be the be all and end all of my music listening.  I mean, c'mon dude, no audiophile gives a rat's ass what anyone blasts mp3's into their brains with.

What's this got to do with Alice Cooper's Killer, you ask? Well, it just reminded me of an afternoon hanging out at some other kid's house when I was in Jr. High and I had brought Killer over.  He liked Progressive Rock, and I'm sure I brought some Yes over, but I had just got Killer and I thought it was just fantastic and I was sure he would, too.  Well, I never even got to play it.  I heard a long, rambling, early teenage dissertation about how stupid Alice Cooper was and how Emerson Lake and Palmer and Pink Floyd were where my head should be at.  It made me a little salty, and was probably an early bit of sunlight on my little seed of thought that Rock music should be fun, and everything else is just a bonus.  I don't think I could even convince him to listen to Killer, and as I sit and listen to it right now, I think he is the one that screwed up.  He could have added some fun to his musical journey.

Because Killer is just a really cool record.  It's fun.  It rocks hard, and if anything, these guys were an extremely underrated and talented group of musicians.  Maybe they didn't play twenty minute epics like Emerson Lake and Palmer, but the eight minute Halo of Flies is a sort of mini West Side Story and I think a lot of the Prog rockers of those times past could have gotten in to this, but they didn't like that the band that had the kids at the Roller Rink dropping their smokes to come in and skate to Under My Wheels could upstage their upside down keyboard solo's with something as cool as Halo of Flies.

I had another friend that turned his nose up at Alice Cooper and I made him come by one day and see what he was missing.  He was completely blown away by Desperado (and if you think it's anything like that crappy Eagles song, you're wrong) and he was equally impressed with the ability of the band to just bring the rock on songs like Be My Lover, You Drive Me Nervous and Under My Wheels.  This was a fun party album, and while I was most into Alice Cooper when I was a teenager, I think the early albums with Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton are some of the coolest albums of the early 70's, even though they seem to be kind of overlooked these days.  I know they got inducted into the Rock Hall, but when is the last time you heard anyone give them any credit or play anything other than School's Out?

So how's my copy?  Well, it's well loved, but I don't care.  I like this copy.  I like that I carried it to some one's house and they never played it.  I like that I know it's one of my touchstones that reminds me that it doesn't matter if I'm the only person that thinks it's cool.  I put the wear and tear on this, and this record showed a lot of other people how good Alice Cooper could be.