Published on Nov 1, 2001
Although numerous “best of” collections pertaining to Alice
Cooper’s long career have been released over the years, very few
have really been able to do him any justice at all. In early 2001
Rhino records entered the fray by releasing
Mascara & Monsters: The Best Of Alice Cooper, and while
it certainly has some obvious faults, I would have to say that so
far it’s the best one-disc overview of Cooper’s 30-plus year
career.
Basically this is an expanded version of the original
Greatest Hits album that was released in 1974 upon the
breakup of what many to this day consider the ultimate Alice Cooper
band line-up, the original five members who crafted a handful of
landmark studio albums between 1969 and 1973.
All of the tracks from 1974’s
Greatest Hits are included here as well, and one additional
track from the original band has been added, the underated
“Generation Landslide” from the brilliant
Billion Dollar Babies album. In my review of
Greatest Hits, I mentioned that I found it to be an
unforgivable oversight that that compilation did not include two of
the defining tracks of early 70’s Alice Cooper: “Dead Babies” and
“The Ballad Of Dwight Frye”…not only are those two of the
strongest songs the original band ever wrote, but they were also
among the most popular, and remain in Cooper’s live repertoire to
this very day. I would have liked to have seen “Be My Lover” and
“Teenage Lament ’74” replaced by “Dead Babies” and “The Ballad Of
Dwight Frye” because I believe those songs to be much better
representations of Alice Cooper’s material, which brings me to my
first gripe with
Mascara & Monsters. They did not correct this mistake
for some strange reason, even though CD’s have quite a bit more
room, and why did they add “Generation Landslide” instead?
And, unlike
Greatest Hits,
Mascara & Monsters also covers a decent portion of Alice
Cooper’s solo material, which began with 1975’s
Welcome To My Nightmare album. But again, I have to question
why the song “Department Of Youth” is included here…while it’s
certainly not a bad song, I also don’t think it quite deserves a
spot on a “best of” collection when so many superior tracks have
been omitted.
Another problem with
Mascara & Monsters is the flow of the disc. Three of
Alice’s biggest hit ballads (“I Never Cry”, “You And Me”, and “How
You Gonna See Me Now”) are bunched back to back near the end of the
disc, which really hurts the momentum of the music…it’s pretty
obvious that the tracks are mostly placed in chronological order,
but how could the people putting this disc together have possibly
thought it was a good idea to have three soft, mellow ballads in a
row near the end of a very long, 22 track CD? I can definitely
imagine more than a few fingers reaching for the skip button as a
result of this. That’s just plain stupid, and the collection would
definitely have benefitted from mixing up the diversity. It’s
strange that this happened, because usually the people at Rhino
know what they’re doing.
My final grievance is probably the most severe. There are only
two measly songs representing the entire last twenty years! That is
simply unforgivable, and gives people who might buy this the
impression that Alice Cooper has hardly released anything of worth
in two whole decades, which could not be further from the truth.
“Clones” from 1980 and “Poison” from 1989 are all that showcase the
80’s, and there is nothing here from the more recent, brilliant
The Last Temptation or
Brutal Planet albums, which contain some of his finest
music. It’s disgraceful that so much great material has been
ignored. You know, my eyesight is pretty damn good, and when I look
at the cover of this CD I see the words “best of”, not the words
“greatest hits”, and there is a world of difference. The title is
misleading because it’s pretty obvious by the tracklisting that
Rhino chose to include only Alice’s most commercially successful
songs, as opposed to his “best” material, which certainly would
explain the convenient omission of selections from Cooper’s more
recent output, which was not commercially successful despite it’s
superior quality.
On the upside to things, the booklet is well put together,
containing several nice photos, interesting liner notes including a
typically witty message written by Alice himself, and
track-by-track descriptions also given by the creator, which were
actually taken directly from 1999’s four-CD box set
The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper. I also think the album
cover is quite good, with side profile shots of the “normal” Alice
Cooper and the make-up wearing “evil” Alice Cooper staring at each
other, face to face.
On a whole, I can’t really fault this collection too much,
because even though I would have rather seen several key songs in
place in some of the ones that are included, each and every song
here is nevertheless excellent. I think that to properly convey the
diversity of Alice Cooper’s songwriting though, this should have
been volume one of a two-CD set, after all, much lesser bands like
Uriah Heep or INXS boast hits collections consisting of more than
one disc, so I really don’t see the logic in restricting a legend
like Alice Cooper to only one. However, until the day comes that a
multi-volume examination of Alice Cooper’s work is available,
Mascara & Monsters is as good as it probably gets on one
CD.