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Cooper's use of macabre has dwindled to absurd

Sunday night an estimated 2,000 people, mostly young and mostly male, were gathered at the Wintergarden Ballroom to hear, see and experience an Alice Cooper concert. Many of their expectations were high. After all, each time out on the road, Alice Cooper and his entourage have garnered a reputation for creating an even more elaborate, even more daring stage show than the time before. And considering Cooper's track record, nothing seemed too far out.

Cooper's attention-getting "Billion Dollar Baby" tour in mid-'70s had brought guillotines, monsters and snakes to the stages of concert halls across the country. The timing of the tour had clicked handsomely with the concert-going public. Fans, enthralled with the decadent, whip-slinging Alice, shelled out more than $5 million in ticket sales. Following in the late-'70s, the "Madhouse Rock" tour furthered Cooper's theatrical insanity; dancing nuns, (simulated) bloody torsos, a giant cyclops and an Alice heavy into S&M, among other trendy attractions were featured.

Now what?

The 33-year-old Cooper is far from packing them in like he could in the '70s, but, nonetheless, those fans gathered here Sunday night appeared genuinely eager and anxious to see what new gimmicks the "Alice Cooper 1981 Special Forces" tour would offer. An anticipatory buzz of "Lights, camera, action" seemed to hang in the air as Alice Cooper, the first and foremost master of black leather, dead-baby, you-name-it, rock 'n' roll, arrived in a florescent cloud of smoke on the stage.

But whether it's due to the passing of time or just simply an uninspired Alice et al, the rest of the concert dissipated over the crowd just as this cloud of smoke wafted to the rafters. The promise of something new and exciting soon bottomed out and it looked like Alice was back to his old tricks.

Backed by a white-and-black back­drop of a skull with "Special Forces" stamped on it, Cooper delivered the majority of his hits, interspersed with cuts off "Special Forces," his latest release. An album, that, according to the tour press release (Cooper declined interviews this tour), is "a profile of pro­Americanism to the point of absurdity."

What was absurd, however, was the series of short vignettes that each song became. Singing his trademark anthem, "I'm Eighteen," Cooper dashed into the wings and the waiting embrace of his rock-star boa constrictor. The two of them shared the stage for the duration of the number, the snake gliding and slithering around Cooper's neck and arms and then, audience satisfied, back to the wings. Lights out. Next song, new props...lights on...and so on...and so on.

The predominantly young male audience cheered as Cooper, in skin-tight leathers and torn T-shirt slung around a life-sized stuffed woman doll attired in an outfit, uncannily resembling that of a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader.

As if to counter the projected violence of this scene, Cooper turned to his softly sung ballad "Only Women Bleed," one of his few compositions of heavy-metalism. The mood, however, was duly shattered with the sudden, contrasting "No More, Mr. Nice Guy" and "The Telephone is Ringing."

As expected, "Billion Dollar Baby" and "School's Out" capped off the show, but instead of the symbolic baby being sacrificed, Alice booted a football into the audience; a reference, undoubtedly, to the pro-Americanism of the show. And just to make sure that this point was sufficiently driven home, Cooper hoisted an American flag and led the audience in a synthesized — version of "My Country Tis of Thee."

"God Bless America....AND ME," Alice ordered emphatically with a broad sweep of the flag and then with a wry grin departed the stage.

One young male fan, who admitted to being 12, stood on the tips of his toes at the fringe of the crowd. "Yea, I can see," he said with a craned neck. "Alice Cooper is great." A nearby 16-year-old, concurred, "Yea, I like Alice Cooper because he does something different."

The heavy-metal sound of Cooper, however, was not an exclusive adolescent taste Sunday. A woman in her mid-'40s stood by the exit door, her coat draped around her sweater and slacks. No, she said, she was not waiting to pick up her son. She came with her son. And he's 24. "I like rock music," she said, "but not all of it is great like Alice Cooper."

"I don't like Van Halen," she insisted, "In fact, I wouldn't walk across the street to see him."