Alice Cooper, Pretties for You (side A)

The sense of humor was already obvious on Alice Cooper's 1969 debut Pretties for You, but the darkness was barely present. The aggressive parts sound more like glam than metal, though neither genre really existed in 1969, and some parts are very psychedelic. Pretties for You is primitive and almost lo-fi, without a hint of the polish that would later appear. The musicianship is consistently great, and "Levity Ball" is now famous for a bass-line that the Flaming Lips borrowed years later. The cover art, with a painting of a woman's exposed panties, is sufficiently distasteful that my copy came with a small sticker covering the panties.