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Alice Cooper + Billy Thorpe Thebarton Theatre, Sat 2 July I don't know what happened with advertised local support Cosmic Storm, but we were inside the venue before 7:30pm and according to an usher no one had played yet. Come 8pm, Billy Thorpe and his band stepped onstage to deliver an extremely well-received set. With the volume turned way up high and the sound unbelievably muddy, I couldn't make out their opening number, but with the rest of the first half of their set dedicated to tracks of Thorpe's yet-to-be-released new album, 'Tangier', all we could do was to sit back and enjoy the high-energy show for which this man has been renowned the past forty years. "That was Billy Thorpe now," he announces, "this is Thorpie 1972!" as they launched into Be Bop A Lula followed by C.C. Rider and closing with his signature tune, Most People I Know (Think That I'm Crazy). "Thank you", acknowledges a sweat drenched Thorpe, "come back and see me when we play for three hours", hinting at an inevitable return to the Australian live circuit. As a long-time Alice Cooper fan, one could not have wished for a better set, as the master of shock rock gleaned numbers from as far back as 1971, as well as adding a couple of numbers from the imminent new album 'Dirty Diamonds'. Beginning with the rock anthem Department Of Youth, Cooper and his energetic, extremely heavy 'punk' backing band then stepped back a couple of years with No More Mister Nice Guy. Dirty Diamonds was next, where he tantalised the audience by throwing handfuls of faux diamond necklaces into the front rows. Then, as he's done since 1973, during Billion Dollar Babies he teased the crowd with wads of AC dollar bills skewered with a sword. It's this unabashed display of cheap crassness that took Alice to the top over thirty years ago. Despite being 57 years old he's still as juvenile as ever, and with three generations of followers before him he wasn't prepared to let up. An acoustic take on I Never Cry was among the many surprises and newer songs such as Between High School And Old School and What Do You Want From Me? (from 2003's 'The Eyes of Alice Cooper') were nestled comfortably between such bona fide classics as I'm Eighteen and Be My Lover. Feed My Frankenstein saw our macabre hero piecing together a dismembered body, and Cooper's daughter, Calico, made a few appearances throughout the show as a vampiress during Go To Hell, an abused wife (Only Women Bleed) and as Paris Hilton (Wish I Was Born In Beverly Hills). There was also the infamous straitjacket, guillotine execution and white tuxedo closer to the main set with School's Out, before he finished up the encore choices with the staple Under My Wheels. Ninety minutes long and within the tight confines of the Thebarton Theatre, this truly was a classic Alice Cooper show.  |
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