BY RANDY MICHAUD NOT ESPECIALLY FORCED Special Forces from 1981 is the second of four albums which Alice Cooper (the solo artist) released during what has come to be affectionately known as his “Blackout Period” from 1980-1983 - after he dried out from alcohol but replaced it with a cocaine habit. I personally love this period, regardless of how it was created, because it yielded some of the most interesting music from the Coop since the early days of the original Alice Cooper group. As with most of my formative years of being indoctrinated into the circle of Classic Rock music, my friend Chris and I were already avid fans of the predecessor to Special Forces, Alice’s 1980 album Flush the Fashion. To lay the groundwork here, I will tell you that Chris was a brand new member of the RCA Record Club at the time (13 albums for just one cent, remember?), so he had already received his treasure trove and was working on the promised “3 albums at regular club prices in the next year” stipulation he’d agreed to. We were both beginners when it came to Alice Cooper (meaning, we both knew and loved the song “School’s Out”), so Chris ordered a copy of the live Alice Cooper Show album, since live albums had never steered us wrong before. On the day the album arrived, we tore into the packaging but were disappointed to find Flush the Fashion had been sent instead of the live album. Chris decided to keep it anyway and it only took one or two spins to realize the album was an instant classic (I recorded a copy on cassette which just happened to have the self-titled debut from The Cars on the other side, so those two albums have always been linked for me and, as it turned out, I found the musical styles of both albums to be very similar). I told you that story to tell you this one (which should lead me into my review of Special Forces). Chris and I continued our musical discovery together, so when Chris became aware of Alice’s follow up to Flush the Fashion, he grabbed it (along with a copy of From the Inside). Chris lived in the basement of his parents’ house, in a corner room he and his father built. One of the walls of the room was bare concrete, so he had the idea to paint it black so the black light posters he hung would look like they were floating in thin air instead of on the wall. Both of us also liked to draw, so we would reproduce our favorite band logos on paper and hang them on our walls since we couldn’t find anything similar to buy. While browsing in a hobby shop/art supply store one day, we found these cool items that I can only recall as being “paint markers." They were like a magic marker, but instead of ink, they were filled with paint. I don’t remember who had the idea first, but we both thought it would be really cool to try and paint all the band logos we loved on the black concrete wall of his room. Since the pens were something like $3.00 apiece, we could only afford to buy a few to begin with, but we augmented our collection quickly using another method I won’t discuss specifically here. Once we had the main 8 colors and some additional ones, we could get to work. No details are necessary about which bands’ logos we painted - that’s not the point. The point is, the soundtracks we played exclusively to fuel our inspiration were the two Alice albums I mentioned above: From the Inside and, particularly, Special Forces. Side One of Special Forces fades in with a short introduction of ambient keyboards before several staccato hits to the snare prompt Alice to ask us, “Who Do You Think We Are?”, which is a valid question, since this is definitely not your father’s Alice Cooper. But does Alice care? NO, HE DOES NOT. From there, the album practically runs like a series of comedy sketches starring bizarre characters the likes of which haven’t been seen since Alice’s ward-mates on From the Inside. The next track, “Seven & Seven Is," is a gutsy treatment of the song originally recorded by Arthur Lee’s LOVE. Alice adds so much grit to his version, that one has to wonder if his ball is gonna explode as it bip-bips against the wall. “Prettiest Cop on the Block” casts Alice as a macho, alpha cop who excels at his undercover assignments with the vice squad because he just looks so damn good in drag. “Don’t Talk Old to Me” features yet another disenfranchised youth being pushed around by the establishment and his declaration of rebellion that Alice has been trumpeting since “School’s Out” first hit the airwaves in 1972. The closer of side one is a 1981 reworking of “Generation Landslide” first heard on the Billion Dollar Babies album that gives the track a different, slightly more cohesive feel than the original while keeping the stream of consciousness poetry of the lyrics intact. I have to confess that this version is the one I heard first, so I’ve always favored it slightly over the original. DON’T JUDGE! Side Two opens with the mock comic horror of “Skeletons in My Closet” which showcases Alice in his best pyjamas, hiding under his sheets because he sees skeletons and bones everywhere in his house. The skeletons persist in calling his name until the frightened but frustrated Cooplet tears off the covers and demands, “WHAT?!? WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?”. Alice answers his own question in the following cut, “You Want It, You Got It” and promises all manner of excessive luxuries to what appears to be some unknown but exceedingly spoiled model brand female, who may just be the subject of the next and, arguably, most comedic track of the album, “You Look Good in Rags." Alice runs down a laundry list of female fashion criminals who have gone to extremes to stay at the top of the vanity heap and then indicts them all by informing them they’d look better in rags with dirt in their hair. He then drives his point home with a gang vocal section at the end of the song which features several male voices singing “rags rags rags rags, rag-rag-rag-rag rags” in a round (e.g. “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) to hilarious effect. In fact, my above-mentioned buddy, Chris and I used to lift the needle and repeat the section over and over while pissing ourselves in hysterics every time. When we finally had our fill, we would let the grooves spin out and venture into the next vignette, this time casting Alice in the role of the ultimate military commander who is SO good, his subordinates keep telling him, “You’re a Movie." To which, the ubergeneral agrees but must correct them, “A very GOOD movie”. The final track, “Vicious Rumors”,"plays out like it’s over the credits of the sonic movie we just watched, is fittingly the album’s most straight-up rocker and could easily have been a cut on the previous year’s album, Flush the Fashion. Overall, Special Forces is an incredibly strong offering with finely crafted songs which continue in the New Wave style Alice initiated on Flush the Fashion. It may not sound like classic Alice Cooper at first blush, but taken on its own terms, it stands not only the test of time, but the test of the discriminating music snob as well. - Randy “Trog” Michaud, 2018
 COVER REVEAL: HIGH CROSS BY PAUL MELHUISH
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