BLACK FRIDAY PICKS
Another Black Friday, another Record Store Day, and after some fairly slim pickings in recent Novembers, this year bounced back with a vengeance. A 10-inch picture disc preview of Frank Zappa’s upcoming Hot Rats box set; the full recording of The Doors’ Isle of Wight festival appearance; and a 12-inch of Jimi Hendrix’s Christmas jingles all made Spin Cycle’s want list this year, while the shopping bag was also hungrily augmented by some other memorable releases. Beginning, of course, with Alie Cooper.
Two Alice albums appeared. The first, a two LP pressing of 2001’s Dragontown (Nashville Catalog/eOne) gives vinyl life to an album that might not routinely be ranked among the old master’s greatest, but is certainly one of his heaviest.
As for the other, well... the absence of any genuinely high-quality live souvenirs of Alice’s initial (and greatest) reign of terror is one of rock’s, listened to , sat through several decades of subsequent concert performances. But (Rhino) is the only bona-fide full-length, generally available, souvenir of the show that wet a million pants.
