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Concert Review

At the Ice Stadium, where Alice Cooper would mislead our wholesome Swedish youth to devil worship and sadism. Once in a while our moral banner holders wake up and roar against one monster or another. This time a middle age hard rocker from the USA who sings about poison and trash.

Outside the stadium were a handul of Salvation Army soldiers with banders saying "No to Alice Cooper" and "No to violence in all shapes". They shiver in the raw cold wind and discuss God and violence with debate happy youngsters.

The youngsters are no worse seduced that, when they recieve the Salvation Army's fliers, they say "Thank you very much!".

It's mostly young Salvation Army soldiers, except the middle age officer who leads them. His patience with the undisciplined youngsters debate technique is also the shortest. When they don't say yes immediately to his statements - that Alice Cooper agitates for violence and drugs - he seems to take it as proof they are already unredeemed.

Closer to the underground the debate is hotter between the youngsters and a man in his fifties from the Antidrug-coalition. A good-natured policeman goes between and says in lusty south Swedish accent:

- Let's split up now. Those who are going to the show go this way and you who think Alice Cooper is a satanist can go in another direction.

Inside the Ice Stadium it's dead calm. The audience sits duteously in their sits while one band comes after another and the music booms. Only near the stage there's raised hands. On several places parents sit with their youngsters. One dad says he saw Alice Cooper six-seven years ago with his young daughter at Gröna Lund, and now it's the 13-year-old son's turn. The dad doesn't believe much on the speak about satanism and horrorism.

- Cooper is bad at the same level as Disney's Big Bad Wolf and the Pigs, he says. The only thing this is bad for is the hearing.

(Translated for the Alice Cooper eChive by Maria Westin, November 2008)