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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 16. 12th July 1973

Billion Dollar Babies:

Billion Dollar Babies:

I did like Lou Reed's "Transformer" and sucks to (Miss) Harry Craig. And then these bastards come along and it's your old pal Decadence, with an 80-piece orchestra and it all just about wipes out little Lou. Lou's homely, like sittin' round the fire and laughin' bout nothin'. Alice is big and floppy, a plague of zits from American hot dogs and no-head boils. You don't try and dare talk over it 'cos you play it that loud — and I guess some people lap up Dali pix to the strains of "I Love the Dead".

So... "Billion Dollar Babies". For starters, the garish (import) deluxe cover, billion dollar bote and push-out pin-ups won't cost you a cent extra. That was as far as I got two weeks ago. Sec, its taken me that long to find anything constructive to write about in the music.

Objectively, the songs are samey, tedious and the lyrics (printed "Aladdin Sane"—style on an insert....) quite drollish.

But Alice is American, the thing is about Bad Things and necrophilia, and it does succeed, after a hazy fashion. In "Elected" they sound bitchy and the inevitable autobiographical "No more Mister Nice Guy" reads like two hundred words from a dull psychopath. It's all so crumby.

In the end, a billion babes will buy the record and already I've seen gents and ladies with it who look like they'd puke at "Raped and Freezin'".

Do have a listen to the music though: you owe it to your unborn offspring too. Unfortunately, they're gonna wanna hear about Alice Cooper in twenty years.