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Venerable Rockers Know How to Please

Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden deliver loads of flash, fun

Alice Cooper, Iron Malden
Main Stage
Saturday, July 7, 7 and 9 p.m.

Successful geezer bands understand two fundamentals:

Fans are nostalgic and have little interest in new tunes when there's a back catalogue of familiarity to choose from.

And second, concert-going veterans like a good, honest onstage effort with lots of visuals — the more outrageous and over-the-top, the better.

And so it was that on the Ottawa Bluesfest Geezer Stage on Saturday evening that two of the more venerable and visual acts in the business strutted their well-worn stuff — lots of flash and bravado to accompany the tunes we all know and mostly love.

Alice Cooper, the original shock rocker who justifiably claims to have found profit and fame in garish : makeup long before Bowie or Kiss, is the early act for this leg of the Iron Maiden tour.

Opener yes, but second fiddle certainly not.

The man once known as Vince Furnier is what he is: A performance artist still living off the well-cultivated, gruesome reputation of boa constrictors and fake blood — of doing the visually outrageous but always with a hint of fun.

It's fair to say — as several have — that Alice helped take rock 'n' roll to a different level. He injected showbiz into rock 'n' roll and, with the help of some decent tunes and a turnover of excellent musicians, he made and sustained international fame.

Sustaining is the tough part. From the dulcet tones of Vincent Price's melodramatic spiderish intro and the crashing opening chords to Black Widow, Alice had captured his crowd and through the next dozen songs took them on a perfectly-paced nostalgia trip.

It was hardly a modest beginning with campy Alice atop a contraption that might have had something to do with a spider's web. And with six legs strapped to his body. And sparks flying from his fists. Great fun.

Bright sunshine doesn't mix too well with heavy rock, but that's the reality for openers at summer festivals. For Alice and the thousands of enthusiasts in front of him, it didn't seem to matter greatly.

Armed with various props, including a crutch for I'm Eighteen, his tale of teenage angst and confusion and the boa for No More Mr. Nice Guy, Alice and the band went over the top with Feed My Frankenstein.

All in all a great hour of rock theatre culminating with thousands of people of a certain age screaming out the refrain of School's Out.

Which left the intermission question: Would Iron Maiden be worthy?

Well, even Dickinson, Harris and Co. might concede it was a tough act to follow, but they brought their own toys to compete and had more time to spread their musical wings across the years.

The Maiden show is a high-octane three-guitar blast led by Bruce Dickinson's unrelenting movement and profane cajoling of members of the audience to do whatever he feels they should be doing at any given moment. It's called working the crowd, and he's very good at it.

After the grand opening with Moonchild and Can I Play With Madness, some sound imbalance that was burying Dickinson's vocals were dealt with and the concert flowed through one familiar song after another. Maiden work hard and after more than three decades, long ago figured out how to please the crowd — by attending to those geezer fundamentals.