My Heroes Have Always Been Monsters Part 9

Alice Cooper quite literally saved my life. I won't get into all the dark details, but I had resigned myself to exiting this world when the single for "Hey Stoopid" came out. It was an anti-suicide song at a time when I was too immature to see other options and too depressed to care. "This ain't your daddy talking...your story ain't so shocking" and "They win, you lose!" really resounded with me and gave me a reason to keep slogging through the crap. I'd been a fan of Alice since I caught Class of 1984 on late night tv and "I Am The Future" was the theme song for the film. I had known his name since I was very young because my cousin had Alice's posters hanging in his room and in 1989 when the video for "Poison" came out my mother flipped out and banned his music from our home because she knew what a sick, satanic freak he was and wouldn't stand for me watching his videos..! Good luck enforcing that!  I became obsessed and had to have every album and skipped lunch, pocketing my lunch money to save up for every cassette I could lay my hands on.
Alice's music has been a staple for more than two thirds of my life. I still play Dada, Love It To Death, Last Temptation, and From The Inside on a regular basis and will be catching him with Iron Maiden this summer!
What inspired this chapter was news that The Strange Case of Alice Cooper will finally be available on DVD on May 22, 2012. The description below comes from the Amazon listing...

The Strange Case Of Alice Cooper is more than a concert film. It is the warped tale of one man's descent into madness, a theatrical rock 'n' roll spectacle that could only emerge from the twisted imagination of Alice Cooper. Filmed during a stop on the Madhouse Rock Tour in 1979, Strange Case was inspired by Alice's stay in a New York sanitarium and the people he encountered there. Vincent Price introduces the proceedings as ghoulish doctors and transvestite nurses cross paths with dancing bottles of alcohol. All the while, Alice performs songs off his album From The Inside, as well as many of his most well-known and best-loved hits.

The DVD also contains a brand-new commentary track by Alice Cooper.

[Setlist]

1. From The Inside
2. Serious
3. Nurse Rozetta
4. The Quiet Room
5. I Never Cry
6. Devil's Food
7. Welcome To My Nightmare
8. Billion Dollar Babies
9. Only Women Bleed
10. No More Mr. Nice Guy
11. I'm Eighteen
12. The Black Widow
13. Wish I Was Born In Beverly Hills
14. Ballad Of Dwight Fry
15. Go To Hell
16. How You Gonna See Me Now
17. Inmates (We're All Crazy)
18. School's Out

Pair this with the Welcome To My Nightmare concert film and you have an amazing double feature of shock rock awesome. 

Keep watching the sky, nerds!