Original Album Series (5 Pack)

A very good price for 5 CD pack. Alice Cooper early years from 1969-1972

I saw Alice's first UK tour when they were promoting "Killer" - with a lot of "Love it to Death" in the set. Truly excellent and before they'd really broken into the phenomena they were about to become. I still maintain, Alice were the band then, not the front man, and what an excellent band they were. I rushed out and bought "Love it to Death" and "Killer" - the former then on the Straight label before Warner bought it out. Quite different, in that the earlier was quite disturbingly manic, having an empathy for the craziness. 'Dwight Fry' and 'SunArise' (the first thing they did at that gig) were wonderful. "Killer" carries much more threat and darkness. With titles like 'Dead Babies' and 'Desperado' that's probably to be expected.I went out and got "Pretties" - a niaive, Zappa-esque offering, strange and way off beam to where the band finished up. A great insight into the times and a band struggling to find their genre. Certainly not typical Alice. 'Reflected' is an early variation of 'Elected' and it's interesting to see the roots of a song later to become a huge hit. Then it was "Easy Action" - a transitional album for sure, with both "Pretties" and "Love it to Death" in evidence. Some nice experimental distortions and effects. Both then on the Straight label of course.By the time "School's Out" arrived the band were really big. The title track was overplayed to the extent I'm still not too keen on it. When I first got this collection of CDs, the little heard 'Loony Tune' jumped out again at me - excellent to revisit it after so long. All in all it's a great value collection, to see an obscure band evolve and explode into Superstardom. It's a shame they couldn't include "Billion Dollar Babies" and give us everything that was produced by the band (except the dodgy "Muscle of Love")before Alice split and went solo .... but really musn't grumble at this price.It's all here and musically powerful, depite their fame being focused on the live stage show. Sure, that was groundbreaking and sensational, but it was based on solid rock and roll - some well crafted songs, wholly theatrical and with driving rhythms behind strong lyrics. If you're dipping into the samples I'd recommend 'Today Mueller', 'Refrigerator Heaven','Dwight Fry','Halo of Flies' and 'Loony Tune' as a pick from each disc. This is really good stuff. Pop it in your basket now.

Fantastic!Great price!Get it if you're an Alice Cooper fan.

Well, seeing as I paid only £10 for this on a pre-order special deal, I can't complain that's it's not great value for money.And it IS very nice to have the first 5 AC albums all in one place, and in card sleeves so you can play a selection of faves from the various albums without having to grapple with plastic CD cases.And, let's face it, if you're an old-school Alice fan from back in the day like me, then re-listening to these holy-grail albums is always a pleasure. What other band from that 69-72 era (presented here) showed so much invention and evolution in such a short time. Each of these albums differs in sound, song-writing styles, vocal styling, production and so on. Collectively they really do represent a treasure in the Rock canon.That's the upside. Now, there are a couple of niggles to point out.Firstly, though I'm no audiophile, these sound like they're taken from the same old Warners CD masters from the days of yore, replete with hiss here and there. I guess at this price we're not going to get nice remasters. But, I did live in hope.Secondly, the card sleeves and the box. The box seems ideal for 4 card sleeves, but jamming 5 in means they're a real pain to get out. Hence, I have taken to only putting 4 back in, as it would surely damage one or more sleeve to winch them out whenever I want to listen to one or more, if I put all five back in.And the card sleeves themselves. Why oh why have Rhino elected to put a coloured border around each of them? These are some of the most striking album covers of all time. And, even if a border were required, it would have been logical and easy enough to put a suitable colour around most of them that matched the original design (black for LITD etc.). That's another indication that little time has been spent on this reissue, or little time considering the consumer.But, for the price I paid, I can't really complain. I just thought I'd point these things out for potential buyers. ........It's still classic Cooper, Bruce, Dunaway, Smith, Buxton (and mostly Ezrin) at the height of their creativity. And maybe at this price some new listeners might be exposed to the joys of the Cooper group as they mutated from psych to psycho rock.

These classic album sets are bargains. For this set, you get the first 5 Cooper albums for just a little over a tenner. Cannot go wrong. I had never heard any of these albums before and I am very impressed. Overall, the entire set is 5 stars however, the debut was a real joy to the ears. I had heard it was a hotch potch of styles and nothing like the AC from the School's out/BDB's era however, I like this album a lot. I expected it to be very much a debut but I think it's great. The second album is good, is a slight step down in my opinion, yet still great nonetheless, then once you hit the 3rd album, the classic Cooper sound is firmly there, another great album, followed by Killer and then School's Out. I would say, having listened to all 5 three times, School's Out isn't quite as good as I thought it would have been, but it's still enjoyable, maybe 3/5. I can't wait to get series 2 covering the following 5 albums.

Great value for this collection also bought volume 2

bought this collection to replace my vinyl copies of Killer and Schools out as on low budget. took me back to my youth, surprised that there was no slick black limousine on the albums