Alice Cooper and the wolf, on the tablet

Any worthwhile lover of classical music knows that it has always been somewhat counter-culture in one way or another.

Alice Cooper has been considered counter-culture from time to time, but he has passed through into the realm of classical music counter-culture. He has even found himself narrating a new version of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

This version of the classic children’s story isn’t just a new setting. It boils down to an intro to classical music CD in the form of an app for tablets and smartphones. The creators of the app have written backstories for each of the characters which explain how they all came to be together.

It is during these backstories that several different composers are introduced before Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf music starts the familiar story.

There are two different ways to go with the story setting. You can keep the original setting in the frozen Russian woods and explore that culture and its traditions or you can change the setting. This new version changes the setting to Los Angeles and a wolf has escaped the zoo.

It’s unclear how the hunter’s guns are going to be addressed since they are in the score and will be tough to change unless they get transformed into fireworks as a way for removing the message of “gun violence.” I hope this isn’t the case but I have a sneaking suspicion that the wolf isn’t going to be shot dead.