Alice Cooper November 26, the Pearl.
By now, Alice Cooper is as much a brand as he is a generation-spanning character, which makes his show the macabre equivalent of a summer superhero blockbuster. Like those flicks, there’s a formula at play, but it’s been worked and refined over time into something stupidly fun—and on Wednesday night, Cooper left just enough room between the established set pieces to fit in a few pleasant surprises.
The band launched the show with “Hello Hooray,” showing the kind of energy many groups wish they could muster up for an encore, keeping the pace up for the entire hour and a half. What followed was a parade of greatest hits and iconic stage moments, which, like those summer blockbusters, the fans already know about ahead of time: the straitjacket, the electrocution bit, the live boa constrictor et. al. These stage elements were as tight and on-time as the band, which sounded great and entertained enough during the several solo and group jams that you wouldn’t even notice any of the set changes. Cooper himself commanded the crowd’s attention with and without antics like tossing dollar bills and diamond necklaces into the crowd.
Cash and jewels aside, the true rewards were the unexpected moments at the end. Following Cooper’s onstage “death”—another stage trick fans know well, but which still elicited a “whoa” from first-timers—he returned from beyond the grave with a set of cover tributes to fallen rock legends Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Keith Moon and Jimi Hendrix. Cooper showed his impressive range, but bonus points went to new guitarist and bona fide shredder Nita Strauss (of The Iron Maidens and, formerly, As Blood Runs Black) for—strictly metaphorically—setting her fretboard ablaze during Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady.”
The show closed out with, of course, “School’s Out,” featuring a surprise appearance from Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil and an “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2” interlude, capping off the notion that the Alice Cooper experience can be at once comforting and unpredictable.
