Music Banter - Last album you bought, downloaded or listened to

Last Week I purchased 'Remember the Coop’(an Alice Cooper tribute album) & wrote up a review for it:

‘Remember the Coop’
Released: 2010
Label: Mainman Records
Review by Bucky

Disc One: Classics

1. Hello Hooray • Richard Barone with Frankenstein 3000
2. Don't Blow Your Mind • The Ribeye Brothers
3. I'm Eighteen • Deena & The Laughing Boys
4. Public Animal #9 • ****
5. Under My Wheels (Live) • Michael Bruce with Dimma
6. School's Out • Well Of Souls
7. Is It My Body? • Mutant Monster Beach Party
8. Muscle Of Love • The St. Vitus Dancers
9. The Ballad Of Dwight Fry • Dead Elvi
10. You And Me • Christian Beach
11. Be My Lover • Porro And The Raving Lunatics
12. Teenage Lament '74 • Gin House Bandits
13. Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo) • Rick Tedesco
14. Billion Dollar Babies • Jack Brag
15. Elected • FourYearBeard
16. Desperado • Graveyard School
17. No More Mr. Nice Guy • The Swales
18. My Stars (Live) • Michael Bruce with Dimma
19. Only Women Bleed • Eye Of The Dawn

Bonus Track
20. School's Out • Shawn Mars

Disc Two: Killer

1. Under My Wheels • Blue Fox
2. Be My Lover • Scream
3. Halo Of Flies • Dimma with Dennis Dunaway
4. Desperado • Frankenstein 3000
5. You Drive Me Nervous • Serpenteens
6. Yeah Yeah Yeah • Johny Dey
7. Dead Babies • Ché Monet
8. Killer • Renée Dunaway

Back around 1990 I was in a record store & came across a record titled ‘HARD TO BELIEVE - A KISS COVERS COMPILATION’. I had never seen a tribute album so I picked it up & was amazed at the different bands with different styles covering Kiss classics & I loved it. Since then tribute albums have been coming out constantly & there have been a couple of good Alice Cooper tribute albums (Humanary Stew & Welcome to our Nightmare). This past October Mainman Records released a phenomenal 2 disc set titled ‘Remember the Coop’ & this may well be my favorite Alice tribute album to date. The album is full of great tracks including 2 tracks recorded live from Iceland by Alice Cooper Group guitarist Michael Bruce backed by the band Dimma. Bruce & Dimma give us musically very tight sounding renditions of “Under My Wheels” (at the end Bruce sings part of Bowie’s “Suffragette City”) & “My Stars” (which near the end he mixes in a bit of the Stones “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). The Icelandic band Dimma appears again on the album backing original Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway on an outstanding version of “Halo of Flies”. What is great about this 2 disc set is disc one is all the Cooper classics & disc 2 is the ‘Killer’ album. The ‘Killer’ disc not only features Dennis Dunaway’s performance of “Halo of Flies” but stays with his family on a couple of other tunes: His daughter Ché Monet does an outstanding beautiful cover of “Dead Babies” which really shows some great vocal talent & his other daughter Renee Dunaway has an unbelievable performance of “Killer” which really needs to be heard. This version of “Killer” is very dark & sounds like something PJ Harvey would have done (thinking of her hit “Down By the Water”) & the wild thing about this version is that Dunaway intertwines Cooper’s “Mary Ann” in with it. Popular underground band Frankenstein 3000 (who seems to make their way onto tribute albums) appear backing singer/songwriter Richard Barone on a great rendition of “Hello Hurray” which screams out “GLAM” & also perform a superb version of “Desperado”. One big surprise on the album is by a band called the Ribeye Brothers as they perform a great version of The Spiders’(Alice Cooper Group’s ex name) single from the 60’s “Don’t Blow Your Mind”.

There really are not any disappointing tracks on this album & a few of the other outstanding tracks are “Is it My Body” by Mutant Monster Beach Party(very crisp & clean sounding with great vocals), “Muscle of Love” by the St.Vitus Dancers, “Teenage Lament ‘74” by the Gin House Bandits (Kind of a Heavy Dogs D’Amour Style), “Big Apple Dreamin’” by Rick Tedesco of the Dennis Dunaway Project, “Under My Wheels” by Blue Fox (kick ass fast paced rock & roll), “Be My Lover” by Scream featuring Slim Cain of Rollins (very cool version with plenty of sax), & a wild version of “You Drive Me Nervous” by the Serpenteens which sounds nothing like the original version until a small hint in the final 30 seconds. Overall, this is a great tribute album & if you are a fan of Alice Cooper then pick this up because you will not be disappointed.