Sunday night in Peterborough at The Peterborough Memorial Centre, Alice cooper brought his show to town and didn’t disappoint. His 28th studio album is out now, Detroit Stories and he is on tour in support of it, although this show was a make-up from 2020. We all know what happened there.
Alice has been known throughout his career for his brand of shock rock and theatrics onstage. Over the years, he has found several ways to shock his audiences as well as different ways to be “executed” before your very eyes. An Alice Cooper show isn’t just a concert, it’s an event! You don’t want to take your eyes off the stage because you aren’t sure what’s going to happen next.
All of this happens surrounded by one of the best bands in Rock’n’Roll. The Rhythm section is made up of Chuck Garric on Bass and Glen Sobel on drums. Sobel is one of the best drummers in rock music in my opinion, but I feel he is also one of the great showmen too. His sticks often seen spinning between beats, at times not even looking like they were touching his hands. Rounding out the band on guitar are Ryan Roxie, Tommy Henrickson and Nita Strauss. All three are great guitar players but together on one stage it’s amazing. They do a great job of filling out the sound in true Alice Cooper fashion. Cheryl Cooper makes several appearances onstage playing various villainous parts too, all trying to make Alice’s life miserable.
As a long time Alice fan, I lean toward his older music and I was pleasantly surprised that on this tour, he dusts off some older songs that I hadn’t even heard him do live before. You get the standards like Billion Dollar Babies, No More Mr Nice Guy and I’m Eighteen, what would an Alice Cooper concert be without those in the set? On top of that, we got lots of older stuff that has been absent for years, songs like Dead Babies, I Love The Dead and Be My Lover. It was great to hear those older songs again. Welcome To My Nightmare Jam was a new twist where they threw in many pieces of the album of the same name in a medly. We also saw him do Steven from the same album, complete with straight jacket
Once again, like before, I was transformed back to my teens listening to Alice Cooper records in my bedroom wishing that I could someday see him in concert. Little did I know that at another point in my life I would get what I wished for and it has been just as I imagined. In modern times, maybe the shock has been lost a little but an Alice show is still the spectacle it always was. This is one 74 year old teenager who is still very much on his game. You will certainly be entertained! There is considerably more gray hair in the audience than there used to be, the fans are the same ones that you might have seen in 1975, and still loving every moment.
I left the Peterborough Memorial Centre that night feeling that I had just witnessed the best Alice Cooper concert of all the ones I’d seen to date. Alice has not slowed even a bit. He lives to entertain, and he is one of the very best in the business at it too. He packs a ton of value into a 90 minute set.
Alice Cooper website
