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Procol, Alice and Floyd

Then there is Alice Cooper. Whew! It comes down to the music being only a sidelight, a contrapuntal aspect of the theatre involved. Alice Cooper is as strong a vocalist as the situation permits and requires, maintaining a unique style without slipping into other singers' styles (other than the intentional Jim Morrison-Doors imitation in "Desperado" and other numbers). The band is a capable rock 'n' roll group, having polished the cliched essence of hard-driving, ballsy rock to a high sheen. Despite being obnoxiously loud live, they conform perfectly to Alice's demands, both as a vocalist and as an actor. There is really very little difference between the Alice Cooper on record and live, except for sheer volume, as regards the music. But at times it barely matters what they're playing in light of the performance of Killer.

All the gimmicks, all the effects make an Alice Cooper concert a dramatic effort that is on a plane above your typical rock gig. Everything from the pseudo-drag that the band wears, through the whips, bubble and smoke generators, stripteasing, eroticism with a boa constrictor heightens the effectiveness of what is to follow. The evening culminates with the ripping off of a girl doll's clothes, Alice's fondling her crotch, the eventual hacking up of the doll and flinging the pieces to the frenzied audience, and the seizing and having of the killer amidst lightning, thunder and all sort of hell, then the return of Alice dressed in white top hat and tails to throw posters and crumpled dollar bills to the crowd. The message of Killer becomes all too frighteningly clear. Alice flaunts all levels of dignity, reality, sexuality, decency: mocking the rabid viewers. As he mouths the words, "You are crazy!" to the audience as they crowd the stage and aisles and commit mutual violations on each other for a mangled poster or picture of George Washington, the personification of the onlookers, the human race as the killer becomes more and more evident. Working through "Is It My Body?" that asks, "Please tell me, who I really am" through "I'm Eighteen" with the chorus of "American Pie" tacked on and into "Ballad of Dwight Fry" ("See my lonely life unfold"), on and on until Alice sums it all up with "We've Still Got a Long Way To Go." He is hanged and the audience screams its joy and approval. Little do they know that probably the greatest rock act is laughing right back at them, making them all the more culpable just by inciting them. Alice cooper really is a killer.