Alice Cooper, "Poison"

Don't Call It a Comeback

THE VIDEO Alice Cooper, "Poison," Trash, 1989, Epic

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SAMPLE LYRIC "Poi-saaaaaahn / you're poison runnin' through my veins / poi-saaaaaaahhn / I don't wanna break these chains"

THE VERDICT This video is like a time capsule of what heterosexual men thought was sexy in 1989. High-waisted thongs, high-waisted jeans, straight blond hair a la Christina Applegate and curly light-brown hair a la Rebecca Gayheart (actually, this gal looks quite a bit like Keri Russell). If you were to extend this into a full-length feature, it would also need to have clothes from Merry-Go-Round (it may already have this come to think) and Designer Imposters fragrances (which I know they still make, but I feel like approximately 1988 through 1994 was their heyday). I guess I should also note if you're really into this stuff, the uncensored version of the video lets you see the Keri Russell-looking-one topless.

Other than the two afore-described ladies lounging around, fonding chains, and trying to poison Alice, this video mostly features, well, Alice, looking at once especially leathery and the same as he's always looked. He's surrounded by a relatively generic-looking bunch of musicians who I'm pretty sure aren't the same guys who appear in the other videos from this album. Definitely not "House of Fire," though the "House of Fire" guys may well be the iteration of the band that appears in Wayne's World (digression on that to come!).

In this vid, he's got one guy with Zakk Wylde-esque hair (as always, I mean the hot Zakk Wylde, not today's Zakk Wylde) and a blonde guitarist who is seriously hott (yes, with two t's). He looks like the best of Duff McKagan crossed with the best of Taime Downe somehow shoved into one guy. Possibly after this video they realized they needed to surround Alice with way less hot guys. They should've put Kip Winger back in the band! (*Rimshot*)



Here's the promised Wayne's World digression: I also like that even though it's a bit later, the Alice Cooper of Trash always makes me think of Wayne's World. Alice is of course in real life a big-time conservative, which pains me greatly. I bring this up in the Wayne's World vein because his cameo in that movie (as well as his special guest appearance on The Muppet Show, which was one of my favorites growing up and is what I associate Welcome to My Nightmare Alice Cooper with) makes me think that unlike those other metal conservatives (I'm talking about you, Paul and Gene) Alice seems like a nice guy who's not unwilling to make fun of himself.

Of course, notorious metal conservative Ted Nugent and his tongue-in-cheek performance as himself on Undeclared combined with his real-life douchery only confounds this picture further. (As does big-time metal liberal Dave Mustaine's seeming inability to make fun of himself.) Sigh! As long as we're talking Wayne's World though, let me also mention the guitarist in Cassandra's band Crucial Taunt -- it's Marc Ferrari from Keel! He did the music for the movie and plays in her band. Also, regardless of your party affiliation, you must agree he's ah-dorable.

Long story short, we've got babes, we've got Alice, we've got a bright blue background, some pieces of diaphanous red fabric waving through the air, chains, chairs getting kicked over -- it's pretty much what metal videos are starting to look like at this point in time, as the 80s wind down and we head into the early 90s, when basically all metal videos will look like this (viz. 1991's "No More Tears," which is basically the same video just with more water and an exceptionally hot young Zakk Wylde). What I really want to talk about here is the song.



This was Alice Cooper's big comeback song -- I mean yes, there were singles in the 80s, like that horrible Friday the 13th one, but not like this. This song is what happens when you go out and hire yourself a hitman. I don't mean a mafioso, and for once, I don't mean Bret 'The Hitman' Hart (though get ready 'cause I'm about to go on a big tangent about wrestling). I mean a producer who can write songs that the whole world wants to hear, regardless of who's singing them. I mean what else has Desmond Child worked on: Bon Jovi's biggest albums, 80s KISS, 80s Aerosmith... think about it. (And I'm not hating, I have heard Alice himself say as much about this album.) I mean think about this song -- it's freakin' genius. Who could screw it up? Nobody.

I've been thinking about this lately because of something that happened to me, about which I am very, very ashamed. As I've mentioned before, I love professional wrestling (shut! That's not the thing I'm ashamed of!), and as I don't think I've mentioned before, I've finally found in my fiance a man who's willing to watch it with me (so let's throw out all your gendered stereotypes about who watches what right now, okay?). Anyway. I hadn't watched it consistently in a couple of years when we started watching it again this past January, at which point I got really into not just wrestling for the zillionth time, but the music of wrestling.

Now, back when I was first watching wrestling in the 1980s, sure, wrestlers had entrance music. But except for Hulk Hogan's Rick Derringer theme ("Real American" -- don't act like you don't remember!), it was mostly instrumental and repetitive. A lot of it I would guess was public domain (e.g., Ric Flair's "Also Sprach Zarathrusta", Randy 'Macho Man' Savage's bizarre choice of "Pomp and Circumstance").

As it turns out, at least for WWF/WWE wrestlers, these are all written by the same guy, who also plays many of the instruments, which is a heck of a thing to do. Anyway, he's been doing that for a couple of decades. But long story short, at some point in the 90s, they began to shift away from having theme music to wrestlers having theme songs. And while these theme songs vary in musical style (girl pop for Tiffany, Jimi Hendrix tribute for John Morrison), a great many of them are pretty much lyrical metal. Though some feature performers from nu-metal bands (e.g. Randy Orton's theme, which I have grown to utterly love), there's nothing nu about the sound they wind up with.



So it wasn't really a surprise to me that I wound up really digging the theme song to Monday Night RAW -- it's this rocking, rollicking thing that you could imagine Slaughter or even Cinderella doing. Or really anyone doing. It's that kind of song -- there isn't a band on earth that could screw this thing up, that's how well-produced it is. And as if to prove my point, once I finally went to figure out who performed the Monday Night RAW theme ...it's ...ulp ...oh god ...it's Nickelback. Yes, the band widely reviled as bottomfeeders of basically, well, the entire music industry. Nickelback. A band basically synonymous with suck. Why, why couldn't it have been Creed? Or Uncle Kracker? Or something else equally embarassing? But no, it's Nickelback. Yes, dear reader, I like a Nickelback song. By accident! By accident!

But here's the thing: Could Nickelback have accomplished this one their own? Oh hell no. You know who produced the album this came from? That's right, the former Mr. Shania Twain, Mutt Lange. Do you know what else he produced? An assload of hits for AC/DC and Def Leppard. If this were performed by AC/DC or Def Leppard, I wouldn't be ashamed. But this is the damnedest part of the whole thing. If this were performed by AC/DC or Def Leppard (particularly the latter), it wouldn't sound that different. That's the thing. Producers, composers, lyricists like Desmond Child or Mutt Lange -- they help you create songs that are just impossible for performers to screw up. Or for listeners to get out of their heads. Thus explaining why Ke$ha has a hit with a song ripped off from "there's a place in France where the naked ladies dance."

P.S.: In all my distraction with this song's production, I forgot all about the weird Burning Man-looking sculpture in the video. It's hard to see in grainy black and white, but I think Alice is tied to it at one point.

P.P.S.: One other thing I love to do with all these wrestling themes is come up with the perfect 80s metal band to perform them. The Big Show's "welllll" is just calling for the voice of Glenn Danzig, and similarly, the wailing in Edge's theme would be well-suited to Geoff Tate and Queensryche. I'm pretty sure the new theme for the newly 'dashing' Cody Rhodes was written explicitly to rip off Slippery When Wet-era Bon Jovi, so why not have them cover it? Winger are perfect for the sleaze-rock of Dolph Ziggler's theme, and come on, a silly rap-rock theme for The Miz? Somebody call Anthrax!

P.P.P.S.: I know a lot of people find this post because they're searching "who are the girls in the Alice Cooper 'Poison' video" or something like that. I can't find any info whatsoever on the blonde (sorry!), but many sources point to the brunette (who I described as looking like Felicity/Keri Russell) being a gal named Rana Kennedy. So far as I can tell, she's now a Pilates instructor in North County, and most of the other work she did even back in the late 80s/early 90s was fitness modeling. (Cue NBC's little 'The More You Know' shooting star thing.)

Warrant, "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Swamp Things

THE VIDEO Warrant, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Cherry Pie, 1990, Columbia

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SAMPLE LYRIC "I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cab-iiiiin / I know a secret that I just can't tell / I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cabin / know who put the bah-days in the wishin' welllll"

THE VERDICT My boyfriend plays guitar, and every time he picks it up when I'm around and starts playing something, I invariably yell, "play the beginning of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'!" He always is all "I don't know it blablabla" and best case scenario I get him to play "Cherry Pie," but perhaps this post will provide the inspiration to tackle the lovely acoustic intro to this song.

Speaking of intros, I have to give fair warning now: This post will undoubtedly be full to bursting with digressions, because there is nothing, literally nothing this video doesn't remind me of. Okay, technically, there are lots of things it doesn't remind me of, but... well... why don't we just get these out of the way now?

As per usual, this reminds me of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and of course, Scooby-Doo. There's an episode of Dynomutt that features Scooby and the gang with a swamp theme -- "The Wizard of Ooze" -- where the villains live in a swamp that looks like this, and turn Big City into Bog City by pumping mud into it.

Even more though this reminds me of the Scooby-Doo episodes that take place in a swamp. In the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? there's an episode with a witch and a zombie haunting a swamp ("Which Witch is Which?"). I feel like the backgrounds from that get more or less re-used for the Scooby-Doo Show episode "The Gruesome Game of the Gator Ghoul" which is, you know, pretty much what it sounds like. Monster alligator haunting a swamp.



There must be something about swamps and monsters -- or maybe I just watch a lot of things with swamps and monsters -- because this video also reminds me of the numerous movies they watch on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that take place in the south -- "The Giant Spider Invasion" (which I thought was rural Georgia but is apparently Wisconsin) comes immediately to mind (watch it minus Mike and the bots here), but the one that is most similar to this is probably "Boggy Creek II" which involves a Sasquatch in rural Arkansas.

Though not super-similar to other metal videos (closest that comes to mind for me is Alice Cooper's "House of Fire," which also features the light-shining-through-holes-in-house motif), it's definitely similar to other videos that appear to take place in the south. The first one that comes to mind is Damn Yankee's "High Enough," since that also involves law enforcement, shacks, guns, and shirtlessness. It's also though reminiscent of Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet"... which though it involves a shack and is about the South wasn't shot in the South. What can I say, I'm from New England and apparently really bad at identifying what's actually in the South (that video isn't even in the US, it's Canada!).

This video certainly isn't helping any. The plot is quite confusing, because a) there are a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards, so it's all out of sequence, b) the lighting is crazy, and half the time there's a big-ass mangrove blocking our view, and c) trying to make sense of what's going on in light of the song's lyrics is damn near impossible. There's no "wishing well" in the video, nor would it make sense for any of the action to have taken place in the protagonist's uncle's cabin.

Anyway, here's the video's plot in order. Small-town cops pull up outside a stilt house in a Louisiana swamp (we know it's Louisiana because the policemen's badges are shaped like the state). The better looking of the two (sort of a working man's Rob Lowe, but from the lyrics we can assume this is Sheriff John Brady) busts into the house and attacks an attractive, bra-less woman. During their struggle, a man comes home and sees what's happening. He rushes in only to be shot by the cop, who then (off-screen, but we see it in shadow) kills the woman as well.



The protagonist (an Eddie Furlong-looking kid typical of the era) and his uncle (think Russell Crowe with a mullet, or a real-life version of 24 from the Venture Brothers) are rowing a rowboat around in the swamp that night, and they see the two cops dump the bodies of the man and the woman into the swamp. They freak out at what they're seeing, and we can infer dialogue from the lyrics ("'Oh my god, Tom, who are we gonna tell / the sheriff he belongs in a prison cell' / 'keep your mouth shut, that's what we're gonna do'").

Once the cops are done with the bodies, Eddie Furlong lookalike and Uncle Tom haul their boat out of the lake, and hurry to a seedy bar, where the Rob Lowe cop is drinking at the bar. They have this moment of mutual recognition, where the camera implies that they have telltale mud on their boots and pants, and that this must let the cop know they've seen him. But based on the general cleanliness of the other bar patrons, either this is not a telltale sign of anything or they were all in the swamp watching the bodies get dumped.

Tom walks up to the bar all casual, but then grabs a shotgun from under the bar and aims it at Rob Lowe. He doesn't see Rob Lowe's partner in the corner (oops, I mean Deputy Hedge), who draws faster, and repeatedly shoots Tom. However, before Tom dies, he gets off a whole bunch of shots that as far as I can tell must spray randomly into the bar. Still none of the other bar patrons seem to have any reaction to the three guns getting drawn, let alone all the shooting.

Eddie Furlong kid runs out of the bar, and here's where it gets even more confusing. The next thing you know, different, apparently non-dirty cops are there, as well as an ambulance, and they're dragging all the corpses out of the swamp. Eddie Furlong ID's the last body, which appears to be that of his uncle (though it's hard to tell because they're a little bit worse for the wear, it definitely doesn't look like the guy who tries to rescue the girl). And that's basically it.

So what the heck happens there at the end? What roused the townspeople to justice? If everyone was so down with the cops being crazy and killing people, why didn't someone just shoot Eddie Furlong? Where did these other cops come from? Did the bad cops dump the uncle in the swamp? The whole thing makes no sense.



As for the non-narrative portion of the video, it's more or less just Warrant playing in an empty room that looks like all those stereotypical "it's the South" buildings -- cane chairs, old ceiling fan, busted apart walls with shafts of light pouring through them. Jerry and Joey are all over this video going berserk with their guitars, but we only see Steven from the side and we barely see Erik at all.

It's mostly Jani Lane, and with good reason -- this video is really his magic hour. I mean, almost all guys have this window in their lives where they look really, really good -- they've gotten tall and muscle-y, but still have the metabolism to pull off eating whatever the hell they want and drinking like fish without getting a gut or a puffy face. Anyway, Jani's really in that window here. Admittedly, it also helps that he's wearing this hat that covers up his vaguely froggy eyes (his worst feature) thus accentuating his fantastic lips (his best feature). All the jazz hands with the random gloves kind of detract from it, but hell, I'll take it anyway.

All in all, though this song completely rocks, I have to question the wisdom of Warrant: Why the hell would they name their song "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? I mean, sure, people recognize it. But they recognize it in a like, hey that reminds me of racism and slavery way. Best case scenario, they associate it with the Civil War. I mean jeez, why not name a song "Anne Frank's Attic" while they're at it!?

Also, I have to admit to having misheard these lyrics basically forever as "nothin' was sleeping down in Uncle Tom's Cabin / no one but the bodies in the wishing well." Seriously! Forever I've sung "nothing was sleeping down in Uncle Tom's Cabin / I know a secret that I just can't tell." So who knows how much of the confusion here is my own, and how much can be pinned on Warrant.

Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"

Choose or Lose

THE VIDEO Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction," Countdown to Extinction, 1992, Capitol

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SAMPLE LYRIC "just like the pi-ee-ed pi-perrr / led rats through-ough-ough the streets / we dance like marion-ettttttes / swaying to the SYM-PHON-AY / of des-truc-tion"

EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION Police on motorcycles ride away from the camera, superimposed in front of flames, superimposed in front of a building that's been painted with the American flag and the words "for the people" (just in case you didn't get where they were going with the rest of it). We see that the police are actually part of a motorcade leading a sedan or limo before that shot fades out. A finger pulls the trigger on a gun, then we have a close-up of an older white guy's face in black and white. When he opens his eye, the iris is bright red. Yes, Dave Mustaine is many things, but subtle is not one of them.

As the song kicks in, we see flames, and Dave's face sort of appears in them, but we quickly cut to a bunch of white good ol' boys (wait, actually there's one black dude there too, on the right) smoking cigars, drinking, laughing, and clapping each other on the shoulders in a restaurant (maybe a country club restaurant -- lots of trees are visible through the window). Feet in boots (attached to legs in jeans) march toward the camera, which is behind bars of some sort. We finally see part of Dave's face, then the camera pans past the good ol' boys to a shot of protesters outdoors by palm trees holding signs that say things like "peace now" being taken down by cops on horses and with night sticks.

We see a quick shot of lots of people approaching a barred gate carrying signs that imply that they're striking workers (guess that's what the legs shot was before), then Marty Friedman, then a close-in shot of the people (all Mexican dudes so far as I can tell) yelling and trying to bust through the gate.

We see some quick shots of stylized slo-mo headbanging, a graffitied wall (a picture of an older white dude that has tags all over it), more protesters being squashed, and the dudes at that restaurant table just having a laugh riot. As the chorus begins, Megadeth are momentarily visible, then the camera pans down past a '92 campaign sign attached to a telephone pole to a crowd of people waiting on a sidewalk to greet a limo that's pulling up. We then quickly see everyone -- Dave Mustaine, Dave Ellefson, Marty, and drummer Nick Menza -- before it's just all flames again.

A white haired dude and a lady in a Chanel-style suit emerge from the limo, and dorky looking white people applaud overly effusively. The politican dude makes a variety of gestures while the building with the American flag painting on it burns in the background, then the camera is above he and his wife as they shake hands with people and have their picture taken. We see many images of both Daves, then a particularly unflattering shot of the politician that's taken from beneath, so that his hearty guffaw looks a bit more sinister.



As Dave M. says "before the head explodes" a pistol fires straight at the camera, and we get more images of the band rocking out (I'm trying to think of a way to explain the way these images look, and I couldn?t figure it out until now -- "Enter Sandman." It is done exactly the same way as the shots of Metallica in "Enter Sandman." Now you get it.)

We briefly see another shot from beneath, which is sort of swirling and disorienting, then flames, then we see the politician dude lying down looking surprised while lots of people touch his face (remember the gunshot from a minute ago? Exactly). The millionth shot of Dave Mustaine sneering from a weird angle is followed by a shot of a homeless looking black man pushing a shopping cart past a store with signs that say "bankrupt" and "going out of business" in its windows, and also "for the people" campaign flyers for the politician. We then see the homeless man reflected in the shiny side of the limo, its window going up (with the politician inside it, waving mindlessly) as it reaches the man. We then see another older black man sitting as a child walks by holding an American flag.

For the guitar solo, we get Megadeth going nuts (naturally) but also the peace protesters from before really screaming too. Marty gets his hands shown a lot, if not his face, then we see a guy leaping over a heavily graffitied bench advertising the politician. Guys in construction hats turn hoses on the strikers behind the gate, and a cop on horseback jumps something as the peace protest devolves into a semi-riot, with a lot of shots of the trashed bench interspersed.

Following some shots of the strikers screaming while being drenched with water, one of the cops on horseback jumps his horse sort of through the bench, destroying it. Dave E. and Marty headbang in unison, and the limo slides by the camera again, this time reflecting bright orange flames on its side as the window goes down revealing the smiling and waving politician.

After lots of flames, we see the gun shooting at the camera again, and a clearer version of that earlier shot (the camera in front of some kind of municipal building tipping up then falling back, basically the pol's p.o.v as he reacts to being shot), then more soaked strikers. The shots zoom back and forth between the utterly wild protesters, the strikers, fire, and Dave M. making faces.

We then see the guys at the table again, and the people clapping, but then suddenly, within the crowd, we see the shooter. It is a black priest (huh?) raising the pistol toward the camera. Wait, then it's a fat older white guy doing it. And then an army guy. Ohhh-kay. It's the other three good ol' boys from the restaurant before, now all assassinating the one guy. Hm.

These are interspersed with images of the American flag painting burning and of course, Megadeth rocking out. Then the politician is grinning and kissing a disinterested baby in front of the burning building. The video ends with a much clearer version of the first image -- just a normal shot of police on motorcycles escorting the limo past the burning building as we hear JFK intoning, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."



THE VERDICT As previously mentioned, neither subtlety nor restraint are included in Megadeth's repetoire. That said, I must say that I watch this video and just think, "man, those were the good old days." I mean, if Dave thought the country was going to shit then... well, none of us knew what was coming. Bush I was, in retrospect, a cakewalk -- and we even got great songs out of it, from Ministry's "N.W.O." to the Geto Boys' "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster." Sigh... 1992? Headbanger's Ball (the real one!) was still on, a democrat was in the White House, flannel had not yet completely overtaken spandex... those were the days.

But I digress. What the hell happens in this video? We've got two worlds at work which never quite meet: The world of the people (the strikers, the rioters, etc.) and the world of the politicians (the country club, the limo, the handshaking and adulation). Even when the pols are close to the people -- driving by the homeless, symbolically burning buildings, and so on -- they remain oblivious, the car window providing a shield. All of it seems pretty obvious till we reach the denouement: What to make of the politician's assassination by any one of his comrades? Are we not to worry, for those in power will continuously undermine each other? Or is hope for change worthless, because another crappy leader will always rise to usurp the power of the last one? (Like in Heathers. Or uh, 1984.) After all, when the video ends, the building may be mostly burned down but the motorcade is still rolling.

One would think the lyrics might provide a clue, but one would be wrong. The song begins with the whole "you take a mortal man / and put him in control" thing, again sort of a 1984-style analysis, so you think to yourself, "Ok, I guess humans make for crap leaders." But then in the next verse you've got "acting like a robot / it?s metal brain corrodes." Apparently, robots (or computers) are not fit to lead either. With the final verse, however, you've got "a peaceful man stands tall." So maybe it's just all about being anti-war. Or maybe it's not about being a human or a robot or whatever, but about being the right kind of human. Oh oh, I've got it -- maybe it's about getting a democrat into the white house! Maybe I should listen to this song more....

Just when I thought it was safe to interpret this video: Alternate version alert! The original edit of this video features (toward the middle, when the pol is first shot) footage of an actual, random gunman firing multiple bullets at the politician. The gunman is seen from straight on and then from overhead, followed by much more graphic reaction shots of the politician (there's no blood, but his agony is much more obvious). In the version shown on MTV etc., this sequence is mostly replaced by the more suggestive point of view shots and footage of a handgun being fired straight at the camera. Anyway, with the addition of that, it's a much more straightforward assassination, and the other dudes with guns at the end are, I suppose, meant to be taken as completely symbolic -- sort of like, none of these people are actually allied with each other.

I also tracked down yet another version that keeps almost none of this footage -- the strikers still appear, and the gun firing, and the band footage is the same, but that's it. The rest of the video is footage of a conductor and orchestra interspersed with film of stuff blowing up -- a totally literal "Symphony of Destruction."