I’ve seen a fair few shows in my time but I’ve also missed many acts for whatever reasons. One act I had not seen live was Alice Cooper. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity – Alice has played extensively in this area the entire time I’ve been alive, it’s not like it was ever a chore to see him. I just never got around to doing so.

All that changed this past Tuesday, August 15. Alice has been touring with the Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard perpetual stadium tour and Alice has also been doing solo off-dates. My humble little village was lucky enough to land one of these shows and so now I’ve experienced the thrill of Alice Cooper live.

This show was at the Juanita K. Hammons Hall For The Performing Arts, a theater style venue on the campus of Missouri State University. I wrote about it previously when I recapped seeing John Mellencamp there. I decided to save a few bucks and take in the show from the upper balcony. While the lower two levels were nearly full, the upper portion had a fair few seats left. In my own row of 54, I was the only patron. It was kind of funny watching people in the full first 3 rows of this section jostle back and forth while I sat in peace. I was the highest person up for awhile but then a couple came and sat in the very top row, thus ruining my pointless brag about being the highest one up in the crowd. The view was still fine, though it was a steep haul getting to my seat. Here’s a pic of my view.

This was Alice playing all alone, no openers or anything. Alice has maintained a near-constant live line-up for the past decade or so, with the one exception being the brief departure and return of guitarist Nita Strauss last year. Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen join Nita on guitar, Chuck Garric handles bass and Glen Sobel has the drums.

I won’t bother trying to run down the entire setlist, because whoever from our show updated the list on setlist.fm did a piss poor job of it. I was familiar with all but two or three songs I heard so it’s not some big deal. This did feature something like 22 songs so it was a pretty jam-packed set. This was mostly a hits set, starting with massive classics like No More Mr. Nice Guy and I’m Eighteen. More of the obvious classics were played, like Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome To My Nightmare and Under My Wheels.

There was a fair bit of attention paid to Alice’s late ’80’s/early ’90’s period, as the Hey Stoopid album got three tracks in the set – the title track, Snakebite and Feed My Frankenstein. There was a huge Frankenstein that came out for a brief moment and for a second I was wondering what Eddie was doing there, but that’s the wrong show. Poison from Trash was included, as was Lost In America from The Last Temptation album.

The songs were rapid fire, one right after another. Alice was often changing garb in the very brief dark spots between songs. It’s pretty sad that a guy 30 years older than me can change clothes way faster than me but such is life. There were spots for a short drum solo and also a guitar showcase, mostly featuring Nita.

The stage set was something like a courthouse with two huge staircase things that band members used here and there. All of this would come into play later, as we got a bit of a mini-story with the last handful of songs. The Ballad Of Dwight Frye kicked off with Alice being straight-jacketed and eventually beheaded at the behest of his wife Sheryl and the band moved into I Love The Dead. But then Alice would escape, as the song Escaped kicked off. He seemed to be put away again, but there’s a solution for that – how do you get out of criminal charges? Get elected. (Ok that works most of the time, I guess) Elected ended the little story with Alice running for president, which he actually does every four years as a gag.

There was no long gap before the encore, as the band quickly shifted into School’s Out, which was an extended jam that also featured a portion of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall. Alice took time to introduce the band, his wife and himself. Nita honestly got the loudest reception of anyone, she has really staked a name for herself these past few years. The band then wound down School’s Out and that was it.

This was an amazing show, I’m very glad I finally got off my ass and went to see Alice Cooper. The crowd was very lively and into the show, it was impressive because I’ve seen some pretty lame ass crowds at Missouri shows in the past. But this all-ages group was very into Alice and was rocking the whole time. Alice Cooper has been at this for many, many years now and the guy still has it with no signs of slowing down.

I did snap a few pictures but from my bird’s nest view in the mostly dark my pics did not come out worth a damn. Thankfully my buddy Shawn was up far closer and got a few good ones, here’s one at the end of Elected.