Vincent Furnier

I squeezed into a brocade corset and the husband put on his mid-life-crisis-leather pants and we trundled off to the Australian Institute of Sport arena. I was curious as to what sort of crowd the countries most conservative city would produce for an Alice Cooper concert. As we were driving I asked the husband if he thought Alice would finish with School's Out or Poison.
We arrived and mingled with Blandberra's AC fans. Mostly middle class, middle aged and chubby public servant types surrounded us. Also quite a few slightly embarrassed looking people who had blacked their eyes (but wore their ordinary clothes) shuffled amongst us, I'm sure they all thought it was a good idea at the time. A few young 'uns and even a couple of gothy looking metal heads (as well as us) were wandering around as well. The highlight for me was a rather tubby guy with a ponytail wearing a T-shirt which said "no I will not fix your computer". Classic. We went to our seats, which were quite good as we had paid for grown-up seats in the stadium, not teenage seats on the floor and sat through what seemed like an eternity of a really boring support band. I was amused by the Dencorub billboard next to the stage.
Eventually Alice, in his white top hat and tails and cane, appeared. Then Alice in his black leather gear also appeared, stabbed the top hatted Alice and began singing No More Mr Nice Guy. Good start. Things progressed and I was impressed by his level of fitness (and cane twirling), unless you saw him in profile you couldn't see the jowls or paunch and he looked great and was energetic. His backing band, a rather gorgeous quartet of death rock boys, were excellent. He went through the standards, quite a few songs from Killer, before having a break. The boys played and impressed us with their talent while Alice did whatever aging rock stars do back stage (gasp into an oxygen mask? Have a cup of tea?) before re-appearing in a different costume and launching into more classic Alice. He did a rather violent dance routine with a life size rubber bride doll before swapping the doll for a dancer and going through a somewhat misogynistic version of Only Women Bleed. He then stabbed a baby through the heart, was put into a straight jacket and eventually gallows were wheeled out and he was hung by another Alice persona. The band played the chorus of I Love The Dead and Alice re-appeared for his final song – School's Out. After the obligatory few minutes he came back with Billion Dollar Babies and then Poison. His grand finale was Elected, complete with flag waving (US and Aus) and marching. The husband, who has excellent 20/20 hindsight, said "I knew he'd finish with that". Alice introduced and thanked the band, the dancer (who turned out to be his daughter) and then thanked us, and I am sure he said "Thank you Brisbane" but I could be wrong.
All-in-all we gave him 8/10 and drove home contented.