My Thoughts On Easy Action

[Billie1966]

Wow! Has this become one of my favorite Alice albums?
As I sit here at work at 1:45 AM I am listening to what I think is a really great album. To me it's a glimpse of what Alice Cooper would become... A force to be reckoned with that would later come with the release of "Love It to Death". You got to love some of the great lines in the song's.. The opening tune, "Mister and Misdemeanor" has a great line saying nobody like's me but everybody adores you.. That's horrific poetry at work.. Let's not forget how heavily the band was influenced by The Beatles and Doors. Speaking of The Beatles, "Shoe Salesman" is exactly what I am talking about.. Check out those background vocals and guitar work... This would definitely be on my compilation disc of Alice songs. Now for a violent little song called "Still No Air", a song I can hear Jim Morrison singing.. I also like the mention of the jet's in this tune.. Once again, fantastic guitar work from Michael Bruce.
The emphasis is really on the music and not so much the vocals, although Alice sounds like he's ready bust loose any moment. One of those moments comes in "below your means". Now we come to one of my favorites from the album if not my favorite of all of them. The build up to the opening of "return of the spiders" is a song that is a perfect piece of work. Alice's angry vocal I like to call it, works really well with the arrangement set forth in the song which allows Alice to come out of his shell. One of the few mellow moments in the album comes with "laughing at me", once again drawing heavy on The Beatles, It's a short little number that shines with a another great harmony section. Now you tell me who else would write and sing a song called "Refrigerator Heaven"? Alice sings, "I'm Ice cycle blue". This would go along nicely with "Cold Ethyl". Check out the cool piano part in "Beautiful Flyaway" which is also a real catchy number too. Would you ever guess this was Alice Cooper?? The album end's with the longest tune on it. No beating around the bush here, "Lay down and die, goodbye". At a lengthy 7:30 timing it mostly an instrumental probably meant to drive parents crazy. There is a lot of stuff going on here, what I don't know... But can't you just hear this in some haunted house somewhere? Well that is my take on what was Alice's second Album.. Pretty good one too... Not on the same level as "love it to death", But I nice look at to what we were getting ourselves into.
It's all been down hill since... Still love it to death!

Danny~

[Dave Conway]

Cool, I think the most fascinating aspect of listening to the first 2 albums, aside from their stand alone quality, is seeing the signs of what was to come later.

Fantastic stuff.

[Mr. Skull]

Great and wonderful album indeed, long time ago my alias on the Alice Cooper's Sick Board was shoesalesman.
My other favorites the Residents also had a song with that title on their second album : not available.
Later I came here to find out that there already was a shoesalesman in town. I never dared to ask him if he likes that Residents song though.

[Shoesalesman]

Beautiful Flyaway has some great piano work and Shoe Salesman has to go down as one of my favorite Alice Cooper tunes before Bob Ezrin came into the fold. To me, there's more gel on this album in comparison to Pretties For You and it gets regular play on the car's cassette player.

[CountryMetalPunk]

I absolutely love Easy Action. It easily ranks in my all-time top ten albums.

Mr. Skull, I'm not too familiar with them, but i really like the Residents too.

[steven_crayn]

Love this album, full of surprises yet had the song structure that most of 'Pretties For You' lacked.
I used to play 'Shoe Salesman' and 'Laughing At Me' as a street musician and people would say who are those songs by and were surprised to hear they were Alice Cooper songs.
Later from 'Love It To Death' Bob Ezrin would help shape the bands songwriting but you can hear that the creative talent was there waiting to be developed on 'Easy Action'.

[Billie1966]

I know!! You would never guess that those are Alice Cooper songs!! I was really taken back with the harmonies.. Spot on!!

Danny~

[steven_crayn]

I think 'Return Of The Spiders' had the venom that was to be heard more on subsequent albums.

[daytripper]

This is an album that not everyone can enjoy. I like it because to me it is a good start on what was to come. I also love the Piano and Alice's voice is so nice early.