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.

Gene Simmons: 'Rock Is Finally Dead' - Esquire

Gene Simmons: 'Rock Is Finally Dead' - Esquire

Find Out More about Pim Zond and Experimental Music

  photo credit: Funky64 (www.lucarossato.com)  

 Find Out More on Pim Zond and Experimental Music 

Pim Zond is currently experimenting within the noise rock genre. Noise rock makes use of the traditional instrumentation and iconography of rock, but incorporates atonality and especially dissonance, and also frequently discards usual songwriting conventions.

Underground rock musicians such as the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, and the MC5 incorporated elements of free jazz and minimalism into their performances and recordings. Post 2000 noise rock often features tribal poly-rythmic drum patterns. Recent bands have carried on older traditions while branching out and furthering their theatrics. Bands such as Comparative Anatomy, Pim Zond, Lightning Bolt, The Locust are known for wearing outlandish costumes.


 

Music History - Industrial Rock

Music History - Industrial Rock - Origins, Influential Bands and Equipment

Cover of Die Krupps

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BIOMECHANIC DAY - Biomechanic Art & Industrial Music (Museum HR Giger & EbullITION CH) by feelingandsound

Industrial rock arose at end of the 1970s as a number of rock and post-punk bands started to use synthesizers to add an industrial feel to their guitar-based music. The genre draws influences from a number of sources, including noise music and electro-industrial as well as post-punk and traditional rock music. 

It is often mistaken for industrial metal, which is a separate industrial genre that did not develop until nearly a decade later. Early industrial rock was made by a number of bands, including groups such as Killing Joke, SPK, Einsterzende Neubauten, Die Krupps and Test Dept. 

The work of these bands would later have an impact on the development of the genre and industrial music as a whole. Certain releases by influential industrial metal bands like as Nine Inch Nails can also be taken as examples of industrial rock. Other popular bands that have contributed to the genre in one way or another include Gary Numan, KMFDM, Celldweller and Gravity Kills. The American band Filter has also had considerable commercial success. 

 

Cover of Test Dept.

Since the genre draws heavily on influences from rock and post-punk as well as the world of electronic music, industrial rock bands often use a mixture of both acoustic and electronic music gear. Some of the most widely-used pieces of music equipment used in the genre are Digidesign Pro Tools, Apple Logic, the Sherman Filterbank, the Kurzweil K2000 and Clavia Nord Lead. 

The genre features frequent use of effects processors and industrial production techniques to distort recorded guitar riffs and acoustic drums in ways not usually found in other rock music genres.Similar to industrial metal, industrial rock experienced its peak of commercial success in the 1990s, especially in North America. Since then, popular interest in the genre has faded considerably.

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