Alice Cooper!

 Back in 1973 my third concert ever was the Billion Dollar Babies tour in Lincolns old Pershing Auditorium. Alice Cooper was the hottest act out there. It was truly a show from start to finish. Kind of a play. I saw him again in 2017 when he was 69 years old. The show was still there. An intense rock show without a pause for banter or ballads.

Alice Cooper, age 77, came to the Orpheum Theater tonight with a tight band and the show is still just as captivating as it was in 1973. I mean we have it all. The top hat and cane, the snake, Vincent Price, the stage rushers, the monsters in gas masks, the guillotine, Marie Antoinette, Cold Ethyl, the giant Frankenstein. It's a great show. 

But the real lure of the show is the band. Besides Alice, you get 3 great guitarists, Ryan Roxie, Tommy Henricksen and the always unique Nita Strauss. You get a great bassist in Chuck Garric and a drummer keeping it all together, Glenn Sobel. Does anybody really like drum solos though? It's a real showstopper, as in everybody sits down.

The crowd was well let's say, decrepit boomers and Gen Xers, but what they all had was a great time. Standing for the entire 90 minutes of hard driving rock isn't easy for us old timers (Thank you drum solo we all sat for a bit) but for this band its possible. Highlights for me were the hits, Eighteen, No More Mister Guy, Under My Wheels and Lost in America. Schools Out contained a bit of Another Brick in the Wall, and the encore featured a tribute to Ozzie with Paranoid. The sound is a bit off at the Orpheum, but the music was right on. The Alice Cooper lyrics are hard to decipher sometimes if you aren't a super fan who knows all the words but he, my friends, still has it. He moves a bit slower, but he's up there the entire 90 minutes belting out his songs, getting his head chopped off, interacting with his younger band mates, and giving the crowd what they want. a goddamn good rock show with a plot, references to old horror movies and a certain flair for the dramatic.

This is still a wonderful way to spend 90 minutes forgetting your troubles. Your ears may be ringing at the end, but you are satisfied.

As the beginning of the concert says, Welcome to the Show.