Pretties for You [Import]

Here is the story. AC were a struggling band. Flat broke getting by only from stiffing every motel in Detroit. On to LA, things were no better. Frank Zappa met up with AC at a party where it was learned Mr. Z. had started his own record label , Bizarre/Straight. AC wanted to record an album.
When Frank witnessed the band on stage, he noticed that each time they played, they would send the audience away in a fit. To the point of a ghosttown. The stage show at this time was so
offensive and disgusting it made the later AC stage extravaganza seem mild. No big budget theatrics, instead the likes of a transvestite crying "nobody likes me" and then having a temper tantrum like a 2 year old, lying on his back repeating 4 letter f- words until every single audience member had enough. Zappa saw SOMETHING, we can only imagine what, in this.
Zappa offered them a tryout for a record deal, and to his surprise one morning, they snuck into his basement studio and began playing-- loud. A naked, alarmed Zappa rushed out of bed and gave them the deal on the account THEY STOPPED PLAYING RIGHT THEN!
The budget was microscopic and the scheduling was rushed. The band DID NOT have any say in the production. Ya'll can blame
Zappa for the lackluster sound.
One of the things Zappa found interesting was that he realized he would have a challenge trying to transcribe much of their music on paper. It was full of odd time signatures, on a dime changes, sputters, and things that gave it charachter. It is the perfect example of something that sounds like junk until your band tries to play it. It takes some skill to keep it all together. Trust me on this. It is a lot harder than it may seem. None of this music is orchestrated in notation, moreover none of it was developed over time in a studio and none of it was played with real enthusiasm to a crowd on stage. It is literaly taking green amateurs and giving them a couple of hours in a studio and thats that.
Aside from the multitude of musical detail on this album, admittingly hard to notice at first due to the rushed pace of recording (sloppiness)and the lack of studio polish (live in studio, few overdubs), there is some great songwriting. A lot of the ideas are quite off the wall, but there is a definate mixing of emotions within the songs, typical of a lot of the psych music. It is SUPOSSED to be that way! NOT a result of bad songwriting. This was recorded at a time when in LA about the hardest thing around was Spirit or Amboy Dukes. Maybe the likes of Zeppelin coming through on the radio. Or Cream. That's about it.

Pretties is just oozing with that lovely "am I happy or sad?" , manic-depressive, so-on-dope- I'm confused mixed up emotional ambiguity. It's about putting some feeling in music rather than just playing what sounds "acceptable" to a beat. It is a testament to how records were sometimes made back then. Totally honest. This is what they were all about. Not a money making,
picture posing machine they later became.
They take risks. Neal Smith never again assaulted his drums like this. Those twin gibsons are never again given so much freedom. And those vocal harmonies are great! Alice REALLY sings in his REAL voice. It's like a pop album gone bad in some places. A times it sounds like Revolver era Beatles on bad acid! None of that nasal whining. But not all of this album is atonal disonant weirdness. There are a few beautiful songs too. Apple Bush with the help of George Martin could have been home on Sgt. Pepper. Reflected is actually better than the rehashed Elected. And Living is such a toe tapper. It sounds like the Beatles. It does. A fantastic song, a hundred times better than I'm 18. And I really like No Longer Umpire and BB on Mars (great titles by the way), these are go happy and almost giddy sounding, but yet disturbing. A technique AC would touch on later in songs like Dead Babies or I love the Dead, only this is much stranger. Twisted! Brilliant! Levity Ball souds like a live recording with a hand held tape recorder that was in a toilet down the hall-- terrible sound. Not a very good song, I'm afraid, either.
Yes it took me a while to warm up to this album, but after a some time I have realized its brilliance. It is probably my
favorite AC album.
This is one of the most underappreciated classic albums from the US underground scene. We can't always have sparkling production, motivated producers, or even seasoned musicians when making an album. It is the substance and the effort that makes it. Not to be judged comparably to say, Killer, but rather as some great material that was unlike anything else at the time, in true garage rock fashion. Stay away if you must have that studio polish or if some timing issues ruin your day. If you appreciate the avant-garde or late 60's experimentalism, this one is a must.

By the way, AC were not into drugs. They only drank alot. And the cover of the album was taken from an original painting Zappa had hanging in his living room. Also, there are no Cooperisms on here , no "sick things" such as necrophilia, mental illness, etc. so if you are in love with Alice the persona, get a scrapbook and enjoy the wallet size cut out pics from your original LP press of BDB (great album packaging by the way), this has nothing to do with black leather. Alice has blond hair and is in a green mini dress in the back cover photo.

Alice Cooper made a name for himself in the early seventies as one of the most beloved and controversial figures in classic rock. Many artists from the era had image on their side, but Alice Cooper was one of the few classic rock artists that had image and a damn fine hard rock sound to back it up. For Alice Cooper's classic band, it all started in the sixties. A preacher's son, Vincent Damon Furner, was playing in a number of bands, including The Spiders and The Nazz. However, after hearing that there was another band out there called The Nazz (the one with Todd Rundgren), Furnier needed a new band name. He consulted a Quija board, and the name it gave him was Alice Cooper - the name of a witch burned at the stake in the seventeenth century. He took the name for both his band, as well as an alter ego for himself (he thought he was the reincarnation of this witch, and he'd legally change his name to Alice Cooper a few years later.) With guitarists Michael Bruce and Glenn Buxton, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith, the five-piece band got a record deal on Frank Zappa's newly-formed label. How does the band's first album, 1969's Pretties For You, measure up? Read on for my review.

Before I get into the tracks, I should probably state that this is NOT the Alice Cooper band you know and love. On this album, the band uses a sound unlike any they would ever use again. The sound the band uses here sounds like a mixture between the Beatles (latter years) and Cream, with some slight traces of the elements of the Alice Cooper sound to come thrown in. Kicking off this album is the awesome instrumental Titanic Overture. You wouldn't expect Alice Cooper's band to instrumentals very well, but they do this one great. Next up is 10 Minutes Before The Worm (many songs on here have titles that make very little sense.) This is a catchy tune, although it's a very short one. If it was a little longer, it would be perfect. Track three, Sing Low Sweet Cheerio, is one of the longer cuts on the album. The length of the song, nearly six minutes, is one of its greatest strengths. You've gotta love the harmonica! Today Mueller comes next, which is a mid-paced rocker with piano backing it. This track fuses a plethora of different rock stylings, making it wildly diverse and excellent. The fifth track, Living, is a fast-paced sixties rocker, heavily reminiscent of the Beatles song Doctor Robert, from their Revolver album. This is probably my favorite song on the album, and I could totally picture the Beatles circa 1966 performing it. Fields Of Regrets, on the other hand, is a bit more on the heavy rock side. This is one of the more Cream-like compositions featured on the album, and that's a good thing. With No Longer Umpire (don't ask me where they got that title), the band reprises the stylings featured earlier on the album in Today Mueller. The reprise is a nice touch. The next track is Levity Ball, which was recorded live for some unknown reason. This is a classic sixties-style rocker with some excellent instrumentation. B.B. On Mars (another weird title) comes next. The twin guitar assault that opens this track just plain rules. All through this track, the guitars steal the show. Reflected is the song that the band would later turn into the big hit Elected on their 1973 Billion Dollar Babies album. This version of the song is a bit heavier and less pop-friendly than that later take on the song, and this makes this version of the song featured here WAY better than Elected. Why'd they rehash it later on like that? If it ain't broke don't fix it! Apple Bush comes next. This is a rocker similar to the bluesy rock sound that Jethro Tull used on their debut album, 1968's This Was. Interesting. Alice Cooper even sounds like Ian Anderson here! The semi-psychedelic hard rockers Earwigs To Eternity and Changing Arranging close out the album, and do a damn good job of it. In the end, this is an excellent album, even if it sounds nothing like the later Alice Cooper band.

Sadly, this album is extremely difficult to find (as of June 30, 2004), because it has long since been out of print (I'm not even sure if the album was ever released on CD in America.) Fortunately, if you search hard enough on the internet, you can come across a reissue that contains both this album and the 1970 follow-up, Easy Action. The reissue does nothing to fix the horrific production quality of the albums (and many of the songs on the album sound TERRIBLE (blame Zappa's company's production for that)), but it's good to have both albums in one place. If you get the album, be sure to get that edition of the album.

Alice Cooper's first album is, for lack of a better term, underrated genius, even if the band hadn't yet found the sound that would bring them such high success in the seventies. Be warned though - this album is WAY different from other Alice Cooper albums. If you're anything less than a die-hard fan, chances are you won't like it. I am a die-hard fan of the Alice Cooper band, and it took the album a long time to grow on me. But, if you're a die-hard fan of Alice Cooper with an open mind who is willing to give the album a chance, and listen with an open mind, you'll agree, it deserves all five stars. The clasic Alice Cooper band is, in my mind, virtually unparalleled in their greatness, and this album demonstrates it - though not in the same way their other albums do. No die-hard fan of the Coop sound be without this.