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.

The End of an Artform

For many of you, this may be old news, but it appears that the art of the album is all but extinct. And along with the physical album itself, whatever the incarnation, so goes various other necessary aspects. Some of these include artwork, liner notes and track sequencing. These things I will address individually in upcoming posts, since they each deserve their own special attention.

To clarify, I am not against digital music or individual tracks. In fact I love the ability to find those long-lost nuggets and then be able to consume them almost instantly. I believe that through this instant gratification, one's attachment to the song, album and even artist is greatly diminished.

...ripply effect for fade-out to daydream sequence... Some of my first memories of really becoming involved with the music I was listening to was when I would sit myself by the radio all day long on a weekend and wait for one of my favorite songs (Pour Some Sugar On Me, Electric Blue) to play on the radio so I could hit the record button on my cassette player while yelling at the DJs to stop intro-ing and ruining my recording. I had to put effort and dedication into my music, and the payoff was that much sweeter.

Later, when I started being able to purchase full albums, the medium itself was a limiter. If you wanted to listen to a song over and over, you had to put in at least a little work to rewind the cassette. But more often than not, I would listen to the song I really liked a couple of times, then let the rest of the album play through, thus developing a connection to the the album as a whole and discovering songs you would never ever hear otherwise. You couldn't just random through a bunch of albums. Again, even with CDs, if you wanted to listen to a huge variety of music, you either had to put in the time to create a mix-tape, or swap out discs all the time, which was relatively annoying. (Shut up... I'm talking pre-disc changers)

...fade back to reality... So as you can see, having a physical connection and limited access to music ended up making the music mean a lot more to me. It could be that this occurred during my more formative years, but I feel that the music from that time is more heavily associated with happenings in my life because I was more active an involved with it. This same theory, to me, applies to buying vs. pirating (which I've never done, because that would be wrong... I'm only guessing here) music. I feel more of an obligation to the music if I've spent my hard-earned money to support something I believe in.

So in summary, I love digital music. I won't stop utilizing it or buying digital singles. But I think that this trend is an unfortunate one, if for nobody else than the individual listener. What kind of memories will the kids of tomorrow have of their music growing up. Will it have emotional ties? Will they recognize complete bodies of work, or will they just remember a randomly sequenced collection of disposable melodies? So next time you fire up the iPod, take the small step of instead of shuffling all songs, shuffle just between albums, and enjoy your experience. ...If you have the willpower.