Simon Stalenhag With Alice Cooper Welcome To My Nightmare Tales From The Loop reup

Welcome to My Nightmare Album: Welcome To My Nightmare (1975)
Public Animal #9 Album: School's Out (1972)
Alma Mater Album: School's Out (1972)
Grande Finale Album: School's Out (1972)
by Alice Cooper

Simon Stålenhag (born 20 January 1984) is a Swedish artist, musician, and designer specialising in retro-futuristic digital images focused on nostalgic Swedish countryside alternate history environments. The settings of his artwork have formed the basis for the 2020 Amazon television drama series Tales from the Loop as well as the upcoming film The Electric State.

Most of Stålenhag's artwork was initially available online, before later being released for sale as prints. Since then, it has been turned into two narrative art books: Tales from the Loop (Swedish Ur Varselklotet) in 2014 and Things from the Flood (Swedish Flodskörden) in 2016. Both focus on the construction of a supermassive particle accelerator called the Loop.

Stålenhag grew up in a rural environment near Stockholm, and began illustrating local landscapes at a young age. He was inspired by different artists, including Lars Jonsson. Stålenhag experimented with science fiction artwork after discovering concept artists such as Ralph McQuarrie and Syd Mead; initially, this body of work was done as a side project, without any planning behind it. Thematically, his work often combines his childhood with themes from sci-fi movies, resulting in a stereotypical Swedish landscape with a neofuturistic bent. According to Stålenhag, this focus originates from his perceived lack of connection with adulthood, with the science fiction elements being added in part to draw audience attention and partly to influence the work's mood. These ideas result in a body of work that can feature giant robots and megastructures alongside regular Swedish items like Volvo and Saab cars.

As his work has evolved, Stålenhag has created a backstory for it, focused around a governmental underground facility. In parallel with the real-life decline of the Swedish welfare state, large machines slowly fail, and the eventual result of this remains a mystery. In a 2013 interview with The Verge, Stålenhag said, "The only difference in the world of my art and our world is that ... ever since the early 20th century, attitudes and budgets were much more in favour of science and technology."

Outside of his usual canon, Stålenhag also drew 28 pictures of dinosaurs for the Swedish Museum of Natural History's prehistoric exhibits after he rediscovered his childhood interest in the creatures, and contacted the museum to see if he could do anything. In 2016, he followed this with pictures of hypothetical results of a rising ocean under climate change for Stockholm University's Resilience Centre. He also did some promotional artwork for the sci-fi video game No Man's Sky.

Stålenhag uses a Wacom tablet and computer for his work, which is designed to resemble oil painting. Initially, he attempted to use various physical media to mimic a more traditional style, including gouache. Even after switching to digital methods, he has stated that he puts "a lot of effort into making the digital brushes behave naturally and preserve a certain amount of 'handwriting' in the brush strokes." The majority of his work is based on pre-existing photographs that he takes; these are then used as a starting point for a number of rough sketches before the final work is completed.

"Welcome to My Nightmare" is the title track to Alice Cooper's eighth studio album. The song is written by Cooper, Dick Wagner and Bob Ezrin. It peaked at 45 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song itself mixes elements from disco, jazz, hard rock, and keeps a "heavy-yet-funky beat". Cooper would later perform the song on The Muppet Show.

Acoustic guitar is played by Dick Wagner, bass by Tony Levin, clarinet by Jozef Chirowski, drums by Johnny "Bee" Badanjek, and electric guitar by Steve Hunter.

This was the centerpiece to Cooper's 1975 tour, which opened with this song and set the stage for the macabre scenes that followed. Cooper approached the song as a production number, and that's how he performed it. For the tour, the musicians were hidden in the back of the stage while Alice performed with various dancers and props. He would emerge in a haze of smoke, singing this song on a bed; the rest of the show was based on the idea that we were seeing his nightmares brought to life.

Any meaning in Welcome to My Nightmare is up to the listener, as Alice explained, "I project images to the audience and they make up their own story to fit it. I have no message at all. I never did."

In 1975, Cooper turned the stage show built around this song into a concert movie called Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare, and a TV movie called The Nightmare. The famous horror movie actor Vincent Price played "The Spirit of the Nightmare," narrating the show. The movie was a precursor to long-form music videos, as it was a theatrical production set to music. The most famous long-form video arrived in 1984 with Michael Jackson's "Thriller," also featuring narration from Vincent Price.

School's Out is the fifth studio album by Alice Cooper, released in June 1972. Following on from the success of Killer, School's Out reached No. 2 on the US Billboard 200 chart and No. 1 on the Canadian RPM 100 Top Albums chart, holding the top position for four weeks.

The title (and song) were inspired by a warning often said in Bowery Boys movies in which one of the characters declares to another, "School is out," meaning "to wise up." The Bowery Boys were characters featured in 48 movies that ran from 1946-1958. They were young tough guys in New York City who were always finding trouble. The movies ran on American TV throughout the '60s and '70s, eating up a lot of air time on independent stations. It was one of these TV viewings that Cooper saw. In the film, the character Sach (Huntz Hall) did something dumb, which prompted one of the other guys to say, "Hey, Sach, School's Out!"

In a 2008 Esquire interview, Cooper said: "When we did 'School's Out,' I knew we had just done the national anthem. I've become the Francis Scott Key of the last day of school."

The School's Out album opens like a school desk and contains a pair of paper panties. This is the kind of added value you just don't get with CDs or digital media.

The original album cover (designed by Craig Braun) had the sleeve opening in the manner of a wooden school desk, similar to Thinks: School Stinks, by Hotlegs, released two years earlier. The vinyl record inside was wrapped in a pair of panties, though this was later discontinued as the paper panties were found to be flammable. The desk photographed for the album cover is on display in the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas.

Ian Chapman has put forward a theory that it was a concept album about youth lost when leaving school.

Cooper has said he was inspired to write the song when answering the question, "What's the greatest three minutes of your life?". Cooper said: "There's two times during the year. One is Christmas morning, when you're just getting ready to open the presents. The greed factor is right there. The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big."

Cooper starred in a TV commercial for Staples where a young girl is forced to shop for school supplies while a Muzak version of this song plays.
She looks at Cooper and says, "I thought you said School's out forever."
He replies, "No, the song goes, 'School's out for summer'. Nice try, though." At this point, the real version of the song kicks in. Not on this cut but three songs from the albnum are.

side 2 track 2
Public Animal #9
Written by: Alice Cooper, Michael O. Bruce
Album: School's Out

side 2 track 3
Alma Mater Some of the most underated solid HS Band Musica Ever...
Written by: Neal A. Smith
Album: School's Out

side 2 track 4
Grande Finale
Written by: Cooper, Buxton, Bruce, Dunaway, Bob Ezrin, Smith, Mack David, and Elmer Bernstein, Elmer Bernstein, Elmer Bernstein
Album: School's Out