Alice Cooper Old School Boxset

[Si]

I got mine yesterday. I didn't have to sign for it either. Fed Ex just left it on the front steps.

Friend of mine was on holiday when his arrived so the van driver (which was NOT royal mail) left in his rubbish bin for safety!!!!!
Idiots.

[DIMMA]

mestreech wrote:
"8. Teenage lament '74 - demo, 9. Never been sold before - demo, 10. working up a sweat - demo
11. Muscle of love - demo
The demo's are a great listen but soundwise they are not the best."

The MOL Demos & Rehearsals of "Teenage Lament´74", "Never Been Sold Before" and "Working Up a Sweat", I think sound very good and far better than any boot I´ve heard so far. These demos came from me (as did many of the demos in this collection) and they are 1st or 2nd gen copies off Michael Bruce´s masters, so I doubt you could find better sounding copies.
Unless of course if the original masters could be located.
Unfortunately they were not but I doubt it would have made that much of a difference.

The "pre-production" recordings of "Muscle Of Love" and "Teenage Lament ´74" however came from a different source and I agree are not as good soundwise. They are however super rare and therefore very interesting to hear such early versions with different lyrics.

[A_MichaelUK]

>They are however super rare and therefore very interesting to hear such early versions with different lyrics.

Exactly. It wasn't just a question of how good the quality of the audio was.

[pitkin88]

mestreech wrote:
"8. Teenage lament '74 - demo, 9. Never been sold before - demo, 10. working up a sweat - demo
11. Muscle of love - demo
The demo's are a great listen but soundwise they are not the best."

The MOL Demos & Rehearsals of "Teenage Lament´74", "Never Been Sold Before" and "Working Up a Sweat", I think sound very good and far better than any boot I´ve heard so far. These demos came from me (as did many of the demos in this collection) and they are 1st or 2nd gen copies off Michael Bruce´s masters, so I doubt you could find better sounding copies.
Unless of course if the original masters could be located.
Unfortunately they were not but I doubt it would have made that much of a difference.

The "pre-production" recordings of "Muscle Of Love" and "Teenage Lament ´74" however came from a different source and I agree are not as good soundwise. They are however super rare and therefore very interesting to hear such early versions with different lyrics.

When you refer to " masters " Dimma are you talking about actual reel tapes or cassette tapes? Also, what work if any was done cleaning the tapes up?

[ThePainAddict]

Got mine today, and the layout and look is just awesome. I will really enjoy this and feel it is worth every penny. That said, definitely a set for hard core fans, and I am happy they made it that way. Even the pics, most not rare, seem to be in better quality
I do agree that it isn't full of tons of rarities, but the fans who are spending this type of money probably have about everything that is out there fit to be put on cd.
I saw the BE + EC on the back of the desk (Ezrin & Ernie no doubt).
Production errors: The first CD sleeve (Treasures One) is unlabeled, but the second & third are labeled.
The first listing of Teenage Lament on the tracklist gives a credit to "Dennis Smith"

[A_MichaelUK]

>Production errors: The first CD sleeve (Treasures One) is unlabeled, but the second & third are labeled.

Yes, that's very unfortunate. We all went through everything a number of times but mistakes still happen.

[DIMMA]

pitkin88 wrote: "When you refer to " masters " Dimma are you talking about actual reel tapes or cassette tapes? Also, what work if any was done cleaning the tapes up?"

In the case of these demos/rehearsals, I believe the masters that Michael Bruce had were for the most part on cassette tapes.
My cassette tapes (which are 1st or 2nd generation copies off MB´s masters) were transferred directly to digital with high quality equipment without any additional EQ, compression, limiting etc.

Bob Ezrin and Justin Cortelyou then worked on cleaning them up and making them sound as good as possible and I think they did a great job.
Most fans seem to agree, as they haven´t heard these recordings in such good quality before.

[steven_crayn]

how spooky was that sitting at home picked up my guitar started to play second coming and the postal prophecy arrived it's now unopened as I had to pop out need to get it on my iPhone ASAP review to follow!

[steven_crayn]

just opened it and I am in awe of this work of Art.

Special thanks to our own sickthing Andy Michael who is plastered all over the credits, you must be one proud man to have been involved in putting this together.

Now what shall I play first, think it's gonna be in their own words disc!

[the maniac]

absolutley loving disc one, thanks to all the guys that contributed, too this awesome box set, bril but something was missing, the ticket

[homerx]

In there own words very interesting. Gotta sat really love this set. Hope to see some more down the Line. Would Love to see Billion Dollar Babies done in this style. Big "real" leather wallet with 2-4 vinyl and and bunch of Demos and liive stuff from the era.

[A_MichaelUK]

>Special thanks to our own sickthing Andy Michael who is plastered all over the credits,

You're far too kind.

[A_MichaelUK]

>and bunch of Demos

Do you have any those?

> and liive stuff from the era.

That would be unlikely given the 2001 version which had concert recordings on it.

[Sarah]

Yes, thanks Andy! It's such a fantastic set, you can really see all the hard work that went into it. I feel very lucky to own one.

I'm trying to savour it all as slowly as possible! I'm looking forward to watching the DVD.

[DIMMA]

Great to hear how many of you are loving this set!

There is a reason that there is no previously unreleased material from the Billion Dollar Babies era on the OLD SCHOOL Treasures CDs.
The reason is that most (if not all) of the best out-takes, alternate mixes and live recordings that are out there have already been released officially on the B$B 2CD DELUXE edition, DVD Audio disc, GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN ALICE COOPER DVD/Blue-ray and of course the original B$B QUADRADISC LP.

By far the best sounding live recordings that exist from the Billion Dollar Babies era are from the Dallas and Houston shows which exist on soundboard tapes as well as multi track recordings.
However all of the B$B tracks featured on there have already been released officially on the above mentioned releases, with the exception of the song "Billion Dollar Babies" from Dallas, where Alice seems to forget some of the lyrics.

There are other live soundboard recordings from the B$B era but none of them as good as the Dallas and Houston recordings.

[cherrypie]

Yes, thanks Andy! It's such a fantastic set, you can really see all the hard work that went into it. I feel very lucky to own one.

Yes, I'd like to echo that sentiment, I'm so happy that I got one

[the maniac]

just watched the dvd fab.

[homerx]

Yeah I guess there is a lot Of B$B stuff out there wasn't aware of the quad LP set may have to look into that. Have the DVD's and deluxe CD. Still hoping to find the DVD-a cheaper.

Going to construct a nice shelf for the The Old School box as I have realy no place good to display and set it. For now I have it sitting on next to my LP colection on a little stand with a pillow case under.

Prehaps dweel into the solo years next starting with Welcome to My nightmamre do 10 yrs per set. As there are many different Eras of Alice

[bebauz]

I'm waiting for mine to come in now as well.

Once the record shop gets it in my ass will be there.

i can't wait, I'm probably not even going to make it to the car to open it. I'm probably going to open it up in the shop. Hopefully it has one of those Golden Ticket thingies in it.

[Street Schizo]

I wanted to post a review of the box set. I figured there is way too much to type in one post so I would review each part one at a time beginning with the DVD, if you guys don’t mind. First I want to say I love this DVD, but (there’s always a “but”) I found some things interesting. I recently read, for the third time, Michael Bruce’s book “No More Mr. Nice Guy”. I’m amazed that this guy appears to have very little to say on this DVD. I’m kind of stunned that almost nothing in his book was brought up. Maybe some of it was and it got edited out. The whole interview, however, kind of flows the way he writes about it in his book. Basically, they were a band that did everything together and at some point the singer was beginning to be separated from the band. And it happens on the DVD almost exactly at the point in time when this was happening in Michael’s timeline of things. I know Bob Ezrin says they had technical issues and ran out of time but come on. How do you not have the band talk about Muscle of Love? It’s a GLARING omission. The whole thing just feels incomplete because of that. And we’ve heard Alice’s view on this a few times already so I’m not sure about the accuracy that Ezrin claims . I wonder if it was done on purpose because I’m sure some of things they would have said may caste Alice, Shep and Bob in a negative light. At least according to Mike’s book. Aside from that observation I thought this DVD was an excellent feature. Having these guys together is just magic. And this is coming from a guy who was 6 when they broke up. I have spent many years trying to “catch up”. So stuff like this is just a treasure for me. I also love that Dennis was so vocal. And it was cool how they remembered GB. The full clips of Black Ju Ju, Reflected, Is it My Body, Levity Ball, etc are awesome. I hope there’s more where these came from. Hopefully they’ll make an Old School II. On a scale from 1 to 10, I’ll give the DVD an 8. What do you guys think?