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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Welcome to the Theatre of Death!

Spoiler alert. If you plan on seeing Alice Cooper on his current tour, you may not want to read this posting until after the show. This assumes that anyone even reads this seldom-updated (though not intentionally) piece of crap blog. But, whatever. Now on to the review.

I recently went to see Alice Cooper at the Wisconsin Valley Fair in Wausau, Wisconsin. Now I don't get to a lot of concerts - in fact, I'm not proud to say that the only real concerts I've ever seen were three separate Dave Matthews Band concerts - but I have to say that Alice ROCKED! This setlist is from his Pennsylvania show, but if it's not identical, it's damn similar:

School's Out
Department Of Youth
I'm Eighteen
Wicked Young Man
Ballad Of Dwight Fry
Go To Hell
Guilty
Welcome To My Nightmare
Cold Ethyl
Poison
The Awakening
From The Inside
Nurse Rozetta
Is It My Body
Be My Lover
Only Women Bleed
I Never Cry
The Black Widow
Vengeance Is Mine
Devil's Food
Dirty Diamonds
Billion Dollar Babies
Killer
I Love The Dead
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Under My Wheels
School's Out

My buddy and I had great seats - ten rows or so up the grandstand, dead center, with an unobstructed line of sight. From what I've read, people seem to not like the sound system at the venue, but it sounded fine with earplugs in (don't laugh - at least I could hear after the show). Nobody seemed to care about ANYTHING that was brought into the concert, so I was able to record some decent videos and get lots of pics with my camera.

The venue was PACKED and everyone really seemed to enjoy the show, which is amazing considering the diverse crowd at a local fair. Hell, for $9 admission to the fair and $6 parking, nobody within 50 miles had an excuse not to see the show.

Being the Theatre of Death Tour, there were plenty of theatrics to go around. The songs blended well with each other and told a series of short stories - most ending with Alice's death. He was injected with a giant poison needle, decapitated by a guillotine, hung and impaled by a box of spikes. Alice also impaled a guy on a metal rod and strangled a nurse to death (so you can see why he'd be executed).

On top of the highly entertaining show, Alice also sounded awesome. For 61 years old, I was impressed by how his voice still has the same tone and power as it did decades earlier. And for me, his band sounded great too. The intermission-like guitar solos were spirited and energetic and served their purpose well. They sounded great on all of the classics as well.

The only bad thing I can say (I'm sure there were plenty of technical, highly nit-picky things, but like I said, I'm basing this on my enjoyment of the show) is that there were a lot of songs that I wasn't familiar with. I'm not an Alice Cooper aficionado, though, so I'm not surprised. These songs weren't bad, though; in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed them. I just couldn't participate in them as much.

So, if I have to compare all future concerts to this one, I'm afraid that after seeing all of the theatrics and energy in this show, I may be quite disappointed. I loved the show, it's something I'll never forget, and I look forward to discovering more Alice Cooper deep tracks.

P.S. ~ Alice, I love your radio show. The rock n' roll knowledge and quips that you drop are priceless.

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