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Alice

It was Sado-Mach Rock Night at the Berk Com Theater last Thursday, as Mother Alice Cooper and his Leather Acolytes brought their traveling religious carnivorous carnival to town.

Combination of Living Theater and Rock and Roll Revival, catharsis for the cathode kids. Two bubble machines perking away. Alice is shredded black tights, stuntman's vest-harness, with straps under the groin, kneehigh boots, black circles around her eyes, dark stringy hair in a Warhol star non-do. A marked resemblance to Holly Woodlawn. The rest of the band in superstar flash, spangly skintight pants, the bass player gliding around in a wheelchair with a bottle of plasma hovering over it, the drummer engulfed in a tide of cymbals and snares.

Alice cavorting in front of the wall of sound, brandishing a sword, caressing a boa constrictor, exploding smoke bombs, posing, prancing, preening grotesque hard-edged movements as gothic lighting alternates between lime-green rear illumination — throwing the band into silhouette — and bright orange spots.

The songs are all the same, cresting and ebbing, the words are lost forever in the tidal soundwave. Alice duels with the lead guitarist, sword versus guitar. He feigns sucking the head of his snake, letting it coil around his hard thin body. He glares at the audience, throws out a harmonica, the microphone stand, a crushed can full of beer, all tossed into the empty area between the crowd and stage as photographers duck.

After 45 minutes of this it is time for the grand moment, Alice's hanging. A song about a baby killer, Alice clutching a small doll in a pink dress to his leather bosom. Then the ax, and suddenly Alice is down on the floor splitting the doll into sections like a crazed Chinese butcher dismembering a chicken. (The ax leaves a good sized hole in the floor, wonder how the Berkeley school board will like that?) He throws the limbs into the audience, holds the red-smeared head by its golden curls in his thin fist, spits on it and plots it over a microphone stand, and finally puts it off the stage into the audience. Then he falls to his knees as the screaming music drops to a whimper. Arms behind his back, Alice apologizes and confesses his crime. A tape of an organ music pounds as the drummer stands behind Alice playing an old marching snare in funereal rhythms. The rest of the band, hooded, carrying torches, jerk Alice to his feet and lead him to the gallows, place the rope over his head, and suddenly she is dangling, the star crucified for the screaming patrons. Only it is all camp, a game, there is no catharsis.

Then Alice is brought back to life, reborn, decked in white satin coat and top hat, black cane, strutting in the spot, singing, "We've still got a long way to go." And then she's taking it off, throwing the coat and tails backwards, fumbling with the vest with the vest with the crotch straps and big hook in the middle of the back, to reveal a black polo with A-L-I-C-E spelled out in spangles. The crucifixion and the rising, now it's time for communion as people leap over the low fence into the area in front of the stage. And Alice responds by throwing rolled-up posters of himself out to the crowd, first sparingly as young arms stretch and bodies crush each other in the scramble to catch them. Then he's back with armloads, throwing them out in bundles, the crowd pushing and straining for a souvenir image of their hero/heroine. And now some giant balloons, four feet across, rhythm guitarist butting one out into the audience with an excellent soccer style head lunge.

Alice is showing how far we have to go as people push and stumble and roll over each other in the rush for the posters. Then the stage is empty, but it's only moments before the band is back for an encore. Now Alice has another sword (he'd bent the first one in half earlier) and it's a bunch of dollar bills skewered on it like shishkebab, and Alice flips them out to the people, and extension of the play on communion (bread/body) even sticking one bill in her mouth and savagely biting it in two, spitting the halves over the edge of the stage.

For a moment she gets too close to the grasping arms and she's almost pulled down into the excited mob, but two burly roadies save her. And then it's over.

If the music were better, if Alice could sing and dance like say, Mick Jagger or Elvis, if the theatrics were truly dramatic, it would be tempting to think of this as the next big thing in music. A fusion of the mad search for faith combined with the power of rock (remember Watkins' film Privilege?). But the mediocrity of the talent lets you dismiss Cooper and company as a passing phenomenon. Still, maybe she is pointing the way for a new escalation in the religious rock trip, perhaps some talent of giant stature will combine the fascination with violence and thirst for salvation that are both so strong now in Amerikan society, into a movement capable of uniting all the splinter groups — Hare Krishnas, Jesus Freaks, Scientologists, macrobiotics, etc. — now groping for some meaning in our absurd universe. It is a scary thought.