Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic".
Peter Guralnick is an American music critic, author, and screenwriter. He specializes in the history of early rock and roll and has written books on Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke.
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer whose career spans over five decades. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by many music journalists and peers to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock". He has drawn equally from horror films, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre and theatrical brand of rock designed to shock audiences.
Billion Dollar Babies is the sixth studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released in March 1973 by Warner Bros. Records. The album became the best selling Alice Cooper record at the time of its release, hit number one on the album charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and went on to be certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album has been retrospectively praised by such critics as Robert Christgau, Greg Prato of AllMusic, and Jason Thompson of PopMatters, but The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) gave the album only two and a half stars.
Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in Eightball, a solo anthology comic book series. An Eightball issue typically contained several short pieces and a chapter of a longer narrative that was later collected and published as a graphic novel, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), Ghost World (1997), David Boring (2000) and Patience (2016). Clowes's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vogue, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. With filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, Clowes adapted Ghost World into a 2001 film and another Eightball story into the 2006 film, Art School Confidential. Clowes's comics, graphic novels, and films have received numerous awards, including a Pen Award for Outstanding Work in Graphic Literature, over a dozen Harvey and Eisner Awards, and an Academy Award nomination.
Robert Thomas Christgau is an American music journalist and essayist. He began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."
Creem is an American rock music magazine and entertainment company, founded in Detroit, whose initial print run lasted from 1969 to 1989. It was first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. Influential critic Lester Bangs served as the magazine's editor from 1971 to 1976. It suspended production in 1989 but attained a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a tabloid. In June 2022, Creem was relaunched as a digital archive, website, weekly newsletter, and quarterly print edition.
Mister X was a series of comic books first published in 1983–1990 by Canadian company Vortex Comics. Created by album and book cover designer Dean Motter, it was developed for a year in close collaboration with comic artist and illustrator Paul Rivoche, whose series of poster illustrations stirred up great interest in the project. The series published early work by comic artists who would later emerge as important alternative cartoonists, including Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Mario Hernandez, Seth, Shane Oakley and D'Israeli.
Hugh Syme is a Canadian Juno Award-winning graphic artist and member of the Premier Artists Collection (PAC) who is best known for his artwork and cover concepts for rock and metal bands. He is also a musician and has appeared on some Rush albums as a keyboard player. Syme is notably responsible for all of Rush's album cover art since 1975's Caress of Steel as well as creating Rush's famous Starman logo. In 1983 he told Jeffrey Morgan that he never imagined the band would use it as their main logo. Syme also plays piano on the album Thrilling Women, which Morgan recorded with Dean Motter.
Dennis Dunaway is an American musician, best known as the original bass guitarist for the rock band Alice Cooper . He co-wrote some of the band's most notable songs, including "I'm Eighteen" and "School's Out".
Welcome to My Nightmare is the debut solo studio album by American rock musician Alice Cooper, released on March 11, 1975. It is his only album for the Atlantic Records label in North America; in the rest of the world, it was released on the ABC subsidiary Anchor Records. Welcome to My Nightmare is a concept album. Played in sequence, the songs form a journey through the nightmares of a child named Steven. The album inspired the Alice Cooper: The Nightmare TV special, a worldwide concert tour in 1975, and his Welcome to My Nightmare concert film in 1976. The ensuing tour was one of the most over-the-top excursions of that era. Most of Lou Reed's band joined Cooper for this record.
Muscle of Love is the seventh and final studio album by rock band Alice Cooper. It was released in late 1973, the band played its last concert a few months later.
The Eyes of Alice Cooper, released in 2003, is the sixteenth solo album by American rock musician Alice Cooper. With this album, Cooper returned to his earlier hard rock sound, in the vein of The Last Temptation, and left the heavy industrial metal sound found in his last two studio albums. Of note is the album cover, which was released in four different versions, featuring alternate colours in Cooper's eyes and the crescent around the 'A' in the title. It was available in blue, green, purple and red.
The Last Temptation is the thirteenth solo studio album by American rock singer Alice Cooper, released on July 12, 1994, by Epic Records. It centers on a boy named Steven, and a mysterious showman. The showman, with apparent supernatural abilities, attempts with the use of twisted versions of morality plays to persuade Steven to join his traveling show, "The Theater of the Real - The Grand-est Guignol!", where he would "never grow up".
Dave Marsh is an American music critic, and radio talk show host. He was an early editor of Creem magazine, has written for various publications such as Newsday, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone, and has published numerous books about music and musicians, mostly focused on rock music. He is also a committee member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper (1999) is a 4-CD box set by Alice Cooper. It includes select tracks from every studio album released until then, plus many B-sides, unreleased songs, and other rarities. It also includes Alice Cooper's authorized biography, Alcohol and Razor Blades, Poison and Needles: The Glorious Wretched Excess of Alice Cooper, All-American, written by Creem magazine editor Jeffrey Morgan.
Marvel Music was a short-lived imprint of Marvel Comics, introduced in 1994 to publish comics developed in collaboration with musicians.
Lonn Friend is an American journalist and author. Friend is best known for his work in the late 1980s and '90s as editor of RIP Magazine. Friend began his career in 1982, as associate editor of Hustler Magazine, the flagship journal of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). After rising to senior editor at Hustler, he transitioned to Executive Editor of Chic Magazine, and then to RIP in the Spring of 1987. RIP was the first non-pornographic publication produced by LFP. Friend documented his experiences with the heroes of heavy metal in his 2006 memoir, Life on Planet Rock, and released his follow-up, Sweet Demotion, in 2011. He is currently the host of Energize: The Lonn Friend Podcast.
The Immortal Otis Redding is a posthumous studio album by American soul recording artist Otis Redding, released in June 1968 by Atco Records. It compiles 11 songs recorded by Redding in a three-week stretch of sessions that concluded days prior to his death in December 1967. "The Happy Song (Dum-Dum)" was the only song previously released, having been a single in April 1968. The Immortal Otis Redding featured four charting singles including "The Happy Song", "I've Got Dreams to Remember", "Amen", and "Hard to Handle".
Chuck Eddy is an American music journalist.
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