Word: cooperatives
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Paranoia, Political paranoia, the kind you get when you see a fascist behind every rock. I know quite a few people who count themselves as politically active, and to a man (or woman) they're all a touch paranoid. But to call Alice Cooper and their ABC-WBCN simulcast a harbinger of creeping facism, as Andrew Kopkind did in last week's Phoenix, strikes me as so much hysterical over-reacting...
This concerns Alice Cooper and the simulcast insofar as both media are visual. Kopkind's complaint is not so much over the simulcast as it is with Alice Cooper's particular appearance on it. (If he finds creeping fascism in the Allman Brother's brilliant performance last week, then he's in worse shape than I gave him credit for), On the highest level, his major complaint is with Alice Cooper's performance, and what he assumes is gratuitous violence similar to that displayed in the films. More on that later...
...Alica Cooper is another step, or perhaps the culmination of the trend towards a more theater-oriented rock. Kopkind stumbled inadvertently on the core of the matter when he stated, "Cooper belongs to the Theater of the Absurd as well as the Theater of Cruelty." The second label is debatable alone, but Kopkind undercuts his statement with the clause that follows, "with live warm humans around in a concert hall, Cooper is funnier than he is scary...
...interview given to England's New Musical Express stresses Alice's offstage normaley. Nick Kent, the interviewer, remarks on the apparent paradox between the Alice Cooper image and the man. He refers to "the charm and good manners of the All-American college boy he appears when not giving vent to his transvestite juvenile delinquent alter-ago." Kent also notes his own surprise at "how overtly masculine they (the band) look," and Alice's cross-country career at his Phoenix high school. In line with all this one of rock's current rumors is that Alice Cooper is really...
...never took it seriously, and I'm surprised to have to prove to anybody that Alice Cooper is no threat, merely the latest in a series of progressively more theatric rock performance. To call his performance antilife, when it is really an attempt to augment a medium that is in danger of stagnation, is to deny his innovative efforts, and is wildly paranoic to boot. Concern for society is one thing, witch hunting is another. Besides, Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention were performing almost precisely the same things almost four years ago. Zappa's atrocities, as they were called...