A Fistful Of Alice Atlanta GA

A Fistful Of Alice

Alice Cooper

Guardian Records, 2000

REVIEW BY: Roland Fratzl

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 10/27/2001

For an artist renowned for his spectacular live show, there havebeen precious few official live releases over the course of AliceCooper's career...the only previous official live album, The Alice Cooper Show, was released in 1977, and it has beensaddled with a bad reputation ever since, despite the fact that tomy ears it isn't bad at all. That particular disc probably suffersmore from the fact that it came out after the early 70's peak yearsof the Alice Cooper group.

Alice himself admitted that one of his goals for many years wasto release a really kick ass live album to make up for the weakeffort he considers The Alice Cooper Show to be. It seems strange to me that hedidn't release any live material during any of his mammoth comebacktours of the mid to late 80's, but waited to release the excellent A Fistful Of Alice in 1997, a time when he had all butvanished from the mainstream consciousness.

It was recorded over two nights in June of 1996 in a town inMexico at the Cabo Wabo Cantina, some joint owned by the formersinger/frontman of Van Halen, Sammy Hagar. The recording andproduction sound superb, maybe too much so...polish is a littlehigh, so could there possibly have been a few overdubs, here andthere?

As for the musicianship, Alice has backed himself up with theusual assortment of unknown but brilliant musicians. The playing isvery tight and faithful to the original studio versions, and theperformances just ooze energy and enthusiasm from all involved...atotally rocking experience! Some of the older songs are given quitea bit more juice here...they sound a lot meatier and heavier, theway they were supposed to. Particularly some of the older materiallike "I'm Eighteen", "Desperado" and "Elected" benefit from aninjection of power that gives them a much needed boost from thestudio versions of these songs. As great as these songs were theday they were created, with this live recording it becomes so muchclearer just how innovative this stuff must have been in the early70's. And the brief Spanish flavoured intro tacked on to thebeginning of "Desperado" is simply gorgeous.