Alice Cooper arrived late into town last night and brought his macabre circus of snakes, ghouls, goblins and other night creatures to the Bay Area. On a set fit for a John Carpenter movie, Alice played song after song from his impressive catalog of classic rock, to what looked like a sold-out audience consisting this time around of only assigned seating. Well, let’s face it, there were seats on the floor, but nobody was sitting in them. People were much too agitated for that.
The mythical prince of darkness started off the night with a Vincent Price introduction, a perfect mood-setter for the type of spookctacular evening that was about to commence. The timing for the event couldn’t have been better planned. With this weekend being Halloween, an Alice Cooper show is just what the doctored ordered. In fact in an interview that Mr. Cooper did for the Press Enterprise recently, he was quoted as saying, “I pretty much own Halloween,” Cooper said with a laugh. “For us, it’s Halloween all year and we encourage people to come dressed up in costumes.”
The audience was mixed and comprised of both middle aged couples as well as younger goth rocker types. Many were dressed up in their favorite Halloween costumes. And at ticket prices ranging from 60 to 120 bucks a pop, the crowd was hungry for not only some great music but also the theatrics and gimmicks that go with a Vincent Damon Furnier show. Most of the dramatics made an appearance last night. There was the big fireworks show, the eery fog and a broken toy rainbow clown that was in charge of tossing the singer different artifacts from a toy trunk all throughout the night.
The highlight of the show came when Cooper’s encore brought out puppets of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in bloody accouterment and who proceeded to go at it during the song “Elected,” a song that first became popular during the Nixon era but still applies today.
At 68, Alice is still going strong, and sings better than ever. The age seems to add to his character and was balanced by the youth of his beautiful lead guitarist Nina Strauss. Full of stage presence and guitar prowess, this young lady with the model-looks seemed at times to steal the show. It’s no wonder she was ranked #1 on Guitar World’ list of “10 Female Guitar Players You Should Know”, and has been featured in Revolver’s annual “Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock” issue and calendar for the last 2 years.
Set List
The Black Widow
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Under My Wheels
Public Animal #9
Billion Dollar Babies
Long Way to Go
Is It My Body
The World Needs Guts
Woman of Mass Distraction
Guitar Solo
(Nita Strauss)
Poison
Halo of Flies
Feed My Frankenstein
Cold Ethyl
Only Women Bleed
Guilty
Ballad of Dwight Fry
Killer
(partial)
I Love the Dead
(partial)
Under the Bed
(Raise the Dead intro)
Pinball Wizard
(The Who cover)
Suffragette City
(David Bowie cover)
Ace of Spades
(Motörhead cover)
I’m Eighteen
School’s Out
(including snippets of “… more )
Encore:
Elected
Photos Courtesy of Louis Raphael Photography
