01. Hello Hooray 02. No More Mr. Nice Guy 03. Under My Wheels 04. I'm Eighteen 05. Billion Dollar Babies 06. Poison 07. Dirty Diamonds 08. Welcome To My Nightmare 09. Feed My Frankenstein 10. Ballad Of Dwight Fry 11. I Love The Dead 12. School's Out
This is “CBG 21st Century Master Video Series Vol. 27”.
The Coop! Every time I see this guy perform, his band has changed and he almost seems timeless. His band is always fresh and energetic. Fun to watch. Alice Cooper was the name of a performer that I remember as a kid walking in a mall in Miami and stopping with my mom to ask some teenage girls what was popular now to listen to. I mean, my parents had a reel-to-reel deck and like 6 reel-to-reel tapes of Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Tom Jones, Tony Bennett, The Beatles Abby Road, and Janis Joplin Pearl. We played The Beatles and Janis Joplin tapes over and over.
But when I wanted music of my own to play an 8-track on my new Panasonic Push portable 8-track tape player, I wanted to know what I should get. I should have listened to these girls in 1972. For some stupid reason, I didn’t. My mom also didn’t endorse what the girls mentioned as what a 9 year old should be listening to, I guess. I don’t even think my mom knew of two of the artists. I think it was just what she thought they were and maybe from television reports. These are the three artists that the girls mentioned. Cat Stevens (Ok, my mom knew him), Pink Floyd (sounded mysterious to me and this was before the Dark Side of the Moon album was released) and Alice Cooper. They told me Alice was a guy. Ha! I only knew Alice as a girl’s name at 9 years old! In retrospect, I wish my mom bought me the ‘School’s Out’ tape and some Pink Floyd tapes. But there was no way she was going to buy her 9 year old son a tape titled ‘School’s Out’! I didn't get the Cat Stevens tape either. So the two tapes I ended up getting were my first two 8 tracks, Brownsville Station with ‘Smoking in the Boys Room’ and Jim Croce with ‘Bad Bad Leroy Brown’. Not bad though.
So, Alice Cooper would have to wait. Later on, I had a teenage friend from school when I moved to New York and he loved Alice Cooper and had most of his albums by then. He was introduced from his older brothers. And he made me copes on cassette of all of them. Just the way he was to turn me onto the music he loved. Thanks Kevin. He played all of them for me and I was a fan from then on.
One of the first shows I filmed with my first VHS-C camcorder was the Coop in New Haven Coliseum in November 1987. I filmed that show from the right side facing the stage. It turned out rather well considering the technology at the time and my expertise level of just learning to film. So when Alice Cooper was announced to be warming up Motley Crue on their farewell tour, and tickets went on sale for Greenville’s newly named ‘Bon Secours Wellness Arena’, formerly the ‘Bi-Lo Center’ (Ugh, name changes, I hate them), I had to go. To me, this was like having co-headliners.
By happenstance, and because the situation in the arena dictated it, I ended up sitting in almost the same position that I was in New Haven Coliseum some 27 years later! When I started filming the Coop, it was sort of a déjà vu moment looking through the viewfinder of the Sony HD camcorder and thinking back to filming Alice Cooper in New Haven with the old VHS-C camcorder. Boy how technology increased in 27 years!
He rocked the house. His band really rocked the house. He had a lot of his props. The crowd was into it. A really good show. And the sound was really good for an arena and being a warm up band. It was a totally enjoyable show to get and think about where I have come from back in New Haven with that old VHS-C camcorder 6:1 zoom, no iris (no adjustable exposure), no optical stabilization, no HD! For a moment it felt like I was timeless. Just like the Coop! Welcome to his Nightmare in Greenville, Enjoy the Coop in South Carolina. CBG5150
