Return of the coop...

Playlist
Alice Cooper – The Eyes of Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper – Dirty Diamonds
Eels – Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity
Neal Morse - ?
Nine Horses – Snow Borne Sorrow
Peter Gabriel – Hit
Dream Theater – Octavarium
Jon Anderson – Olias of Sunhillow
Chris Squire – Fish Out of Water

Up late for me, around 9:30 and listened to Alice Cooper’s last two albums, burning the best of them to one CD (managed to get everything bar two tracks, one from each album, on to the new disc)…

Whilst doing this I noted on the web that this year’s Alice Cooper’s Xmas Pudding (an annual charity event in Phoenix which he organises) will feature four of the five original members of the Alice Cooper Group – Alice, Mike Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith. Glen Buxton, the fifth member died a few years back….

They’re only playing a quick 30 minute greatest hits set but what an event for any self respecting fan of the original band…

Pity it’s in Phoenix, Arizona…

Now, what Alice ought to do, is keep the band together, add veteran guitarist, Dick Wagner to replace Buxton (after all, Dick played on sessions for both “School’s Out” and “Billion Dollar Babies”) and record a new album. Hell, Alice has been trying with the last two albums to recapture that original sound, so why not use the original players (and indeed writers)?

For some lovely breakfast ingredients, I did something I’ve not done in the nineteen and a half years I’ve lived at Crispycat Towers – I walked to the shops! 14 minutes there, 10 minutes shopping and 14 minutes back…

After breakfast, I set about transferring The Bad Plus’ album “Suspicious Activity” to the jukebox. Since Sony encoded it with a programme which stops it from playing on a PC, I had to “play” it into the PC by connecting my CD Walkman, and record it onto, rather ironically, the Sony Acid programme I use for mastering CDs…

Aftre lunch I did some surfing (not literally of course) while Anne listened to Rangers defeating my adopted home town team, St Mirren (I lived in Paisley from 1960-1966)…

Then to Anne’s Mum’s for tea where we were joined by just brother in law Keith and his partner Maureen today. Without the kids and Jane & Bobby, it was a lot quieter and less hectic than usual. Even nephew Craig didn’t turn up as he was suffering from a stonker of a hangover after a 20th birthday party last night…

There was, of course, much footie talk…

Back home and two episodes of the new Dr Who spinoff “Torchwood”. After all the hype, it was a little disappointing, though still quite good. Frankly – too many welsh people in it and hard to believe that such a supposedly important operation would have only a handful of members and be based solely in Cardiff…

Finished the day with the end of “Match of the Day 2”

Highlight of the Day : The Alice Cooper Group, back together for 30 minutes…