2000 Great Songs #1310: Hello Hooray
I'm not a fan of Alice Cooper (the dude playing hard rock/metal since the mid-70s), but I love a lot of the music scattered across the early 70s records of Alice Cooper (the band), a mix of glam and prog and hard rock that could be surprisingly catchy and melodic. "Hello Hooray," off 1973's Billion Dollar Babies --an LP probably much better known for the more straightforward rocker "No More Mr. Nice Guy" (effectively needle-dropped in Dazed & Confused )--is a big, melodramatic piece somewhat incongruously first written by a Canadian singer-songwriter for Judy Collins back in 1968. As glammed up by Alice Cooper, it seems ready-made for a flashy stage entrance, but also not hard to imagine it opening a darkly gothic musical--which isn't surprising, given that Bob Ezrin produced, and you could hear this meshing well with Lou Reed 's Berlin or Pink Floyd 's The Wall . (Indeed, I used it on one of my favorite imaginary soundtracks , and it works...
