alice cooper
98 Musicians Predict the 2022 NFL Season
Now that Labor Day is in the rearview mirror, it means that football season is finally here. For the fourth season running, we asked a group of musicians to give their insight on how this season will shake out. No one predicted last year’s Super Bowl matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, though a few accurately forecasted that the Rams would take home the Lombardi Trophy. As usual, some fans-turned-musicians are overly optimistic about their team’s chances, while others brace for another season at the bottom of the standings. Will this year be different? We’ll know in February. For now, here’s our collection of predictions. Nathan Followill, Kings Of LeonTennessee Titans (Credit: Taylor Hill/Getty Images) What’s your prognosis for the season?We way outperfor...
106 Musicians Predict the 2022 Baseball Season
The powers-that-be did their best to prevent this year’s Major League Baseball season from happening, but, alas, we’re back. By we, I mean the annual SPIN baseball preview. As usual, everyone (or almost everyone) is optimistic about their team’s chances in 2022. In 2021, a good chunk of the season was played with minimal fans in attendance, but things should be mostly back to normal this year. As I said last year about the season: Will it be weird? Probably. But aren’t they all? If it wasn’t a weird season with bizarre injuries, what kind of season would it be? Not baseball, Suzyn. Somehow, we almost doubled the number of participants from 62 to 105. Maybe we go for a cool 162 next year? If nothing else, we know that musicians love America’s Pastime (even if many feel that it doesn’t love ...
The 100 Greatest Rock Stars Since That Was A Thing
Three of the 100 are in this picture! The Rolling Stones, in 1964, from left to right: Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones. The problem with lists like this is they are invariably bullshit. So our prime objective was to make sure we didn’t do a bullshit list. I’m not saying we did a scientific one either. Because that isn’t possible — actually, it is, if you wanted some compilation of who sold the most records/concert tickets/has the most fans/got the most death threats, etc., and someone could come up with a bunch of very empirical metrics and create a “heat index” or something, and could deliver an actual scientific ranking! But we, um, didn’t do that. In fact we didn’t even, technically, do the “we...
The 50 Best Live Albums of the 1970s
The concert industry exploded in the 1970s, and the live album, a stopgap project once reserved for only the biggest artists, became a compulsory ritual and a pivotal moment for many artists. Live albums captured legendarily loud bands like The Who and The Ramones in their natural element. Once obscure regional acts like Bob Seger, KISS and Cheap Trick exploded into the mainstream with live albums. The Band, The Stooges, and Velvet Underground put their final gigs on vinyl. Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young (as his ongoing archive series shows), and Jackson Browne recorded entire sets of new songs onstage. The Grateful Dead released several official live albums (and continue to do so) that only made fans want to bootleg shows on their own more. With the 50th anniversary of a landmark live album, Th...
Stevie Nicks, The Strokes and Run The Jewels to Headline Atlanta’s Shaky Knees Festival
Fleetwood Mac chanteuse Stevie Nicks, The Strokes and Run The Jewels will headline the Shaky Knees Music Festival on Oct. 22-24, 2021 at Central Park in downtown Atlanta. The festival’s eighth incarnation features more than 60 bands on four stages, including Alice Cooper, St. Vincent, Modest Mouse, Portugal. The Man, Phoebe Bridgers, Mac Demarco, Dermot Kennedy, Dominic Fike, Royal Blood, The Hives and many more. “We are really happy to be able to deliver Shaky Knees this October with a lineup that truly has something for everyone,” said founder Tim Sweetwood in a statement. “We look forward to getting back into Central Park with our amazing Shaky family of fans and hear some incredible live music together.” On the Shaky Knees site, it’s posted that “vaccinations are not currently mandated...
62 Musicians Predict the 2021 Baseball Season
Somehow, some way, it’s baseball season again. Yes, already. Last year’s abbreviated run saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Tampa Bay Rays in six games to win their first World Series title in 32 years, something that Ben Gibbard predicted in our 2020 preview. As you can imagine, Dodgers fans — especially the ones below — are in great spirits heading into the 2021 season. So what does that mean about this year? Absolutely nothing. As COVID restrictions start to loosen and with more fans allowed back into stadiums, excitement is beginning to buzz, especially with our group of experts. Like last time, many are hopeful that this will be their team’s year. We searched far and wide to get predictions for the upcoming Major League Baseball season, creating a proper barometer of what these su...
Feed My Frankenstein: Alice Cooper Isn’t Slowing Down
The big story on Alice Cooper, aside from the music (check the start to finish classic LP Love it to Death and the hit-heavy Best Of for starters) has always been theatrics. From his garage band days in the Spiders to his heyday in the ’70s and early ’80s, Alice Cooper was a bridge between rock ‘n’ roll and theater, and the band helped inspire and create heavy metal, punk and new wave. The idea of spectacle on stage isn’t a new one (Aristotle noted its importance in Poetics more than two millennia ago), but Alice always adds his trademark touch of shock and awe to immersive and fantastical effect. Though his touring schedule is already booked through the next decade, like the rest of us he’s sitting out the pandemic and waiting for the giant pause button on the world to be lifted. Alice fi...
Alice Cooper Drops Cover of Velvet Underground’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll
“School’s Out” singer Alice Cooper dropped a cool cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” today (Nov. 13) ahead of the Feb. 26, 2021, release of his album Detroit Stories via earMUSIC. Helmed by longtime Cooper producer by Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Lou Reed), the LP follows the 2019 EP Breadcrumbs as a continuing homage to Detroit, where Cooper was born and initially found fame at that city’s famed Grande Ballroom alongside other legendary city denizens including The Stooges and Ted Nugent. “Detroit was Heavy Rock central then,” explains Cooper in a statement. “You’d play the Eastown and it would be Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, the Stooges and the Who, for $4! The next weekend at the Grande it was MC5, Brownsville Station and ...
Alice Cooper Calls for U.S. Police Departments to ‘Weed Out the Bad Guys’
While Alice Cooper has been channeling his energies toward his Solid Rock non-profit during COVID-19, he recently shared his thoughts surrounding racism and police brutality. Staring his music career around the same time as the civil rights movement was gaining more momentum, Cooper talked about how the same problems in the ’60s are still issues today. “You would have thought that that solved the problem,” he said during an interview with Hawaii Public Radio’s All Things Considered. “But there’s always that five percent of people that are racist.” Cooper admitted that he knows “a lot of cops” but said, “I don’t know one racist cop. But I guarantee you that five percent of the police force in every city have got a racial problem. And those are the guys that get all the headlines because the...
