I Am Dwight Frye

As part of my ongoing campaign to drive away every regular reader of this blog forever, I've recorded yet another version of Alice Cooper's Ballad of Dwight Frye, a song that has fascinated me since childhood. This one uses a live performance effect on the rhythm and vocals track and something called "British Invasion" on the lead. I get lost for awhile and just go with it. As a result, it's more than eight minutes long. This is how I amuse myself. It beats the shit out of bad tv. Alice fans will appreciate the clip below of The Man, in top form back in the 70s.

Ballad of Dwight Frye, Again

The music obsession has progressed. I rerecorded the Ballad of Dwight Frye today, figuring I could do a hell of lot better than last time. Back then, I recorded the guitar first and then did the vocals as a second track. This time, I proved I can both walk and chew gum by doing it all at once. Total time saver.

The Ballad of Dwight Fry

My narcissistic love affair with my new recording equipment continues. This is a 2 AM version of Alice Cooper's 1971 Ballad of Dwight Fry. I played this song for a friend a week or two ago, and her reaction was, "I didn't know Alice Cooper wrote good songs." Yes. Alice Cooper crafted smart, quirky pop gems, and to the twelve or thirteen year-old young Tim Harris, this song was deeply meaningful. I'm not exactly sure why. I identified with it. I still do. The song is off the uniformly brilliant Love It To Death album, best known for his breakthrough hit, "I'm Eighteen." Last year I posted an amazing version of Alice's Is It My Body, also from that record, which remains one of my favorite YouTube music videos of all time.

Dwight Frye (1899-1943) was an early horror movie actor, "The Man with the Thousand-Watt Stare," who specialized in playing the mentally imbalanced. The song is written around a character he may have played. Frye can be seen in his full glory below in his 1933 The Vampire Bat.