Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Area Festeggiamenti / Majano (Udine) / Italy
Concert date: 11.08.2010
Attendance: 3500
Ticket price: €41.00
Last Thursday, Alice Cooper continued this summer’s run of above-average gigs by globally known names in our western neighbor’s backyard, rolling into the little town of Majano with his caravan and the “Theatre of Death” tour. Majano sits south of the Alps and north of Udine, a little under an hour’s drive from the border. Alice Cooper’s musical journey has been a fascinating one: his modest beginnings under the wing of the legendary Frank Zappa quickly blossomed into a hugely inspired first half of the seventies, followed by years of musical experimentation, all the way to the commercial successes of the second half of the eighties, which finally cemented his place among rock’s icons. A venerable career and the persona of Alice Cooper tipped the scales, so I was once again off to catch one of his shows, where the stage always turns into a proper spectacle that leaves absolutely nobody cold.
The sprawling “Theatre of Death” tour is now in its second year and has already stopped in plenty of places, both in Europe and across the Atlantic, and Rockline treated you to a report from the autumn leg of the tour back in November last year. Cooper is backed on tour by a colorful bunch of musicians: the guitar duo is Damon Johnson (Brother Cane) and Keri Kelli (ex-Pretty Boy Floyd), Chuck Garric (ex-Dio, ex-L.A. Guns) tames the bass, and the drum stool belongs to the one and only Jimmy DeGrasso (ex-Y&T). Even though this lineup has barely been together for a year, the experience and maturity of these players are more than enough to make them come across as a cohesive, tightly rehearsed unit on stage, one that has no trouble pulling off a show worthy of the boss’s reputation: professional, and theatrical enough to fit right into the Alice Cooper show concept.
Right on schedule, the sound of a school bell rang out. The intro to the hit School’s Out was followed, as if on an assembly line, by more of his classics, mostly from the first half of the seventies: No More Mr. Nice Guy, I’m Eighteen and the psychedelic Ballad Of Dwight Fry. In terms of building the stage story, the latter already delivered the first peak, as at the end of the song horrific figures on stage seized Cooper and dragged him to the guillotine, whose activation wrapped up the seeming first half of the show. That was just one of four death scenes over the whole evening, with which Cooper glues the viewer (pardon, listener) to the spot and whisks them off into a world of completely new dimensions, ruled by tense moments of struggle between Cooper’s character, the heroes of his songs and other fictional creatures, mostly of the sinister kind. The spotlights, of course, joined the visual feast too, adding an extra stamp to an already packed show with their lively light-play combos. The theatricality of Cooper’s performance knows no bounds: the action on stage is lively from start to finish and follows the rhythm and message of the songs, and besides a heap of fright-inducing props, the story winding through the concert also features a giant troll, nurses and a whole bunch of other helpers. The guitar trio of Johnson, Kelli & Garric lurk fairly unnoticed at the edges of the stage on both sides while the action unfolds, and step into the spotlight once the acts end, when longer instrumental sections without Cooper on stage generally kick in. The longest of these instrumental breaks came with Black Widow, a classic from “Welcome To My Nightmare” (1975), played without vocals or backing vocals. The instrumental interludes and Jimmy DeGrasso’s drum solo surely do a tired body and voice good for Alice Cooper, who has an unbelievable amount of energy for his almost 63 years and stretches across the stage like a youngster, which is why Black Widow, as a way to recharge, is tactically placed right in the middle of the show.
The show is highly polished and built on a long-proven tactic, an alluring mix of music and stagecraft, and the horror flick that results works on the fans below the stage like opium. The backbone of Cooper’s repertoire has for years been made up of material from 1971-1976, with a few newer songs sprinkled in, so for the regular concertgoer, the excessive lack of originality in the setlist can be a slightly hard-to-swallow meal. Just a quick glance at the setlist of the European “Along Came A Spider” tour, on which he presented his new album two years ago, confirms the claim above.
After Under My Wheels (“Killer”, 1971), Cooper and company waved goodbye to the crowd with raised hands and left the stage. Is something wrong? After all, barely an hour had passed since the start of the show. To the delight of most (but not all, heh), the encore kicked off with Cooper holding an Italian tricolor and the song Elected, and then a few thousand throats roared even louder for School’s Out, this time in the full-length original version. Despite the professional, flawless delivery, I felt a lump in my throat after the show, because an hour and fifteen minutes is decidedly too short for a ticket price of more than forty euros. Compared with the autumn leg of the tour, namely the gig in Bratislava, it’s clear that Cooper cut the summer shows by seven songs, a full quarter of the playing time, so the crowd can rightly feel shortchanged. But even if you turn a blind eye and ignore that fact, you still have to admit that, despite the merciless ticking of Alice Cooper’s biological clock, catching one of his shows remains a real treat, worth the trip for any music gourmet out there.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. School’s Out (Part) 2. No More Mr. Nice Guy 3. I’m Eighteen 4. Wicked Young Man 5. Ballad Of Dwight Fry 6. Go To Hell 7. Guilty 8. Cold Ethyl 9. Poison 10. From The Inside 11. Black Widow (Jam) 12. Vengeance Is Mine 13. Dirty Diamonds 14. Billion Dollar Babies 15. Killer 16. I Love The Dead 17. Feed My Frankenstein 18. Under My Wheels —encore— 19. Elected 20. School’s Out
Photo gallery
