Customer Reviews

Special Forces

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Well I had to edit this from my earlier post and downgrade the rating. Collectors choice when reissuing this messed up somewhere..I know it isn't remastered..BUT the import sounds better and has more punch. If you can I would get this Special Forces as the Import rather than the collectors choice reissue. Now for Zipper Catches Skin the reissue soundwise is better than the import and DaDa soundwise is slighly better over the import.

Earlier post below -

Well I received my purchase today for the Zipper Catches Skin, Special Forces and DaDa Cds. While these 3 lost years albums are among my favorites from Alice. I had bought these 3 reissues hoping that they would have been treated to a remastering that they do truly deserve but didn't get this second time around. ???

The highlights of these reissues are the 2 bonus tracks For Britain Only - On Zipper and finally we get Special Forces with the track that was left off the original album at the last minute by Alice because he felt it didn't fit in with the rest of the tracks on the album..though the record company didnt have time to change the cover to omit the track from the listing. We finally get the album as it was listed with "Look At You Over There Ripping the Sawdust From My Teddy Bear" .

I really wish there had been something extra that they had included on DaDa but we get nothing.

Ok if you are a diehard Alice fan such as myself you allready have these as imports and you also have the 2 bonus tracks from the box set Life And Crimes.

These reissues are good for the fan though that don't have these as imports or the box set. Also good that these are available here in the U.S so you don't have to pay the import price.

My question is When is Warner Brothers gonna wake up and give their Alice catalog the remastering they deserve along with bonus tracks etc? They did it to Billion Dollar Babies and Atlantic did it with Welcome To My Nightmare. Warner Brothers and Rhino needs to get this done as it is surly needed!

Nearly a decade after the original Alice Cooper band broke through with School's Out, and five years after the solo Alice Cooper re-emerged with Welcome to My Nightmare and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell some retooling was in order. Cooper's albums of the late 70s had become bombastic, and his 1980 release Flush the Fashion mistakenly embraced a modern-rock sound that failed him. By 1981 he was ready to recapture his earlier glory. Gone were the new wave synthesizers brought by Roy Thomas Baker and back were guitar, bass and drums to give punch to Cooper's tough singing. What synths remain were slithering and insinuating, or in the case of those which introduce "Seven and Seven Is," quickly pushed aside by slashing rhythm guitars. Covering this Love song was a canny tip of the hat to punk-rock's mid-60s garage-rock roots.

This isn't a full one-eighty from Flush the Fashion, but in the punk rock movement Cooper had clearly found kindred confrontational spirits. His then-current preoccupation with military and police matters provides the album's major lyrical strand, though it's set to the sort of clever wordplay that had made his earlier hits and stage show so alluring. The accoutrements of power and forces - guns, ammo, holsters - are dressed-up in suggestive sexual double-entendres that leave their meaning to the listener's imagination. Cooper revisits "Generation Landslide" (from 1973's Billion Dollar Babies) without the finesse of the original, and at times, such as on "Don't Talk Old to Me," Cooper sounds like a ranting alcoholic, which was apparently a real-life role into which he was about to lapse. Cooper's secondary fascination with horror films is highlighted in the ornate "Skeletons in the Closet," on which trades the raw rock `n' roll for synthesizers and spooky imagery.

None of this content generated a social shock or commercial reaction in 1981, but either did it sound out of time. The staccato rhythm of "You're a Movie" may be tied to the new wave sounds of early MTV, but there's enough muscle in the band's playing to keep this from being completely dated. Collectors' Choice's domestic CD reissue adds "Look at You Over There, Ripping the Sawdust From My Teddybear," a song Cooper trimmed from the original vinyl release. Its electric piano and funky rhythm do indeed sound out of context, but it fits lyrically and fans will be happy to get this extra period track. The disc is delivered in a standard jewel case with a four panel insert that includes new liner notes by Gene Sculatti. This isn't Alice Cooper at his pinnacle, but neither is it the sound of a one-time enfant terrible simply hanging on. 3-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]