Alice Cooper In Encyclopedia Britannica

Alice Cooper In Encyclopedia Britannica

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Alice Cooper, American hard rock band that shared its name with its leader. In addition to producing a string of hits in the 1970s, Alice Cooper was among the first rock groups to infuse their performances with theatrics. The members were Alice Cooper (original name Vincent Furnier; b. Feb. 4, 1948, Detroit, Mich., U.S.), Michael Bruce (b. March 16, 1948), Glen Buxton (b. Nov. 10, 1947, Akron, Ohio—d. Oct. 19, 1997, Mason City, Iowa), Dennis Dunaway (b. Dec. 9, 1946, Cottage Grove, Ore.), and Neal Smith (b. Sept. 23, 1947, Akron).

The son of a preacher, Furnier formed a band with four schoolmates in Phoenix, Arizona. After moving to California in 1968, he and the band took the name Alice Cooper.

Their hyper-amplified club shows, influenced by British glam rock, earned them recognition as “the worst band in Los Angeles” and a contract with Frank Zappa’s Straight Records, for which they released two unsuccessful albums before relocating to Detroit.

With producer Bob Ezrin (who later worked with Kiss, a band much influenced by Alice Cooper’s music and presentation, as were the New York Dolls), they crafted a clear, powerful, guitar-heavy sound on such youth anthems as “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out.” Makeup-wearing vocalist Cooper, whose identity soon eclipsed the band’s, formed a new group in 1974, adding Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) to a list of significant albums that included Killer (1971) and Billion Dollar Babies (1973), all explorations of decadence, perversion, and psychosis. Best remembered for its shocking stage show,

Alice Cooper blended the gore and grotesquerie of horror films with the camp of 1930s Berlin cabaret. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

The Benefit of the Double Neck Guitar

The Benefit of the Double Neck Guitar

 

Rosli Mansor with his double neck guitar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 A double neck guitar looks like a set of Siamese twins. With two separate and distinct necks and a single, wider-than-average body, the instrument really does appear to be two independent entities joined by a common body. This description is, in fact, not too far from the truth. 

The benefit of the double neck guitar is that it essentially allows the musician access to more than one instrument at a time. To take the most common example, consider the typical double neck guitar. This instrument has one neck with twelve strings and one with six. The musician can, at any point during his or her performance, choose to switch between the two necks. This freedom of choice allows him or her to double the kind of music he or she can produce. Hence, to play the double neck guitar is to essentially play two instruments not simultaneously, but at least back-to-back. The concept of the double neck guitar is not a new one. Instruments similar to this have been around for at least a few hundred years. 

A double neck version of the Russian guitar, for example, was popular in the beginning of the 19th century. Today, however, double neck guitars are generally Western-style electric instruments. As mentioned, the most common models have twelve strings on the top neck and six strings on the bottom. However, some versions have six strings on one neck and only four on the other. Fretted instruments are most common, but sometimes only one neck will be fretted and the other fretless. In fact, almost any combination of guitar characteristics is possible with these instruments. Some models eve have three, four or five necks. 

Such guitars only increase the variety of music that can be played on a "single" instrument. Although double neck guitars have traditionally been simply standard electric guitars, bass instruments have gained popularity in recent years. Double neck bass guitars are often tuned differently, an approach that significantly widens the player's range. Other models vary the use of frets or the number of strings. A more unusual approach is to have a double neck instrument with one neck set up as a standard electric guitar and the other set up as a bass guitar.

 The double neck guitar is, needless to say, rather startling in appearance. This no doubt contributes to its popularity with a number of musicians in famous bands. After all, not only does the double neck guitar allow the artist to increase his musical variety, it also ensures that a great number of people will be staring at his instrument. These musicians are usually bassists, and they include Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Slash of Guns N' Roses, Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi and Eddie Van Halen of Van Halen.

 It should be mentioned that while the harp guitar is a relative of the double neck guitar, the two instruments are not the same. The harp guitar features unstopped strings that are designed to be plucked like those of a harp. The double neck guitar's strings, on the other hand, are invariably meant to be played like those of a guitar. Victor Epand is an expert consultant for guitars, drums, keyboards, sheet music, guitar tab, and home theater audio. You can find the best marketplace at these sites for guitars, double neck, sheet music, guitar.

Glam Rock

 Glam Rock

 

English: , English rock musician of the band Slade (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Glam rock (also known as glitter rock) is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter. 

The flamboyant costumes and visual styles of glam performers were often camp or androgynous, and have been connected with new views of gender roles.   Glam rock visuals peaked during the mid-1970s with artists including T. Rex, David Bowie, Sweet, Roxy Music and Gary Glitter in the UK and New York Dolls, Lou Reed and Jobriath in the US. It declined after 1976, but had a major influence on genres including punk, glam metal, New Romantics and gothic rock and has sporadically revived since the 1990s. 

 

"Life on Mars?" David Bowie by Sidney Tucker

 

Glam Rock Stars (Photo credit: avrenim_acceber)[/caption]   Musically glam rock was very diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art rock of Roxy Music, and can be seen as much as a fashion as a musical sub-genre. 

Visually it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamour, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war Cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology; manifesting itself in outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots. Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside extensive use of theatrics. It was prefigured by the showmanship and gender identity manipulation of American acts such as The Cockettes and Alice Cooper, (once called, "Shock Rock's Glitter King") the latter of which combined glam with what now is termed as shock rock.

 Glam rock emerged out of the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960s and can be seen as both an extension of, and reaction against, those trends. Its origins are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme Top of the Pops in March 1971 wearing glitter and satins, to perform what would be his second UK Top 10 hit (and first UK Number 1 hit), "Hot Love".

Slade Run Runaway by Celtiemama

From late 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act. Bowie in a 1972 interview while noting that other artists described as glam rock were doing different work said "I think glam rock is a lovely way to categorize me and it's even nicer to be one of the leaders of it".

These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust. While highly successful in the single charts in the UK, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts.

 

Alice Cooper - Black Juju by DwightFrye

In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976. A second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976. Quatro directly inspired the pioneering Los Angeles based all-girl group The Runaways.Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, the Rolling Stones. 

  Punk rock, often seen as a reaction to the artifice of glam rock, but using some elements of the genre including makeup and involving covers versions of glam rock records, helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976. Although glam rock went into a steep decline in popularity in the second half of the 1970s it was a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and American glam metal acts like Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe. It was a major influence on the New Romantics in Britain, acts like Adam Ant, Visage, Duran Duran, and Flock of Seagulls extended it, and its androgyny and sexual politics were picked up by acts including Culture Club, Bronski Beat and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

It also had an influence on the formation of gothic rock, which was completely informed by the make-up, clothes, theatricality and sound, and even on punk rock, which adopted some of the performance and persona-creating tendencies of the genre, as well as the genre's emphasis on pop-art qualities and simple but powerful instrumentation. In Japan in the 1980s, visual kei was strongly influenced by glam rock aesthetics. Glam has since enjoyed continued influence and sporadic modest revivals in R&B crossover act Prince, and bands such as Marilyn Manson, Placebo, Chainsaw Kittens, Spacehog and The Darkness. courtesy Wikipedia Related articles