This is a must have for all Alice Cooper fans. "Life and Crimes" is a four disk set that, in chronological order, showcases the genius that is Alice Cooper. You get quite a bit of the original Alice Cooper band's material from their 7 records together. I have seen other reviewers state that not enough disk space is given to the original band's material, but 2 of the four disks in the set are basically devoted to the Alice Cooper band years. You get all of the hits, "Eighteen", "School's Out", "Billion Dollar Babies" etc. but what I loved about this box set, is that for the first time I was able to hear the songs like "Don't Blow Your Mind" and "Hitch Hike", songs released when the band called themselves The Spiders. You get to hear how Alice and crew took a song called "Respect for the Sleepers" and re-tooled it into "Muscle of Love". You get a demo track "Call it Evil" that is lousy in production value, but as a fan, you can enjoy just the raw sound of the band at work. Alice's old bandmates even get a track "I Miss You" from thier Battle Axe album when they performed as The Billion Dollar Babies. There are so many unreleased and forgotten gems on disk 2 & 3, it's almost like discovering a new Alice Cooper album. You get Alice's great cover of the Beatles "Because" from the "Sgt. Peppers" movie he did with the Bee Gees. There are two songs from a Flash Gordon rock-opera that Alice performed, "I'm Flash" and "Space Pirates". A nice surprise are two songs from the fantastically awful horror movie "Monster Dog" Alice starred in, "Identity Crisis" and "See Me in the Mirror". Also in this set is the song that made it onto the Special Forces LP jacket, but not onto the record, "Look at You Over There (Ripping the Sawdust from my Teddy Bear". There is a great version of "Road Rats" from the "Roadie" soundtrack that sounds so much better than the Lace and Whiskey version, as well as a cleaned up version of "I Am the Future". And ending disk 3 you get "Hard Rock Summer" from the Friday the 13th soundtrack, that is just a great hair metal jam. On disk 4 there is a demo version of "He's Back" that was re-worked into "Trick Bag" off of Contrictor, plus the movie version of "He's Back" from the Friday the 13th soundtrack. Disk 4 also features quite a few songs that were attached to live albums or best-of's, "Is Anyone Home" and Alice's version of "Fire".
If you go beyond the music, this box set has a great, informative booklet, with forward by Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, and liner notes from Alice and bandmates about each of the songs. There are tributes to Alice from everyone from Dick Clark to Rob Zombie. As an Alice Cooper fan, this box set was just a great treat. If you are a fan of any of the Coop's music, pick this up! Hopefully, now that Alice has released 3 more studio albums since this box came out, he will have enough extra material to produce another box-set in the near future. Possibly with a song or two where he reunites with the surviving members of the original line-up?? We can only hope.

I have been an Alice fan since the early 70's and have anticipated the arrival of this set since it was first mentioned in the mid 80's.

Listening to all the songs on the discs brought back many memories of my youth and the AC concerts I attended. Every song came back to me as if I were rocking out to them yesterday (I may have been!)

These are timeless classics and besides being the master showman, Alice is the master lyricist. Having been involved in writing lyrics to every song on his 20 some albums is a great accomplishment in itself. The boxed set includes 80 songs and he could easily produce Life and Crimes part II with others from his vast repertoire.

It is a truly great set. If I had to pinpoint any problem problem with it it would be that it did not include more from his former bands' album [Billiion Dollar Babies Battle Axe] or some Michael Bruce solo tunes.

Alice is the living legend and this is one box set all fans of rock and roll should have. Even if you are not a fan... you will definately be one after listening to this great set.

Finally, Alice releases a boxed set that he was planning to release years ago. Worth the wait I always say! He's my all time favourite and I was his biggest fan in highschool. I'm also seeing him in concert at the Orpheum theatre, and I know it'll be alot of fun! The set contains 4 CD's! The first one opens up with "Don't Blow Your Mind" that he wrote in the late 60's with his band the Spiders! Sounds alot like a cross between the Stones and The Beatles. Then he formed a group called the Nazz and there's a track called "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye(Original Version)", to which he later released on his 1970 album "Easy Action", the song was remastered to mostly an instrumental track. There's alot of unreleased material on this one which makes this box set really special. I really like a track on here called "Nobody Likes Me" which was released a year before he got signed up to a record company. I also like "No Tricks"(with Betty Wright). There's alot of tracks on here that was used on motion pictures. My favourites are "See Me In the Mirror" and "Identity Crisis" both from his first lead starring direct to video motion picture "Monster Dog", both songs never released until now! I also like "Hard Rock Summer" and the motion picture version of "(He's Back) The Man Behind the Mask",both from "Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives." "Under My Wheels"(with 3 of the Guns N' Roses members) is a masterpiece from the documentary "Decline of the Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years." "I Got A Line On You" from "Iron Eagle 2" is a great stompin' rocker! There's a track on here that was just released on this set called "Hands of Death"(featuring additional vocals and instruments by Rob Zombie) a real killer track that introduces the Coop to the dark grunge world!!!The box set also features a booklet that shows pictures of him in concert and meeting others stars and in the studio, plus many more photos and the story of him and his history of albums, movies, and his gory stage shows. One of the pictures feature him and his band the Spiders, where they all look clean cut with short hair. An early Beatles type look! I hope that he still makes studio albums and keeps on rocking no matter how old he is! Long live the Coop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This collection provides a good overview of the Coop's career thus far. The remastering is revelatory, particularly when compared to the flat sounding reissues of the past. My only gripe is that they used single versions in some cases. There is no excuse for this on a $50-plus set. There are lesser tracks from the early-to-mid 80's that could easily have been omitted to make room for the full-length album tracks. It mars this set somewhat to have the intro gone from "Welcome to my nightmare," one of the Coop's seminal tracks. Still, this isn't a bad place to start.

This is the best box set I have ever owned, and it blows the usual sets out of the water. It contains 12 songs that can only be found in this collection, and lots of songs from albums that cannot be found on cd anymore. For example, it has 4 songs from the album Muscle of Love, and now that album cannot be found on cd. Then, there are 3 songs from the first two albums Pretties for You and Easy Action, and even the most hardcore fan will have a hard time finding these songs or records anywhere else.
It also contains a great book that has quotes from Alice Cooper and other members of the band about each song, and why they wrote it, and there are great pictures, and his complete discography up to when the set was made.
I was hessitant on buying this set and instead thought about buying the albums individually, but I ended up buying the box set, and liked everything, and ended up getting the albums too, and don't regret ever getting the box set. It does a great job of mixing rare tracks with classic songs like "I'm Eighteen" and "Billion Dollar Babies". And the rare songs are good too, not like some of those b-sides you're dying to hear, then end up understanding quickly why they didn't make the album.
Some of the cooleset tracks found only on this are: "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye" and "Nobody Likes Me" (the studio version) and He's Back (the Man Behind the Mask).