Alice Playlist

[Juliane Bari]

One of the things I love most about music is that it tells a story. Music tells a story just like Alice in Dairyland tells a story wherever she goes. The different parts of a song are like the different parts of a speech or key message that Alice shares with audiences across Wisconsin, whether highlighting the economic impact of Wisconsin agriculture, all the opportunities available through careers in agriculture, or personal stories from my experiences in the agriculture industry.

My journey as the 76th Alice in Dairyland began on July 5, 2023. This past summer brought many opportunities to share my key messages across Wisconsin, whether at Farm Technology Days, the Wisconsin State Fair, or at many of the county fairs in our state. These events were also the opportunity to introduce myself as Alice to consumers across Wisconsin and beyond, just like the intro in a song.

Some memories include riding the 10-horse hitch of Meyer Farms at Farm Tech Days and engaging with our Alice in Dairyland partners for the first time, the cream puff eating contest at the Wisconsin State Fair, visiting my home county fair in Columbia County to emcee the Sale of Champions, and my first official trip to Door County to visit Washington Island and learn what makes Door County agriculture so diverse and special.

Moving into the fall, the adventures of promoting Wisconsin agriculture continued, and my playlist of songs diversified. My top memories include engaging with fourth grade classrooms across Wisconsin to promote Wisconsin agriculture and specialty crops in our great state, walking the colored shavings at World Dairy Expo to deliver the Supreme Champion envelope, touring Alsum Farms and Produce to learn more about potatoes and pumpkins, witnessing my first Wisconsin cranberry harvest thanks to Amber Bristow, and traveling internationally with the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin to highlight Wisconsin Ginseng and agriculture across the world.

Progressing into the holiday season and first few months of the new year added new verses to the song of serving as Alice in Dairyland. The annual Holiday Campaign provided memories promoting our Something Special from Wisconsin members and products while making new connections with media outlets across the state. Attending events such as the Wisconsin Association of Fairs Convention and Corn and Soy Expo allowed me to reconnect with many familiar faces in Wisconsin. As a very involved FFA member growing up, I enjoyed sharing memories on social media during National FFA Week in February and how those experiences as an FFA member have shaped my personal and professional journeys in life.

Alice has always been a bit of a chameleon, and all his style shifts typically work well. He plays with kick-ass musicians, whether it was the original Alice Cooper band or Kane Roberts or Eric singer or more recently Australian shredder Orianthi.

Genuine American Girl (Paranormal): Alice released a new album last year, and it included a couple of bonus tracks recorded by the original Alice Cooper band. This is my favorite of the two, but I included the other further down in the playlist. Fun for the sake of nostalgia, but they are also genuinely good tunes.

Vengeance is Mine (Along Came a Spider): Fun fact that I just will always specifically remember: This album was released the same day as Lost Boys: The Tribe came out on DVD, July 29, 2008.

Jeepster (Hollywood Vampires): Okay, so this is not from a proper Alice Cooper album, but was done by his kinda supergroup or whatever, Hollywood Vampires, which I reviewed upon release in 2015. This is a cover of one of my favorite T. Rex songs and they do a damned fine job.

Saxophonist and Resident Artistic Director Ravi Coltrane brings his exciting project "Cosmic Music" (3/30-31) that honors the music of his legendary parents, John and Alice Coltrane. Here is a curated playlist of music from both iconic artists.

Ravi Coltrane and his new quintet perform Cosmic Music, exploring the music of John and Alice Coltrane and original compositions, 3/30-31. Tickets and more information available here.

I actually have a small Alice in Wonderland YouTube playlist with the first two songs as the first two that I thought of. Will have to add that Jefferson Airplane video to the list now. Alice Music Videos: =PL2E8B3C9D9F99EAC7

But that song is child's play compared to a lot of these choices. And I don't mean "Child's Play," the movie with Chucky, the murdering doll. That was actually scary. I mean child's play as in sticky kids' stuff, as opposed to Alice Cooper staring longingly into cadaver eyes or Bauhaus paying tribute to film legend Bela Lugosi of "Dracula" fame.

I could have filled the list with Alice Cooper songs. In fact, I did a separate list called the Ultimate Alice Cooper Halloween playlist if you want to dig a little deeper. It seemed more fair for the sake of this list to limit each artist to a single track. And this one is a ghoul-tide gem, from the opening verse, "I love the dead before they're cold. Their bluing flesh for me to hold. Cadaver eyes upon me see ... " Pause. "Nothing." Other lines that make this song the greatest Halloween track ever? "I never even knew your now-rotting face." "While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave, I have other uses for you, darling." And the sing-along chorus is genius. The only thing missing is a children's choir. Ahh, restraint ....

A Hungarian film star best remembered for his starring role in "Dracula," Lugosi made an ideal subject for a Bauhaus single. And these goth-rock pioneers delivered with a haunting post-punk tapestry of strange guitar effects, a dark, descending bass line and lead singer Peter Murphy eventually making his way to the mike to deliver the eulogy several minutes in: "The bats have left the bell tower. The victims have been bled. Red velvet lines the black box. Bela Lugosi's dead."

The title track to David Bowie's 1980 classic "Scary Monsters" finds the former Ziggy Stardust observing a woman's descent into madness and, as such, those super creeps and scary monsters may be nothing more than figments of a mind gone mad. Or are they?

Long before Alice had met his untimely demise in a guillotine, Screamin' Jay Hawkins was making the world safe for spooky rock-and roll-theatrics in the '50s. Carried onstage in a flaming coffin, Hawkins would rise from the box wearing a black satin vampire cape and serenade a skull named Henry, which Hawkins would carry around on a stick, with songs like this. Hawkins has said he was drunk the day he cut "I Put a Spell on You" and that explains a lot, but his performance still brings chills with maniacal laughter punctuating what sounds like the ranting of a half-mad stalker. "I put a spell on you because you're mine," Hawkins sneers in the opening verse. And it gets creepier from there.

From AC/DC's final album with Bon Scott on vocals, "Highway to Hell" finds Scott romanticizing hell as the ultimate rock-and-roll promised land. "My friends are gonna be there, too," the singer gleefully proclaims. Of course, he didn't know he was about to die. But chances are, he would've sung that bit about a "season ticket on a one-way ride" regardless. The guitar riff is among the finest AC/DC ever hammered home, while the solo does more with the raunchier side of the Chuck Berry template than any lead guitar break since the early Kinks.

The former leader of psychedelic garage-rock legends the 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson recorded this wholly believable account of his walk with a zombie at the helm of a new band, the Aliens, in 1981. It shares a title with a classic zombie film from 1943, and lyrically there's not much too it, with Erickson repeating "I walked with a zombie, I walked with a zombie, I walked with a zombie last night" until it's clear the zombies hypnotized his fractured mind and sent him back to share his haunted visions with the world.

This garage-punk classic from the desk of Scott McCaughey finds the Minus 5 leaning into yet another less-than-subtle variation on the three-chord stomp of "Gloria" as McCaughey calls the living dead out on the lies they've been feeding him, all that talk of elevator clouds and bugs that braid your hair. The singalong chorus is priceless (the "lie, lie, lies of the living dead"), and thankfully someone thought to add an organ sound straight out of 1966. It's one of three songs on this list you can find on a CD called "Little Steven's Underground Garage Presents Halloween a Go-Go."

Church bells tolling in a thunderstorm? They've got the horror-movie vibe established long before the band itself emerges from the sludge with the scariest, most devilicious riff the world had ever known. And this is all before the singing kicks in. "What is this that stands before me," Ozzy Osbourne wonders. "Figure in black, which points at me?" Turns out it's Satan, and despite his unearned reputation as a longhaired friend of Satan, Ozzy's running scared and begging God for help before the track is out. A truly terrifying epic.

In which the voice that wondered "What is this that stands before me?" years earlier regales us with the tale of an unspecified yet clearly undead creature barking at the moon. "Years spent in torment buried in a nameless grave," he sings. "Now he has risen / Miracles would have to save / Those that the beast is looking for / Listen in awe and you'll hear him." Guitar enthusiasts, of course, were just as likely to listen in awe to Jake E. Lee tearing it up on the neck of his guitar.

In which the men of Motley Crue tell you to shout at the devil, portrayed here variously as "the wolf screaming lonely in the nigh," "the blood stain on the stage," "the tear in your eye," "the knife in your back" and "rage." And that's just the opening verse. It takes a damn sight more than that to scare Vince Neil, though. "We'll stand and deliver, be strong and laugh," he sings going into the chorus. "And shout at the devil."

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