ALICE COOPER
House of Blues, Hollywood, 08/20/98
Snidermann sez: Alice Cooper, the perennial
Godfather of rock'n'roll, started as Vincent Furnier growing up in Phoenix in the 1950s.
He was the son of a minister and saw the music of the day and said "I can do that,
even better." Even better is just what he did. After high school Vince and some of
his friends - Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith - migrated
to Hollywood and released a series of recordings on Frank Zappa's Straight Records label.
The band generated quite a reputation - as Alice himself has said "It was cool to
walk out on an Alice Cooper show in the late 60s, early 70s."
In 1971, the Alice Cooper band signed with the Warner Brothers label and released
"Love It To Death" and that was the beginning of an influence in rock'n'roll
that is still alive and kicking in the last decade of the 20th century, with no end in
sight ... thank goodness!! Alice just loves to perform live and, with the "Alice
Cooper Rock'n'Roll Carnival," he showed us just that at the House of Blues here in
Hollywood on Thursday, August 20th, 1998 - the last of three sold-out shows.
Before the show, I was wondering "What is Alice going to do this time and what's up
with this Carnival stuff?" Any Alice Cooper show would not be complete without his
old favorites "I'm Eighteen," "Be My Lover," "No More Mr. Nice
Guy," "Billion Dollar Babies" and they were all there. Alice also performed
some lesser known songs like his "From The Inside" album (which he wrote in an
asylum while recovering from booze addiction - no Betty Ford in the late 70s), as well as
"Hello Hooray," "Poison," "Steven" and a very obscure tune
called "Halo Of Flies" (Alice's take on the James Bond genre). His encore was
Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock and he ended the evening with "Under My Wheels."
All in all, Alice Cooper again rocked the house (as I knew he would) with a show I'll not
soon forget. In conclusion, I have but one simple question, when are we going to get some
new stuff? ROCK ON, ALICE!!
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