Location: Bratislava / Sportova hala Pasienky / Slovakia
Date: Thursday, 11/19/2009
Catching a show by the legendary Vincent Damon Furnier belongs in the must-see-for-every-hard-rocker category. I’m talking, of course, about Alice Cooper, the stage name Vincent took on way back in the sixties. First operating as the Alice Cooper group, in the early seventies he perfected Arthur Brown’s pioneering style with creepy getups straight out of the horror flicks of the day, and thanks to albums like “Love it to Death”, “School’s Out” and the releases that followed, he became the leading force of shock rock and, over the years, an icon of American rock music. Last year you could catch him in Munich, where Cooper teamed up with Whitesnake to present the freshly released album “Along Came a Spider”. The promo tour is over, and so that Alice Cooper wouldn’t get bored, he immediately hit the road again with a new one called Theatre of Death. After the summer-autumn Australian and American legs, the “theatre of death” made it to Europe too, and to Bratislava for the very first time — a relatively remote spot, but still the closest thing to a “scene of the crime”. During a few days of wandering around the city, I spotted only two posters advertising Cooper’s show, so there was no sign of any euphoria whatsoever. Since I don’t know Slovak concert habits and the promotion was practically nonexistent, it was a big unknown (to me) how many people the event would even draw. In the end the number was pretty big — the nicely designed sports hall Pasienky on the outskirts of Bratislava was satisfactorily full.
Before Bratislava got its first-ever taste of a Cooper show, 30 minutes of glory went to Evarest, Czech metallers who had already done the same job in eastern Slovakia, in Košice, where Alice Cooper played the day before the Bratislava gig. Evarest are miles away from a style of their own — they play the female-fronted band formula, a breed that multiplied like mushrooms after the rain following Nightwish’s success. A heavy metal base with two guitars, drowned in female vocals and melodic choruses are the attributes Evarest bank on, but they didn’t make too positive an impression on the crowd.
School bell for an intro — now it’s on! The show, the story had begun. Alice Cooper is that figure in rock history who took his music to the stage and created and directed breathtaking productions there, ones that often shocked audiences. The Bratislava story began to unfold with the hit School’s Out, whose job is to heat up the crowd right from the start; with this move the band gets contact with the audience going immediately, not gradually over the course of the set, as so often happens. The stage setup was magnificent — Jimmy DeGrasso’s drum set high up in the air, with stairs leading up to it from both sides, and gigantic letters hanging in the air at varying distances as scenery, adding a third, depth dimension to the stage. What dynamics on stage! Lead guitarist Keri Kelli (ex-Pretty Boy Floyd), standing mostly on the right, and the left side of the stage in the form of second guitarist Damon Johnson (Brother Cane) and bassist Chuck Garric (ex-Dio, ex-L.A. Guns..) constantly swap positions and change tempo; during instrumental parts they step together and create a demolishing “Iron Maiden” guitar power, and when needed they make room for the boss and play in apparent darkness while all eyes are on Alice Cooper. Maybe it’s precisely all that guitarist kinetics that’s to blame for them handling their harmony vocal duties a bit worse, standing like inexperienced ducklings far from the mics and coming across way too quiet — that happened on Devil’s Blood, for example. Exceptional concert mileage has schooled Alice Cooper well, and the old man knows exactly how to please a crowd. On stage he morphs into an actor, assisted by a handful of backing players, and together they write a story that the viewer — pardon, the listener — falls into, and only the house lights coming on at the end of the show wake them up and sober them up. The story is made up of punchy songs with heavy guitar lines that turn into dramatic moments on stage, and bluesy rock ballad marches that ease the tempo and provide some “respite,” a break in the story. There are also some long instrumental parts where the musicians get their due, stepping out of Cooper’s shadow while he’s off stage and getting a few moments of self-promotion. Guitarist Kelli is a real balm for the ears — heavy rock fits him like a glove, and his charisma overshadows the rest of Cooper’s hired musicians. Alice Cooper is past sixty and no longer wet behind the ears, which shows in his vocals, but the theatrics of the performance give him cover to bend the vocal lines at will and adapt them to whatever’s happening on stage — he exploits this cunning tactic skillfully, and at moments it even comes off very well!
The setlist waded deep into the seventies, with songs from Love It to Death (1971) to Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (1976) forming the backbone, which was a real treat for every fan of the American rocker. The core was seasoned with the (like it or not, obligatory) non-album hit Poison and a few newer tracks — Wicked Young Man, Dirty Diamonds and Vengeance is Mine as the only one from last year’s Along Came a Spider. Really, the set was a “best of” the seventies.
What a “show man” Cooper can be! It’s really no surprise he once got up the noses of his conservative countrymen, when on stage he pulls off a breathtaking performance that raises every hair on your body! The selection of concert props is extremely varied, from more fun balloons to somewhat less fun gadgets that would belong more in the Tallinn museum of torture devices. The theatrical peak comes toward the end, when, to the roaring cheers of the crowd, auntie Death leads the story’s main character to the gallows, where she takes him into her hands for good…
It’s all just part of the game, of course, Cooper’s well-rehearsed opium for the people. A decent bit of fun from an old tomcat, who served Bratislava an hour and a half of rock’n’roll treats. Only the sound stumbled a little — Pasienky hall, too, suffers from the famous Tivoli syndrome of non-acoustics. But what counts, of course, is that we concertgoers went to bed happy on Thursday!
author: Urban Bolta
photos: Urban Bolta
Setlist:
1. School’s Out (intro part)
2. Department Of Youth
3. I’m Eighteen
4. Wicked Young Man
5. Ballad Of Dwight Fry
6. Go To Hell
7. Guilty
8. Welcome To My Nightmare
9. Cold Ethyl
10. Poison
11. The Awakening
12. From The Inside
13. Nurse Rozetta
14. Is It My Body
15. Be My Lover
16. Only Women Bleed
17. I Never Cry
18. The Black Widow (instrumental)
19. Vengeance Is Mine
20. Devil’s Food
21. Dirty Diamonds
22. Billion Dollar Babies
23. Killer
24. I Love The Dead
25. No More Mr. Nice Guy
26. Under My Wheels
—encore—
27. School’s Out
