Easy Action Iowa

Easy Action

Alice Cooper

Straight Records, 1970

REVIEW BY: Roland Fratzl

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 10/02/2001

The is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear this albumcompared with that oh-so-stinky debut Pretties For You is how rapidly the Alice Cooper group'ssongwriting and playing skills managed to drastically improve inthe space of only one year. Easy Action isn't a perfect album, but it's pretty shockingto hear such a colossal improvement over Pretties For You. This is the classic Alice Cooper band'slittle known follow up album to their little known debut record,released in 1970, only a year before the critical and commercialbreakthrough classic album Love It To Death.

All the signs of the band's musical direction in the near futurecan be found on Easy Action. I guess they woke up and realized what a turdof a debut they had put out and by the sound of things managed toget sober enough the second time around in the studio to actuallynail down some stellar songwriting. I mean, judging by the lyricshere I'm pretty much convinced that they must still have been ONsomething, but hey! That's rock 'n roll, MAAAAAAAN!!!!

Yep, those are actually fully developed songs you hear this timearound! Isn't that shocking? Unlike the debut which was 38 minutesof mostly unintelligible noise, each song on Easy Action is distinctive from the rest. But keep in mindthat this is a transition album seeing the band mature fromnon-sensical crap phase to awesome hard rock songwriting phase, sothere's a mix of both these aspects throughout the album.

So without further ado, let's get down to the nitty gritty: theactual songs. Right off the bat the change in style hits ya like acloud of weed! I personally feel that there are a few songs on herewhich should have become classics and remained in the liverepertoire, but unfortunately the album bombed...it didn't evensell as well as Pretties For You for some ungodly reason, so I guess that'swhy even the good material on here has become completelyforgotten...which really is a shame. Cooper probably hasn'tperformed ANY of this material since 1970, if ever, and I'd betthat he even doesn't remember much about this album!