Alice Cooper – The Palais

When Alice Cooper first started his/their shock rock act some thirty something years ago I’m certain no-one, least of all Vincent himself, was thinking about its potential relevance in 2009. But whether it be by luck or grand design ‘Alice’ made a couple of very shrewd early moves.

Firstly the character of Alice was and remains virtually ageless. Once the make-up goes on and the costumes are donned there is virtually nothing that makes Alice look any older now than back when school really was just out. Cooper has maintained his part of the bargain by keeping himself lithe and fit so that the costumes didn’t look silly (well ‘silly’ is of course a relative term!). And even if he did look a little older there is nothing inherently ‘young’ about the creation of Alice anyway. The fight between evil and more evil isn’t necessarily a young mans war.

The other stroke of good planning was that they created an Alice Cooper repertoire that would age extremely well. The songs were never metal, they were never punk. They were simply loud, theatrical, rock n’ roll and as such have never been desperately fashionable and hence they weren’t prone to fall out of fashion spectacularly, a difference that say Adam Ant may have done well to appreciate.

Alice Cooper didn’t give us any time to build any negative immediate impressions at the second of his Melbourne shows, launching a devastating right-left-right flurry of punches to open the concert. Schools Out, Department of Youth and I’m Eighteen had the audience sold from the get-go, before any overt ‘theatricality’ needed to be introduced.

The show has been developed by a Broadway director and there is a storyline that loosely winds its way through the performance. Alice, for reasons best left to the imagination, has strayed from the path that all good little boys should stay on and as a result has found himself in an eternal battle of good v evil, or perhaps its actually evil v more evil as alluded to earlier. The Alice character isn’t particularly heroic and in fact you think that perhaps he might deserve the attention he is getting from various ghouls, demons and nasty nurses (the latter played with a Rocky Horror-like manic intensity by Coopers daughter Calico. In fact there are times when we are clearly supposed to be cheering against Alice.

The bad guys are intent on exterminating Alice and in fact manage to do so several times. He is beheaded, impaled, given a lethal injection and hung, and yet somehow, like a good episode of Buffy, they cant seem to keep the morally confused man down. The theatre of death is in fact as much a theatre of resurrection – which is an essential point really because we keeping needing a reason to introduce another instrument of potential demise.

Each resurrection finds Alice returning in an evolved costume – my particular favourite was the voodoo witch doctor although the Black Widow was a fine piece of wearable art.

The show delves into most eras of the Cooper catalogue, and the most commercial stage of his career is represented by Poison which goes down really well with the audience. Other highlights included Be My Lover, Cold Ethyl, Welcome To My Nightmare and the ballads Only Woman Bleed and I’ll Never Cry.

The show powered home to its conclusion. The heavy duty Vengeance Is Mine, the punky Dirty Diamonds and the brutal I Love The Dead were joined by some classic Cooper such as Billion Dollar Babies, Killer, No More Mr Nice Guy and Under My Wheels before the show closed with a reprise of Schools Out.
There weren’t very many notable absentees. From the comeback years we might have thought we’d hear Lost In America and Hey Stoopid but admittedly both would have been difficult to weave into the narrative, such as it was. Personally I missed a favourite in Elected but I’ll take Be My Lover as a unexpected and very welcome consolation prize. I also have a soft spot for Lace & Whiskey but that was never going to feature.

Now , at this point I could meander off into a dissertation about the relevance of “shock-rock” in a time when the real horror comes from that fact of encountering knife wielding gang bashers on city streets – not to mention many a bigger picture horror story around the globe. How shocking really is mock guillotines and battered dummys? But the real point here is that the Alice Cooper show we see now is e.n.t.e.r.t.a.i.n.m.e.n.t. There might have been a time when the beheadings and the violence and the demon possession might have been worthy of some social debate but I think that time has passed. Yes, some of bad Alice’s treatment of woman probably doesn’t pass as politically correct in 2009 but I think its pretty obvious that the ‘badness’ in Alice is hardly being glorified. I mean he was executed at least four times for his sins in one  2 hour show!

Nope – there is no mistaking that the Theatre of Death show is exactly that – theatre. Combining great songs, a very good rock n’ roll band that delivers the songs extremely well and a frontman that has lost none of the passion for his performance and you have a great show – no more , no less.

Alice Cooper To Tour In August

A notice from Alice Cooper’s mailing list announces that the king of shock rock will be back in Australia in August. The Alice Cooper “Theater Of Death” tour is coming to Australia and this time he’s playing at venues that should suit his theatrical rock show.

On Monday, April 27 at 12 am there is a pre-sale for members of the mailing list for the following shows:

August 18              WIN Entertainment Centre, Wollongong, NSW
August 19              Convention & Exhibition Centre, Gold Coast, NSW
August 21              Entertainment Centre, Newcastle, NSW
August 22              Convention Centre, Brisbane, QLD
August 24              Entertainment Centre, Sydney, NSW
August 26              Royal Theatre, Canberra, ACT
August 28              Palais Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
August 29             Thebarton, Theatre, Adelaide, SA
September 1          Challenge Stadium, Perth, WA

Alice Cooper, of course, is one of the greats of hard rock – so many great songs and great albums. From Billion Dollar Babies, Elected, No More Mr Nice Guy and Schools Out through to the later years with hits like Hey Stoopid, Lost In America and Poison and the more conceptual creations like Welcome To My Nightmare, Cooper has a catalogue matched by few rock artists.

He’s still a creative force these days buoyed by a combination of clean living and golf and we can expect Cooper to be in fine form when he hits Australia in August.