Alice Cooper Dragontown CD

With well thought out songs paving the way, 'Dragontown' leads you down a nightmarish path into the mind of rock's original conceptual storyteller. Alice's deranged, tormented mind serves as your tour guide into a place that is bitter cold and conversely swimming in furnace blasting heat. A 2001 Spitfire Records release.

Personnel: Alice Cooper (vocals); Bob Marlette (guitar, keyboards, bass, programming); Ryan Roxie (guitar, background vocals); Tim Pierce, Wayne Swinny (guitar); Sid Riggs (keyboards, programming); Greg Smith (bass); Kenny Aronoff (drums); Teddy "Zigzag" Andreadis, Eric Dover, Calico Cooper, Giovanna Morgana (background vocals).
Recorded at The Blue Room, Woodland Hills, California and Henson Studios, Los Angeles, California.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files including the videos for "Gimme" and "It's The Little Things."
This is a Special Edition of DRAGONTOWN, which contains a bonus DVD of previously unreleased material along with the enhanced videos.
Personnel: Alice Cooper (vocals); Bob Marlette (guitar, keyboards, bass, programming); Ryan Roxie, Tim Pierce, Wayne Swinny (guitar); Sid Riggs (keyboards, programming); Greg Smith (bass); Kenny Aronoff (drums); Teddy Andreadis, Eric Dover, Calico Cooper, Giovanna Moraga (background vocals).
Recorded at The Blue Room, Woodland Hills, California and Henson Studios, Los Angeles, California.
Personnel: Bob Marlette (guitar, keyboards, programming); Ryan Roxie (guitar, background vocals); Tim Pierce (guitar); Kenny Aronoff (drums); Eric Dover (background vocals).
Audio Mixer: Bob Marlette.
Audio Remixer: Christian B.
Recording information: Henson Studios, Los Angeles, CA; The Blue Room, Woodland Hills, CA.
Photographer: Neil Zlozower.
Dragontown continues the assault of Alice Cooper's gift to the new millennium that was Brutal Planet. Considered a third chapter of a trilogy initiated by 1994's The Last Temptation, this shadowy production plays like hardcore in slow motion. There is no one identifiable song like "Gimme" or "Brutal Planet" from the last episode, but the production values are high and the innovative riffs consistent. This work stands on its own, chock-full of the dark prince of pop's nasty humor. "It's Much Too Late" is supposed to be for John Lennon, but the Beatlesque backing vocals sound like Carole King's hit from Tapestry on hard drugs. There are references to the sacrilege spread out over Lennon's work from Plastic Ono Band to Imagine, but here Alice takes off the gloves and gives the church the finger: "I'm sending you all to hell/I'm tired and I'm wired here...." Continuing the dismal discourse of the previous record, Cooper takes Ray Davies' advice in a way the Kinks' leader never could -- A.C. actually gives the fans what they want. "The Sentinel" is some creature of the devil out there harvesting souls -- possibly the souls of dead rock & rollers. The ode to Elvis Presley is a bit more unnerving: "Disgraceland" is metal rockabilly with blazing guitars -- "Went to the pearly gates/Said I'm uh here to sing/And Peter said, 'Well son, you see we already got ourselves a king.'" If you don't think Alice Cooper is the Bob Dylan of nastiness, you clearly haven't followed his pernicious poetry over the years. (Hasn't everyone tried too hard to like Bob Dylan's Love and Theft? Do you really think it will have a place in history as solid as "Like a Rolling Stone" or "Ballad of a Thin Man"?) Where Mariah Carey goes through the motions and wonders why no one cares, Alice Cooper proves that he still does care. This might not be as platinum as Trash or as explosive as Killer, but the older, wiser Alice Cooper devastates with subtle intensity and venomous lyrics. The 12-page booklet inside the very Halloweenish cover contains print that is much too small, but the great photos are exactly what the fans crave: Alice showing the world he was Freddy Krueger longQ (11/01, p.118) - 3 out of 5 stars - "...A sterling effort...proficient, professional schlock-horror rock..."