Alice Cooper

[waxonwaxoff]

I recently picked up Alice Cooper's fairly new album "Welcome 2 My Nightmare" and was pleasantly surprised. It isn't the classic the original Nightmare album was obviously, but it is a fun listen and actually has a variety of musicial styles on it much like the original. The song "I'll Bite Your Face Off" has very much a Rolling Stones sound to it, yet it didn't get any play at all. It made me think about Alice, who I was a fan of back in the day.

Why does he get ignored so much. He is considered an icon in the music business but outside of a few songs like "School's Out", doesn't get much airplay anymore. I did some research and he has something like 14 Top 40 hits yet you only hear two or three of his songs regularly. I know he went more in a hair metal vein in the 80's (and had a big hit with Poison) but his newer works in the last ten-fifteen years are really good stuff. Considering his sales figures of the past, the fact he still tours yearly and still puts on a good show, and still makes good music especially compared to some of his peers in his age group, why does radio ignore him so much?

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

Dear Wax-- Yours is a legitimate question, sweetened by astute observations. Since leaving the radio bizz myself years ago, most of the facts and insights I can offer are only take-aways I gleen from trade magazines and in fact this very website. But I have a few suggestions.

First, Alice's popularity was driven by as it's edginess. Still, as macabre as Alice may have seemed in the '70s and '80s, his antics back then pale in comparison to the profane envelope-pushing antics of today's acts, particularly RAP. So, while still ringing with strong name recognition, Alice's show of 30-years ago might not seem so cutting edge today.

About the limited selection of Alice's songs now in play, I can speculate that, as other RadioInfo threads have recently bemoaned, today's classic rock station PD's are young and painfully unfamiliar with much of the music they are charged with programming. So, they choose recordings otherwise unknown to them according to album sales history only. Its' not so much a matter of guts, but rather limited insight; they know too little about the music they program. Some of the classic hits we cherish today reaped surprisingly low record sales in their heyday. Some barely even cracked the top 20.

Another on-going challenge that's been around as long as the recording industry itself are Publishing industry execs, whom I have more than once accused of "sitting" on the rights to songs they feel might pay off even greater royalties if they wait another five, ten or twenty years before releasing them.

These are just my own thoughts. What say you other threaders?

 

[landtuna]

Alice lives in my area and my wife went to high school with him. Today he is middle-aged and known for his golf game, Cooperstown restaurant and charitable pursuits. Hardly the "rebel" image that shock rockers want to portray.

 

[88.9 Miracle]

Alice is an extremely talented guy and yes Wax, his new album is great. Sounds a lot like his early works of the 70's. We're playing the heck out of the album in Cincinnati on ClassX Radio. The industry needs begin programming this stuff again and not stop with Alice, but with the tons of new killer Melodic Rock is that being put out. There were so many new Melodic Rock albums released in 2011 that as a programmer, I could not stay on top of it.

I also agree that the young programmers of today don't get Classic Rock and they should not be programming it.

 

[johnbasalla]

The new Alice Cooper CD is good. I do wish that Classic Rock would add, maybe in light rotation initially, good new music by core artists. That would freshen things up. They should front announce the songs to grab the listeners attention. In fact Active Rock stations that lean or just play some classic tracks should join in the fun. Both should consider having an interactive segment where they specifically ask for listener input on this new Alice Cooper (or whoever) song. That could work for no-name bands to, in order to help the decision making process.

 

[borderblaster]

Maybe Alice can play his new stuff on his own radio show.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

Alice lives in my area and my wife went to high school with him. Today he is middle-aged and known for his golf game, Cooperstown restaurant and charitable pursuits. Hardly the "rebel" image that shock rockers want to portray.

Interesting-- mellowing may have hurt Alice's image, but it hasn't damaged Robert Plant. The LED frontman might not be swinging a 9-iron these days, but his new music sure has tamed. Yet, classic stations play his LED music hourly.

 

[TheRover]

If there was any real integrity to Rock radio, then songs from "Killer" would be played, as they rock so much better that the trash on now...

But that's what the audience feeds on...

 

[KFodor]

Have any of you folks heard of "Auditorium Music Testing"? Or "Internet Music Testing"?

Look into it. It might answer some of your questions...and...erase some obvious biases I'm reading here...

 

[borderblaster]

Gee, Jason, didn't you know the way to be number one is to play 10000 obscure songs? I;m waiting for that book that shows WNKU/WNKN number one in both Dayton and Cincinnati

 

[88.9 Miracle]

Blah blah blah. The earth is much larger than an auditorium. If you have a stream, any format will fly. Just ask the iPod! It just takes time to build. Only commercial stations, driven by greed to pay down their massive debt, need to play it safe. Radio was never supposed to be about money, thus your drive for number one. It is about providing a service to those that you serve. Read the FCC rules! I could care less about EVER being number one. I only care about bringing unique and different programming to those who desire it.

 

[TheRover]

Blah blah blah. The earth is much larger than an auditorium. If you have a stream, any format will fly. Just ask the iPod! It just takes time to build. Only commercial stations, driven by greed to pay down their massive debt, need to play it safe. Radio was never supposed to be about money, thus your drive for number one. It is about providing a service to those that you serve. Read the FCC rules! I could care less about EVER being number one. I only care about bringing unique and different programming to those who desire it.

Those days are gone.... It's all about servicing the advertisers, so that, like you said, to play it safe, and cover their massive debt.

Thanks Pres. Clinton !!

I'd like to see a Pres. who cared about something other than the usual issues of whether to serve labor, or to serve Big Business.

Serving the people.... what a quaint concept !!

 

[borderblaster]

Hate to break it to you, but in the good stations had to get ratings and make money too. Playlists were researched and tight. You also had many duplicate formats, as with only one station you had to go for the biggest, most profitable piece of the pie. No one mortgaged his house just so he could play good music for the people.

 

[88.9 Miracle]

Hate to break it to you, but in the good stations had to get ratings and make money too. Playlists were researched and tight. You also had many duplicate formats, as with only one station you had to go for the biggest, most profitable piece of the pie. No one mortgaged his house just so he could play good music for the people.

Wrong. Innovation was in the 60's. Everyone trying new ideas never knowing if money would come. But more concern towards audience development. FM was still young. Those formats were developed into the 70's. Then consolidation took over in the 80's. Ruined radio and the focus became MONEY, certainly not innovation. Playlists did not get tight until the mid-late 70's and even then they were not tight when compared to today's crap formats (Christmas in July, REALLY?). In the 90's everyone went to 20 song playlists.

In fact, many people mortgaged their house in order to put a station on to serve the community they loved never knowing if they would make it financially, but a hope to make it financially. In those days they were not trying to pay off shareholders but rather simply make a living and pay the bills, doing what they loved. No one gets to do what they love in radio anymore. All the creativity has been Fired and now Corporate greed runs the show, not to serve anyone but themselves. But they don't have enough. They want more.

Telling it like it was and is.

 

[borderblaster]

You never heard of Todd Storz or Bill Drake? We're going back to the 50s and 60s with tight playlists. It was the Big 30, not the Big 200. Many FMs were automated with Beautiful Music, some with formats like Drake-Chenault's Hit Parade or TM's Stereo Rock. Yes there were the "experimental" Progressive stations, and once it was found that people like familiar they went away too. There were top 40 stations on AM, and 98% of the playlists were the same from coast to coast. Then there were the full service MOR statons that mom and dad listened to. There really wasn't this utopia where the owners were altruistic and didn't care if they went broke, and then let any DJ walk in and play and say what they wanted. Want to know how many times in my young DJ career I was memoed about music? The bigger stations more often than not were owned by insurance companies, tire companies and banks.

 

[waxonwaxoff]

The thing is I have yet to ever meet a person that didn't deserve their favorite radio station to expand the playlist. It is truly sad when radio is so predictable that you can literally wake up in the morning and write down which songs you think your favorite station will play that day. It especially amazes me that a genre as big as classic rock radio is, is so predictable.

I wanted to respond to a couple of Alice comments just using him as an example. I am not sure if his current image as a family man is viable. Even someone like Ozzy Osbourne is now seen as harmless. I think what is tragic is you have veteran artists like Alice who still put out really good music that in many ways sounds like their older stuff, yet radio won't even consider it. Part of the problem isn't that people wouldn't like the newer songs, the problem is in many cases the average fan doesn't know a particular artist still records. I remember seeing an interview with Kenny Rogers one time. Rogers talked about how frustrating it was to record a new album and then when you perform the song live, 90 percent of the auidence has a blank stare on their face because they didn't even know you had a new album out, only the diehards know. He said it was frustrating because he realized that if he were to record the greatest album of his career, radio wouldn't get it a shot because of his age.


Speaking of playlist, another thing I always wondered is how does a band like Autograph get airplay for the song "Turn Up the Radio" on many classic rock stations, yet most of the so called hair bands who had big hits in the 80's get ignored unless it is a speciality show or a band like Def Leppard or Bon Jovi (who once were considered a hair band). How did that song (though I like the song) make it through the cracks considering they weren't that popular even in the 80's and most people couldn't name another song they ever did, yet someone like, I don't know, let's say Winger, can't get any of their hits played on the radio these days to save their life and Winger was far bigger than Autograph ever were, like them or not.

 

[waxonwaxoff]

Speaking of song testing, I once participated in a song testing sample and an Alice song was tested. It was a track you may have vaguely heard of (lol) called "Eighteen." I just shook my head because that is one of the Alice tracks that is a classic rock staple. How is it that really testing anything in this day and age. If you want to test something test "Brutal Planet" or some something along those lines. Why do they test songs that already are hits?

 

[borderblaster]

They are testing the hits to check for burnout. They can't realistically test every album cut that has ever been released, and they'd all get "don't know" scores. In tghe world of PPM, you can't just throw unfamiliar songs on or most people will hit the button. I realize there are music geeks but they are very vary few.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

...Radio was never supposed to be about money, thus your drive for number one. It is about providing a service to those that you serve.[/color][/b] Read the FCC rules! I could care less about EVER being number one. I only care about bringing unique and different programming to those who desire it.

My angle is a little different-- credit President Reagan for driving deregulation back in the '80s, which offered big payoffs for broadcast execs. I positively adored The Gipper, but, in my own humble opinion, the paring down of government regs under his administration proved far more consequential for Radio/TV than any changes during the Clinton years.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

Wrong. Innovation was in the 60's. Everyone trying new ideas never knowing if money would come. But more concern towards audience development. FM was still young. Those formats were developed into the 70's. Then consolidation took over in the 80's. Ruined radio and the focus became MONEY, certainly not innovation. Playlists did not get tight until the mid-late 70's and even then they were not tight when compared to today's crap formats (Christmas in July, REALLY?). In the 90's everyone went to 20 song playlists.

Right. And where are those stations now?