THE ALBUM THAT ALICE FORGOT
Alice Cooper – DaDa (1983)
From the shelves
‘DaDa’ is one of my favorite Alice Cooper albums, hands down. I know it’s an odd choice, as it includes some of his weirdest material ever, but that’s exactly why it sounds intriguing. For those who are not familiar: Alice Cooper released a string of unusual albums in the early 80s, dabbling with new wave and synths among other things. He has almost no recollection of writing and recording those, as he was basically drinking himself to death. ‘DaDa’ (1983) is the last album of that series, before getting sober and making a successful comeback in a more metal vein. “That was a very creepy album”, Alice said when I interviewed him in 2005, and it’s hard to disagree.
My personal highlights are the eerie ambient-like title-track (an instrumental with a little girl’s voice – producer Bob Ezrin’s daughter if I remember correctly – chanting “da da” over and over. It could easily pass as the soundtrack to a horror movie) and the creepy ballad ‘Former Lee Warmer’, a classic horror story about an evil twin locked in a dusty attic. “To this day – he told me about the latter – when people ask me what were the scariest songs that I ever wrote, I always include that one. I always say, if you listen to that song alone in the dark, it’s pretty creepy”. It was a nod to old style horror: “I think some of the movies done in the 60s were very scary. Movies like ‘The Haunting’… The original ‘Haunting’ was really a scary movie. Or ‘Carnival Of Souls’. Movies like that, where you never really see a monster, you never really see a vampire. It’s sort of like implied. And sometimes that’s scarier than actually seeing a monster”.
The rest is not bad too, especially the quirky sense of humor in songs like ‘Dyslexya’ (“Is dis love or is dyslexia?”) and ‘I Love America’. Even the worst moments (‘Fresh Blood’, predating late ’80s Pink Floyd, but cheesier) still sound fascinating to me somehow. Oh, and the freaky cover artwork (by none other than Salvador Dali!) is a perfect companion to the music. Definitely worth a listen, even if (or especially if) you’re not the greatest fan of the “usual” Alice.
I had the CD for years, but today I found a mint (still sealed) LP copy for a very cheap price and couldn’t resist.
