"And Their Music? It's Just Noise"

Probably one of the reasons why my brother and I could listen to any music we wanted was because our parents, like most of the parents born in the Depression, couldn't understand the lyrics. I find that true too, as I would swear I understood a favorite song only to find out it's lyrics weren't what I thought they were.

Song lyrics like, “We Built this City on Logs and Coal” by Jefferson Starship or say, a classic like Hendrix's Purple Haze: “'scuse me while I kiss this guy.” Abba's Dancin' Queen sounded like “See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen!”

Since my parents gave up wondering about the crap my brother and I listened too, we could listen to anything as long as it wasn't too loud. In fact, that was the only rule: Don't Blast the Music.

Alice Coopers Billion Dollar Babies was a great album in that it's fun rock music to listen to. Fun in the same way Live at Budakon of Cheap Trick fame. Had my parents looked at the song list and read a few of the lyrics, they would've burned the album and then salted the earth upon which it was burned. The album had titles like:

“I Love the Dead” A song about necrophilia, with Alice panting as if he was porking a corpse

“Sick Things” A song about those deeply secret little hobbies many of us have and will take to the grave with us when we die. God Forbid the public find out!

“Raped 'n' Freezin' A song about finding a slut in the desert and being raped by her

These were the songs I was singing along too when I was 7 years old. It's a good thing I couldn't sing worth a note as Dad and Mom probably did their best to block me out. To tell the truth, at 7, I didn't know what Alice was singing about either, but it was tune catchy and you could sing along with it.

One night, as I was watching the Smothers Brothers show, I found out Alice Cooper would be their guest to sing “Unfinished Sweet.” I ran into the kitchen to get my Dad to tell him “He's on! He's on! Come an' see!”

“Who's on?” my Dad asked.

“Alice Cooper! C'mon! Come see it!”

“Who's she? He asked.

So Dad comes to watch. When he finds out Alice is really a male named Vincent Furnier, he becomes completely dismissive to whatever he could possibly sing. Already he has pre-judged this song as crap.

As Unfinished Sweet turns from a common set of a dentist's office to a staged tooth pulling involving dancing molars, giant forceps and a mascara covered Alice, he shouts out, “Maureen..Jesus H...Come and see this moron!”

Alice dances around like while the molars carry and parade him and Dad tells my Mom, “This is talent? This is what the kids like? My god...it's AWFUL! Why would any guy wear black make-up?”

Well, what do u expect from a guy who still hummed Big Band songs from the 40's.

Click the pic and see the show on the Smothers Brothers, it's shitty quality so put up with it. I was surprised to find it.