Alice Cooper gig photos, vid clips and report
Piccies and vidlets be HERE...
These give the impression we were further away from the action than we actually were, for some reason. We had a pretty good view for the most part!
So, report time... we saw quite a few people decked out appropriately with Alice Cooper makeup; there was a little blonde girl in a full mini-Alice costume (white suit, top hat and all) being carried around by her dad. Aww! She seemed really proud to be in her gear too, and was making the rock-devil-horns sign at people. Respec' due!! :D
The opening support band were these guys. They started out rough as hell on their first number, but seemed to get better as time went on. C and I felt kinda sorry for them because the audience weren't particularly receptive, although they did get cheered every time they finished a song. One or two of the members seemed a bit drunk, which didn't bode well. We also thought we could detect a vibe of some tension between the frontman and the lead guitarist. Both played guitars and could sing, and it seemed like there was a little bit of underlying spikiness between them. Creative differences, clash of egos...? Meh, that's pretty normal. LOL... then things became increasingly Spinal Tap-esque as the technical difficulties started to hamper the band, but credit to them - they stuck it out and battled through. Eventually they received some help from roadies/tech crew and the frontman's guitar had to be abandoned; he was lent an acoustic which I presumed belonged to one of Alice's axemen. So that was it for the support act... they were alright but if I'd have seemed really into them I would've been faking it. They didn't really grab me, although the lead guitarist was pretty good when he got going. Apparently the frontman has written material for a few big names and his work is held in quite high regard, especially in the US... but performance-wise I'd say I was more impressed with Whitesnake's support band a couple of years ago. They seemed more successful in getting the audience psyched up with their genki, energetic kind of presence (even though the sound levels were all wrong for much of their set).
On to the main attraction then! We were waiting quite a long time in the awfully-hot guildhall after the support band finished, so there seemed to be a bit of a delay. But boy, was the show worth the wait! Lights came on behind the curtain and we could see Alice's silhouette appear... everyone started cheering and going nuts, then a second Alice emerged and proceeded to 'kill' the first shadow, LOL! So the second Alice was actually the real deal, hehe. I can't remember if it was the first song he performed, but "No More Mr. Nice Guy" was up pretty early. You can make out some of it in the first couple of phone video clips (the ones with sound, tho admittedly the sound quality is rubbish).
In a word, Alice himself was flawless throughout. Age is seemingly no factor here, the guy still rocks up to 11 and beyond... his stagecraft is a true spectacle as well. You will see from one of the silent video clips that he did an execution scene (these are synonymous with Coop' shows, he's been known to do a guillotine one as well). We got to see him hanged! It's alright though, he soon got better. ;D
There were a few songs Chris and I were surprised he didn't play, such as "Hey Stoopid", but "Bed of Nails" was in there along with "Feed My Frankenstein" (which seems to be a must for Alice Cooper lives and anyone who remembers the first Wayne's World movie will know it ;)). We were also somewhat surprised that there wasn't any material from Alice's new album played, but figured that "Along Came A Spider" will probably be getting a tour of its own in due course.
The Alice Cooper band members were all great; I couldn't tell you their names off the top of my head apart from the guitarist Jason Hook, who kind of looked like a shreddin' Jesus. XD C thought the second guitarist looked really familiar but couldn't quite place him... he did a really great bit of acoustic solo work at one point during the gig. The drummer did an awesome solo and was then joined at the kit by the two guitarists (one on each side) for some 3-way drumming fun. That was novel! :D The bassist was bloody good too... he didn't half remind me of someone I worked with at Climax though, looks-wise. LOL. At one point the bassist was larking about with Jason, whose hair was sticking to his face with all the rocking out. So bassist dude reached over and brushed Jason's hair out of his eyes, hooking it up over his ear in a deliberately delicate and ghey-looking way, which just made them both crack up. I larfed me arse off as well. XD
There was one rather negative point to the evening but it was nothing to do with the band... rather, a small number of inconsiderate people who made a pretty good job of ruining parts of the gig for anyone in their immediate vicinity. It was a couple of drunken, double-hard looking skin-heads who pushed their way towards the middle/front of the audience part way through the performance. If I didn't know better I'd say they looked like neo-nazis but the really surreal thing was that they had this young, lanky, scantily-clad Marylin Manson-esque gimp boy in tow (they led him by the hand through the crowd!), so I can only guess at what was going on there. Eep! @_@;; Anyway, the skinheads were blocking peoples' view, being generally rowdy and giving a bit of aggro to anyone who happened to be close by. People did their best to move away from them but it was difficult in such a crowd. Their thrashing about caused one guy's glasses to be knocked off and broken, which is well out of order. And there was a dad who subtly tried to move his young teenage daughter out of their way but the skinheads noticed and one of them kept jabbing the dad purposely in the ribs. Nasty, nasty pieces of work... I wish they could have been chucked out (or even better, shamed and banished by Alice himself). They were at their worst during "Poison", which of course is high on my list of fave songs of all time. T_T
But back to the good stuff... for a finale Alice performed "School's Out", which everyone of course went wild for. Then the lights went out and the whole venue cheered and stomped for an encore, which we got in the form of "Poison" and "Elected" (at least I'm fairly sure that was the order of things). WOO!!!
Um, so that pretty much wraps up my report. Bloody amazing gig, C and I had to agree it was probably the best one we'd ever been to. Whitesnake were superb but it was a sit-down gig, we were towards the back and the sound levels seemed to be a bit off-balance on that occasion. This Coop' gig can't be topped for the overwhelming energy of Alice's performance and the strong feeling of connection 'twixt artist and audience.
These give the impression we were further away from the action than we actually were, for some reason. We had a pretty good view for the most part!
So, report time... we saw quite a few people decked out appropriately with Alice Cooper makeup; there was a little blonde girl in a full mini-Alice costume (white suit, top hat and all) being carried around by her dad. Aww! She seemed really proud to be in her gear too, and was making the rock-devil-horns sign at people. Respec' due!! :D
The opening support band were these guys. They started out rough as hell on their first number, but seemed to get better as time went on. C and I felt kinda sorry for them because the audience weren't particularly receptive, although they did get cheered every time they finished a song. One or two of the members seemed a bit drunk, which didn't bode well. We also thought we could detect a vibe of some tension between the frontman and the lead guitarist. Both played guitars and could sing, and it seemed like there was a little bit of underlying spikiness between them. Creative differences, clash of egos...? Meh, that's pretty normal. LOL... then things became increasingly Spinal Tap-esque as the technical difficulties started to hamper the band, but credit to them - they stuck it out and battled through. Eventually they received some help from roadies/tech crew and the frontman's guitar had to be abandoned; he was lent an acoustic which I presumed belonged to one of Alice's axemen. So that was it for the support act... they were alright but if I'd have seemed really into them I would've been faking it. They didn't really grab me, although the lead guitarist was pretty good when he got going. Apparently the frontman has written material for a few big names and his work is held in quite high regard, especially in the US... but performance-wise I'd say I was more impressed with Whitesnake's support band a couple of years ago. They seemed more successful in getting the audience psyched up with their genki, energetic kind of presence (even though the sound levels were all wrong for much of their set).
On to the main attraction then! We were waiting quite a long time in the awfully-hot guildhall after the support band finished, so there seemed to be a bit of a delay. But boy, was the show worth the wait! Lights came on behind the curtain and we could see Alice's silhouette appear... everyone started cheering and going nuts, then a second Alice emerged and proceeded to 'kill' the first shadow, LOL! So the second Alice was actually the real deal, hehe. I can't remember if it was the first song he performed, but "No More Mr. Nice Guy" was up pretty early. You can make out some of it in the first couple of phone video clips (the ones with sound, tho admittedly the sound quality is rubbish).
In a word, Alice himself was flawless throughout. Age is seemingly no factor here, the guy still rocks up to 11 and beyond... his stagecraft is a true spectacle as well. You will see from one of the silent video clips that he did an execution scene (these are synonymous with Coop' shows, he's been known to do a guillotine one as well). We got to see him hanged! It's alright though, he soon got better. ;D
There were a few songs Chris and I were surprised he didn't play, such as "Hey Stoopid", but "Bed of Nails" was in there along with "Feed My Frankenstein" (which seems to be a must for Alice Cooper lives and anyone who remembers the first Wayne's World movie will know it ;)). We were also somewhat surprised that there wasn't any material from Alice's new album played, but figured that "Along Came A Spider" will probably be getting a tour of its own in due course.
The Alice Cooper band members were all great; I couldn't tell you their names off the top of my head apart from the guitarist Jason Hook, who kind of looked like a shreddin' Jesus. XD C thought the second guitarist looked really familiar but couldn't quite place him... he did a really great bit of acoustic solo work at one point during the gig. The drummer did an awesome solo and was then joined at the kit by the two guitarists (one on each side) for some 3-way drumming fun. That was novel! :D The bassist was bloody good too... he didn't half remind me of someone I worked with at Climax though, looks-wise. LOL. At one point the bassist was larking about with Jason, whose hair was sticking to his face with all the rocking out. So bassist dude reached over and brushed Jason's hair out of his eyes, hooking it up over his ear in a deliberately delicate and ghey-looking way, which just made them both crack up. I larfed me arse off as well. XD
There was one rather negative point to the evening but it was nothing to do with the band... rather, a small number of inconsiderate people who made a pretty good job of ruining parts of the gig for anyone in their immediate vicinity. It was a couple of drunken, double-hard looking skin-heads who pushed their way towards the middle/front of the audience part way through the performance. If I didn't know better I'd say they looked like neo-nazis but the really surreal thing was that they had this young, lanky, scantily-clad Marylin Manson-esque gimp boy in tow (they led him by the hand through the crowd!), so I can only guess at what was going on there. Eep! @_@;; Anyway, the skinheads were blocking peoples' view, being generally rowdy and giving a bit of aggro to anyone who happened to be close by. People did their best to move away from them but it was difficult in such a crowd. Their thrashing about caused one guy's glasses to be knocked off and broken, which is well out of order. And there was a dad who subtly tried to move his young teenage daughter out of their way but the skinheads noticed and one of them kept jabbing the dad purposely in the ribs. Nasty, nasty pieces of work... I wish they could have been chucked out (or even better, shamed and banished by Alice himself). They were at their worst during "Poison", which of course is high on my list of fave songs of all time. T_T
But back to the good stuff... for a finale Alice performed "School's Out", which everyone of course went wild for. Then the lights went out and the whole venue cheered and stomped for an encore, which we got in the form of "Poison" and "Elected" (at least I'm fairly sure that was the order of things). WOO!!!
Um, so that pretty much wraps up my report. Bloody amazing gig, C and I had to agree it was probably the best one we'd ever been to. Whitesnake were superb but it was a sit-down gig, we were towards the back and the sound levels seemed to be a bit off-balance on that occasion. This Coop' gig can't be topped for the overwhelming energy of Alice's performance and the strong feeling of connection 'twixt artist and audience.