Alice Cooper—Welcome to My Nightmare: Special Edition

This archival release compiling two separate titles kicks off with “Welcome to My Nightmare,” a 1975 live concert from England's Empire Pool (later Wembley) arena in which glam/shock rock legend Alice Cooper delivers a 15-song set featuring the entire titular 1975 concept album—Cooper's debut solo effort—centering on a child named Steven who has bad dreams. The LP's major hit was “Only Women Bleed” (a rather sensitive song that Cooper sings while violently tossing around a life-sized female puppet), and it included two minor Billboard chart entries: the title track and “Department of Youth.” But the other four songs here are far and away the best—“I'm Eighteen,” “School's Out,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” and “Billion Dollar Babies”—although all suffer from muddy audio and murky video (and Cooper's concerts are dark—visually, as well as thematically—to begin with), presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio. A little better is the accompanying 1975 TV special “The Nightmare,” with Vincent Price acting as a menacing figure encouraging Cooper to go deeper into his nightmare. But again it is not the Nightmare songs that impress, but rather the sole additional tune, the A.C. classic “Ballad of Dwight Fry.” Presented in Dolby Digital stereo, this is for diehard Cooper fans only, and optional for others. (R. Pitman)