Live Band Meeting Saturday

Set aside whatever you were going to do this Saturday, February 27th (8PM UK/3PM EST), as the entire Alice Cooper Band invites you to sit in on their live-stream ‘Band Meeting’ as they catch up on what each of them have been up to, and quite possibly drop some ‘Easter eggs’ of what’s coming up in 2021. And by "entire" we mean Ryan, Tommy, Nita, Glen, Chuck AND Alice and Sheryl Cooper! This promises to be a real "one off" event and you can watch it free on YouTube.

Meanwhile reviews of ‘Detroit Stories’ are now turning up all over the place, so if you need to know what a journalist thinks check out: Charlotte Observer, First Post, Metal Hammer, Vinyl Chapters, Riff Magazine, Wall of Sound, and Ghost Cult to name a few.

There’s also new interviews at the Detroit News, and American Songwriter.

More Detroit Tales

New Alice Cooper Interviews and book

Lots of interviews are appearing now in the run up to ‘Detroit Stories’ on Friday. New ones have appeared at Forbes Magazine, and the Boston Herald.

Alice was also on the BBC 6 ‘Radcliffe and Marconie’ show yesterday morning and you can listen in around the 1.36 mark for the next month or so here.

Alice and Dennis Dunaway have recorded a zoom interview with Keith Roth for Sirius radio’s channel 38 ‘Ozzy’s Boneyard’ which is due to air on February 27th at 11am EST, with repeats at 7pm on March 1st and 9pm March 3rd. The show will apparently also be available on demand.

Alice is on two more European magazine covers, this time it’s ‘Rock Hard‘ from Germany, and ‘Popular 1‘ from Spain.

‘Watchonista‘ have an article about Alice’s collection of watches.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that Sickthing Chris Sutton has a new book on ‘Alice Cooper in the 70s’ on the way. Well, it now has a confirmed publication date of March 28th and can be pre-ordered from AmazonUK with AmazonUS to follow. Below is the official blurb for the book, plus the cover.

"In Alice Cooper In The 1970s, Chris Sutton, explores the story of Alice Cooper the band and the solo performer from the early years through to the end of the decade.

The book features interview material from key figures including Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith from the original band, plus their hired gun Mick Mashbir. Also interviewed are Prakash John, John Tropea and Allan Schwartzberg from the solo years, and Ernie Cefalu, whose company Pacific Eye and Ear designed the album covers Several other musicians, concert promoters and even the band’s first roadie have also contributed their thoughts.
All of the albums and singles from Don’t Blow Your Mind, until From The Inside are examined in detail, along with related archive releases and songs that didn’t make the cut.
An essential guide to Alice Cooper in the decade the band helped to define."

Detroit News

More new interviews promoting ‘Detroit Stories’

Things are definitely gearing up for ‘Detroit Stories’ now with several new interviews appearing including The Independent, Noise11 (video), Metal Hammer (In the new issue), Pasadena Weekly, Kerrang!, and Kansas City Pitch. Alice was also on Australia’s ‘Studio 10’ yesterday for a short interview which you can see here or embedded below.

There’s a new two minute promo video for the album which features a short clip of ‘Shut Up And Rock’ along with Alice chatting about the album. In fact there are 30 second preview clips of the whole album up now at MediaMarkt in the Netherlands if you just can’t wait another week.
UPDATE: Just after posting this an official preview of the album appeared here which I’ve also added below.

According to TalkShopLive it appears Alice will be launching the new album online with a livestream interview on February 25th (2AM on the 26th UK time). It appears to be free so don’t miss it!

The news of Alice and Sheryl getting vaccinated has been covered pretty widely. AZ Big Media has a different photo and a couple of AC quotes.

Chuck Garric was interviewed by Czech site Frontman.cz which Google translates here. It’s not the greatest translation (Alice seems to change sex in the course of a sentence) but you get the gist.

One I missed earlier is a short interview from Phoenix restaurant ‘Los Sombreros’ on Alice’s birthday from AZTV7 with updates on the new Teen Centre in Mesa, AZ.

Alice Cooper Court

Detroit to have “Alice Cooper Court”

With just two weeks to go until ‘Detroit Stories’ things are starting to move. During an interview with Detroit station WCSX it was announced that Alice will be getting his own road somewhere in the city called "Alice Cooper Court’. Host Jim O’Brien announced the news as a special birthday present to Coop. The exact location is yet to be decided and they are running a competition to choose the right spot.

There’s a new Alice interview in Spin magazine, and AZCentral has a video of Alice confirming that he and Sheryl have now been vaccinated against the Covid virus, having contracted it themselves late last year. German magazine ‘Rocks‘ (which looks very much like a version of the UK’s ‘Classic Rock’) is another European mag to have Alice on their cover this month.

Variety has a short article about being sober in the music business and it has a few quotes from Alice.

Dennis Dunaway is the star of a new advert for RotoSound strings which should be appearing in musicians magazines any time now. You can see the advert below. DD is also interviewed by Max1on1 which is available via Facebook.

Dennis and Blue Coupe will also feature during the Valentine’s Day virtual tribute show to New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain who died last month age 69. Tickets for the livestream are on sale now here.

Ryan Roxie’s latest ‘In The Trenches’ guest was ex-Alice keyboardist Teddy Zig-Zag, and you can watch what happened here.

Nita Strauss is featured on the January cover of ‘Recovery Today‘ magazine, a "Addiction, Sobriety and Recovery" magazine.

Glen Sobel is interviewed by North Wales Drum Productions which you can watch on Facebook.

Lastly there is a new movie due out on digital platforms in a couple of days called "School’s Out Forever". It’s a comedy horror film which looks amusing, and while the trailer doesn’t feature the song there can be little doubt where they got the title from, so surely it will play at some point?

Social Debris

Alice Cooper posts new track ‘Social Debris’

This morning Alice marked his birthday with the third “single” from ‘Detroit Stories’ which appeared on the official Alice Cooper YouTube account. Written by Alice, Bob Ezrin and Neal Smith, and with an obvious tip of the hat to ‘Elected’, it features original Cooper band members Neal, Dennis Dunaway and Michael Bruce on drums, bass and guitar respectively. ‘Detroit Stories’ is due February 26th, although I’ve heard reports that Amazon in the USA is notifying people who pre-ordered that the special edition box set has been delayed by a week.
UPDATE: You can officially download the song for free here.

In a new interview this week with EW it’s revealed both Alice and Sheryl Cooper were diagnosed with COVID-19 in late 2020 but that both made a full recovery: “We had it at the same time, which was great, because we could commiserate.”

Alice turned up on a new ‘advert’ for Uber Eats, the food delivery. Alice appears twice in the two and a half hour(!) video which features Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, as Wayne and Garth from ‘Waynes World’, watching a list of all the Uber Eats restaurants scroll past on screen, and occasionally doing something amusing. You kinda need to see it to understand, which you can do on Youtube here. This link should take you to Alice’s first appearance, with him turning up again around the 2.20 mark near the end.

Other new interviews have been appearing in the European music press. Alice features on the front covers of ‘Hard Rock’ in both Italy and France (presumably translations of the same article) and ‘Rock and Folk‘ in France. There’s also an article in the new issue of ‘Uncut‘ in the UK.

‘Talkulture interviews drummer Glen Sobel for an hour or so which you can see on YouTube.

Dash Cooper and CO-OP have a new single out. It’s called ‘Lie To Me’ and can be found here, and apparently features a guest appearance from Tommy Henriksen.

Catching Up

New Interviews

Another very quiet couple of weeks in Cooper-world. There’s not been much happening but here’s a few things to check out.

Alice has obviously been doing interviews to lead up to ‘Detroit Stories’ next month and a few have started to appear. AZCentral have a new interview revealing that Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway and Michael Bruce appear twice on the album, on ‘Social Debris’ (co-written by Neal) and ‘I Hate You’ (co-written by Dennis). There’s an article in the March issue of ‘Uncut‘ in the UK and Alice appears on the front cover of the new issue ‘Rock and Folk‘. There also a substantial article in the new issue of ‘Sweden Rock‘, The last two in their local languages of course.

Rolling Stone have published a great article about the legendary 1971 press party at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles that was used to launch Alice Cooper on the unsuspecting public.

Neal Smith is interviewed by ‘ChurchOfRock’ on YouTube, while Dennis Dunaway was chatting to ‘IndiePower’ which is also up on YouTube. And to complete the original band make sure you didn’t miss Michael Bruce chatting to Ryan Roxie for ‘In The Trenches‘. In related (pun intended) news Calico Cooper has been talking to ‘Metal From The Inside’ which you can find here.

Happy New Year

The one and only Michael Bruce will be Ryan Roxie’s guest on the first ‘In The Trenches’ episode of the new year. The show will air on January 5th at 5pm UK time/12pm EST via facebook and YouTube

‘A Paranormal Evening At The Paris Olympia’, the 2017 footage included in the forthcoming ‘Detroit Stories’ box set, appears to be airing on German TV’s 3Sat on New Years Eve
at 1AM local time. Unfortunately it’s likely to be geo-blocked outside Germany, but they do have a watchable trailer for the film on their site.

Nita Strauss was on ‘Rob’s School Of Music‘ discussing her solo material, Fitness and being on the road with the Alice Cooper band.

Calico Cooper turned up on Portland TV channel KATU2ABC chatting about Beasto Blanco and growing up with Alice as a father.

Alice, Slash and others turn up in a trailer for the forthcoming ‘Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp’ documentary ‘Rock Camp: The Movie’ which will receive a ‘virtual cinema’ release on January 15th before going to on demand from February 16th.

Weekly Catchup

Detroit Stories Splatter Vinyl

It’s been very quiet this past week with only a few small things to cover to stay up to date.

Good Records in Texas, the guys behind the ‘Live From The Astroturf’ reunion album, will be releasing a exclusive ""Spider Eyes Splatter vinyl" version of ‘Detroit Stories’ in February and it’s available to pre-order now. This version comes with an 12" x 12" silkscreened art print of the band at Pontiac Farm in 1971 (from the Dunaway’s archive) and Alice Cooper trading card.

The official Alice Cooper social media pages have also posted a photograph showing the contents of the ‘Detroit Stories’ box set which you can see below.

SkyArts in the UK (now also on Freeview) will be showing Alice’s appearance in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar‘ on Wednesday evening (23rd) at 9pm. As far as I know this will be the first time it has aired in the UK.

Ryan Roxie is now offering gift certificates for his ‘System-12 Guitar Method’, the perfect gift for your budding guitarist relation. All the info is here.

Dennis Dunaway’s ‘Cold Cold Coffin‘ has won yet another award. This time it’s won the ‘Best Music Video’ at the Shockfest Film Festival in Hollywood.

New Single Released

Alice Cooper releases new single

Today sees the release of the second single from ‘Detroit Stories’ and this time it’s ‘Our Love Will Change The World’, originally by Detroit band ‘Outrageous Cherry’. It’s streaming live in Europe now on Spotify and Youtube, but it could be delayed in your timezone if it isn’t yet midnight where you are. The official video can be seen below.

The Hollywood Vampires have announced an additional show date for their European tour next year. They play Romexpo in Bucharest, Romania on August 31st. Tickets go on sale Monday.

As mentioned a few weeks ago Alice was the first guest on a new webshow by Kesha (‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’) and they have posted an 8 minute preview of the episode on YouTube. The full 30 minute podcast can be heard via various streaming sites found here.

Radio station WCSX interviewed Alice a few weeks ago and have posted video on YouTube. The ‘Halloween Special’ they keep referring to in the interview appears to just have been the Halloween episode of ‘Nights With Alice Cooper’.

SkyArts in the UK are currently running a show called ‘ICONS: Music Through The Lens’ and Alice pops up occasionally to comment.

The Sunday Times (UK) had a short article last Sunday with Alice talking cars which you can see here (subscription required).

Alice is also seen very briefly in the new Frank Zappa documentary by Alex Winters simply called ‘Zappa’. They show some photos, short clips from the Toronto ’69 film, and Alice talks about Frank for a few seconds. In all less then a minute. He pops up one more time later to comment about Zappa writing “hit” singles. Of course Alice Cooper isn’t a huge part of Zappa’s life and the film IS a pretty good overview of Zappa’s career with some interesting home movie footage. (thanks Jeff for info)

New Monsters Cruise Announced

Alice Cooper has been announced as the headliner of the ‘Monsters Of Rock Cruise: Operation Monster Beach’

Alice Cooper has been announced as the headliner of the ‘Monsters Of Rock Cruise: Operation Monster Beach’ which is set to take place between May 26th and 31st 2021 in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Other bands scheduled to play include Winger, Beasto Blanco, John Corabi, Electric Boys and LA Guns among many others. Tickets for the shows go on sale on December 1st at 2pm eastern time. It’s safe to assume that this is all subject to the pandemic situation in May, and how safe you think it will be by then! For full info on the event check out monstersofrockcruise.com.

The early 70s movie ‘Diary Of A Mad Housewife’, which featured an early film appearance by the Alice Cooper band, is due to be officially released on DVD and Blu-Ray on December 15th. While there have been unofficial releases in the past (apparently taken from an old VHS copies) this seems to be the first proper release on DVD and Blu-Ray. It comes with a audio commentary track.

Ultimate Classic Rock has a short chat with Calico Cooper about the period of time she joined the ‘Brutal Planet’ show in 2000.

‘Rock Meets Classic’ have released footage of Alice and Tommy Henriksen performing ‘Bed Of Nails’ back in March, before the tour collapsed due to the pandemic.

Ryan Roxie was on ‘TalkCulture’ earlier today and you can watch the hour long show on YouTube.