Music is a ginormous influence on our lives that can shape our acts as we age. Musical tastes can be influenced by so many variables that we forget where we first heard certain music. For me, it was my mom who introduced me to the love of hard-core music like rock, and the first concert we saw together was Alice Cooper.

Alice Cooper’s music is such a big part of my life and traditions in my family to the point where at the end of every school year we play “School’s Out” by Alice as a way to end the school year off with a bang. The memories that listening to his music brings out are filled with happy thoughts and feelings. I can even remember my first concert, one of his concerts, and the feelings that flooded me during that time. 

I remember being nervous because of all the people, the fact that this was my first concert, and the prep that went into making sure I knew that this would be loud. Then it started, and I was swept up in the rush of music. It was like watching a musical with the acting that was happening to tie into the music. 

None of those would have happened had my mother not been the one to introduce me to his music. She was introduced to certain music by her parents, and she continued the trend by introducing me to Alice Cooper. I’m sure that she had her reservations about certain things when raising me, but music has always been a looser thing. I asked her about my first concert and all the questions and concerns that arose when taking me to such a high-energy event. When asked here are some things she had to say.

“I did at first, I was hesitant, not so much about the performance, but about how the crowd would be,”

she says. Later I was informed of her going the year previous to an Alice Cooper concert to see if it would be okay to bring me to a show, it was. When asked about the deep, or specific concerns, she said

“Well, knowing that it would be an older crowd I knew there would be alcohol, so there’s always the concern of inappropriateness. You also never know it’s a rock-and-roll show, you know I didn’t expect there to be a pit, or anything, just safety and security.”

Those concerns ended up being null-and-void, but are common concerns that parents would have to bring kids to a show like Alice Cooper’s.

As shown Alice Cooper is a big influence on my life and my upbringing. This begs the question, has listening to more diverse music broadened your views on people? I would like to say I’m pretty open to any group of people, but I’m also human and do judge before meeting people. That being said I think the music has gotten me to correct myself not to judge too hard before meeting someone, and rewrite my views on people when I don’t know them. So music, and Alice Cooper, are a pretty big deal in my life.

Music is a pretty big thing for lots of people, and in my personal experience Alice Cooper has influenced my life so much, and I wouldn’t have known of him if I hadn’t been introduced to his music by my mom.