There’s no denying that the vast majority of rock ‘n’ roll animals heading to the sold-out Rogers Arena this Friday night will be huge fans of Mötley Crüe, which is performing on its heavily publicized “Final Tour“.
But I doubt I’ll be the only one going there to revel in the killer tunes and theatrical shock-rock shenanigans of “special guest” Alice Cooper.
“Special guest”? Are you freakin’ kidding me? I hope the main attraction is prepared to be blown off the stage by its “special guest”. Alice Cooper should not be warming up for anybody. Ever! In fact, he’s so bloody awesome that I’m gonna steal the headliner’s umlauts right now and award them to him.
Welcome to Vancouver, Alice Cööper!
“How can you be so sure that the Cööp will kick Motley butt, Nëwt?”, you may well ask. Well, for one thing, I just checked out his setlist, and of the 13 selections, nine are from the early ’70s. Within the span of two years, from February 1971 to Feb. ’73, Cööper released four brilliant guitar-rock albums: Love It to Death, Killer, School’s Out, and Billion Dollar Babies, and he’s pillaged some of the finest material from those discs for his current show.
By the time he gets through “No More Mister Nice Guy”, “Under My Wheels”, “Eighteen”, and “Billion Dollar Babies”, nobody’s gonna give a fvck about hearing the Crue’s watered-down version of Brownsville Station’s “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room”. I mean, I enjoyed Motley as much as anyone when they served up a punky dose of catchy glam-metal on Too Fast For Love back in ’82, but I’m sorry–nobody gets away with calling Alice Cööper “special guest” on my watch.
Also, have you checked out the Cööp’s band lately? He’s got three lead guitarists, which is three times as many as Mick Mars. And one of them is Nita Strauss, who was the female version of Dave Murray in the Iron Maidens.
‘Nuff said. See ya at the show. I’ll be the one tryna sneak backstage to get my dog-eared vinyl copy of Killer signed by the Cööp-and complain that he didn’t include “Halo of Flies” in his set.
I’m going ONLY for Alice.