[troggi]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Raise Your Fist and Yell
Trash
The Last Temptation
The Eyes of Alice Cooper
Dirty Diamonds
Welcome 2 My Nightmare

Originally Posted by suziginajackson

• Pretties for You (1969) and Easy Action (1970) - interesting curios, but by no means essential
• Love It to Death (1971), Killer (1971), School's Out (1972), Billion Dollar Babies (1973) - classics. No record collection should be without them
• Muscle of Love (1973) - good, but not essential
• Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) - essential
• Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (1976) and Lace and Whiskey (1977) - not essential, but worth getting. Alice does disco!
• From the Inside (1978) - my personal favourite Alice album
• Flush the Fashion (1980), Special Forces (1981), Zipper Catches Skin (1982) and DaDa (1983) - the 'forgotten years'. Recorded when Alice was an alcoholic, and by his own admission, he doesn't remember anything about them. All have some good songs, but none should be the first albums that you get
• Constrictor (1986), Raise Your Fist and Yell (1987), Trash (1989) and Hey Stoopid (1991) - the metal years
• The Last Temptation (1994) - a good one
• Brutal Planet (2000) and Dragontown (2001) - very heavy and industrial
• The Eyes of Alice Cooper (2003) and Dirty Diamonds (2005) - back to basics, almost garage punk
• Along Came a Spider (2008) - I like this, but many other fans don't
• Welcome 2 My Nightmare (2011) - possibly the best album since the 70's

For a new fan, just discovering Alice, you could do a lot worse than getting the 4 disc 'Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper' set - it contains pretty much everything you need to know about the man and his music - The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper: Amazon.co.uk: Music

Billion Dollar Babies has been remastered as a double disc special edition. The second disc contains live recordings of most of the album ('Mary-Ann' is missing) and some early demos

When I get the time, I am planning of doing an album-by-album, track-by-track critique of the entire Alice Cooper discography

I, for one, am looking forward to Suzi's critique, I find her comments to be very fair and she has impeccable taste in music. I can't argue with Dem's and Suzi's picks but I would say that "Alice Cooper Goes to Hell" is an essential just to hear Alice "do" a Judy Garland, I love it. "Along Came a Spider" is great! Okay, a couple of tracks are a bit suspect and it is, in essence, a "concept album" but I love it ('specially as mine is a signed copy won from those nice folk at "Planet Rock")!

As for personal favourites- tricky but; "Love It to Death", "Killer", "Billion Dollar Babies", "From the Inside" (I still have a copy of the Marvel comic), "Flush the Fashion" (weird but I love it), "Trash", "Hey Stoopid", "The Last Temptation", "Brutal Planet", "Dragontown", "Along Came a Spider" and "Welcome 2 My Nightmare".

With regards to "Welcome 2 My Nightmare", try to get the "fan pack" if you can, the magazine that accompanies it is informative and has some great photos; "Brutal Planet" and "Dragontown" are often available as a twin pack.

Well that's my three pence worth, enjoy!