Columbus - 5/6

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RemarkablyInsincere
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Columbus - 5/6

Post by RemarkablyInsincere » Sat May 07, 2016 1:59 pm

Made the 6 hour round trip to Columbus yesterday to "Spend the Night With Alice Cooper" so here are some thoughts on the show in no particular order:

- While the show didn't get the total overhaul many of us were expecting, there are some changes that are impactful to the overall presentation which is nice. Chief among them are the fog shooters which are used very effectively throughout the show. I've never seen shooters like this that are able to change the color of the fog too.

- "Public Animal #9" is great live... crowd didn't seem to react strongly to it though from where I was, though. "Long Way To Go" was great in the set too. Hoping they don't pull this in order to rotate other rarities inas I would love to see it *and* any other rare songs they add.

- "Cold Ethyl" and "Only Women Bleed" are always a great point in the show and with Sheryl playing the ballerina, it's a real highlight (along with her as the nurse). The more Sheryl the better. Can they find a way to get her in every song? ;)

- From my vantage point, it looked like the guillotine had two jets that shot long streams of water (10 seconds?) into the crowd after Alice was beheaded.

- Always love seeing "Elected". It's one of my favs and always kills live as a who ender with the "candidates" fighting it out one way or another.

- It doesn't really need to be said because almost everybody points this out, but the band is a fantastic unit. They can go toe to toe with anybody.

- Alice looks great and is full of energy. He is still the master of ceremonies and does it like nobody else.

- No surprise, I found the covers section as a real down point of the show. I just don't go to an Alice Cooper show to see it turn into a covers review 3/4s of the way through. I made a point to look around, though, and sure enough people were singing the lyrics to the songs. I'm not sure if that means they're having a great time, or it's just because these might be the first songs played that many of them actually know the words too. :/

- I arrived to the venue at around 10:45am, met some friends and we began the wait. We were all members of the local "Decibel Club" which gives you early admission to the venue (for a one time $50 fee) so we lined up in that area. I've always appreciated GA shows because they afford you the opportunity to get up front if you're willing to put in the time and effort. However with the lower tier VIP offering this year I suspected there might be a lot more VIPs than in previous years. The VIPs also include early admission into the venue which was rarely the case in the past. There were a lot of them, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 VIPs. I feared that it might impact the ability to get a good spot on the barrier and it does. At least in Columbus. I was the first non-VIP through the gates, and while I was able to get on the barrier, it was pretty far off to the side in front of Ryan. The majority of the barrier was taken up by VIPs so I'd say probably only a small number of non-VIP fans had a legit shot to get on the barrier. Couple this with things like the front package in Louisville ($700+?) becoming the norm and getting up front at an Alice Cooper show could now be more difficult unless you're willing to pay a premium.

- The merch lines were HUGE after the show. I picked up the "Make America Sick Again" poster. The t-shirt version of that is really nice and seemed to be the must have shirt of the year. I may pick that up along with the button in a Pittsburgh in a few weeks, but I had to have the poster cause those are my thing.

So there you have it... overall a fun day... and meeing up with some fellow Sick Things I hadn't seen in a while made it even better.
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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by pitkin88 » Sat May 07, 2016 3:14 pm

Has seeing the show convinced you to go to more than one or is the covers still a sticking point?

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by Lazarus » Sat May 07, 2016 4:07 pm

Good to see YOU again, RemarkablyInsincere! (And a pleasure to chat with AlongCameASpider27)
Solid observations about the show. I had kept myself in the dark concerning this tour, as I wanted it to be a surprise. No peeking at pics or set lists, not even an ear bent toward the rumor mill. I was pleased to hear LWTG during soundcheck, and it rocked in the show. They also rehearsed "Woman of Mass Distraction" a couple times. As it's not one of my favorites, I was glad it didn't make the cut.
I was really taken aback, though, when the tombstones came out. "No..." I thought, "he wouldn't dare...this must be setting off a shitstorm on the message board." Sure enough!
That said, I still had a great time, covers included, though dropping the HV schtick for solo Alice shows would be more than fine with me.
And I agree - the band is fantastic, and Alice is at the top of his game.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by RemarkablyInsincere » Sat May 07, 2016 4:19 pm

Good seeing you too Lazarus! If you noticed, they still have a John Lennon tombstone because they don't have one for Bowie.
Last edited by RemarkablyInsincere on Sat May 07, 2016 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by SickThings » Sat May 07, 2016 4:24 pm

They have a Bowie stone, too. It was lit up in Nashville. Sounds like a lighting mishap.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by RemarkablyInsincere » Sat May 07, 2016 4:25 pm

SickThings wrote:They have a Bowie stone, too. It was lit up in Nashville. Sounds like a lighting mishap.

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I meant the tomb stones that sit on the stage... not the backdrop. I didn't see a Bowie one, just a Lennon one.
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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by Feezle-Nuts » Sat May 07, 2016 9:47 pm

I think I have only been to two GA Alice shows. I'm going to Pittsburgh and I was planning on arriving about 3 hours before the doors open. Sounds like I may have to modify that plan a little bit if people start lining up that early.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by ThePainAddict » Sun May 08, 2016 3:21 am

I was at the Merrillville show the day before and Remarkably's review would pretty much mirror mine.
PA#9 went over well, but I thought it was just due to people still being hyped over the show starting, but the vocal mix took awhile to get straightened out. I could hear Alice the whole time, but his vox got noticeably louder after a few songs.
Sheryl is great, but I still prefer Calico in the role. Agreed that I would try to get her involved sooner, but not every song.
The guillotine does have two shooters, I could see one very clearly.
I was front row, but extreme stage right (great that Tommy could just hand me a pic), but from my vantage point I could see one shooter on the guillotine.
I didn't think the covers went over that well. What did get a loud applause was when Bowie gravestone (backdrop) lit up. It lit up noticeably prior to Suffragette starting. The Moonie stone didn't lit up until after PW started.
As in the other thread the Doors was a downer, and surprisingly Fire seemed tired. Prior to it, either by mistake or purposely, Alice grabbed Lennon's tombstone and waited until Nita started playing and then turned the stone to face the crowd, he then looked at Lennon's name with surprise (mock?) and turned it back around and sat it down.
Merch line was long before and after show. I notice they had one old tour jacket with the Dirty Diamonds logo on front left. It was just setting on the table and I had to ask what it was. They showed me and said it was $100

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by NotSoPerfect » Sun May 08, 2016 5:24 pm

ThePainAddict wrote:I was at the Merrillville show the day before and Remarkably's review would pretty much mirror mine.
PA#9 went over well, but I thought it was just due to people still being hyped over the show starting, but the vocal mix took awhile to get straightened out. I could hear Alice the whole time, but his vox got noticeably louder after a few songs.
Sheryl is great, but I still prefer Calico in the role. Agreed that I would try to get her involved sooner, but not every song.
The guillotine does have two shooters, I could see one very clearly.
I was front row, but extreme stage right (great that Tommy could just hand me a pic), but from my vantage point I could see one shooter on the guillotine.
I didn't think the covers went over that well. What did get a loud applause was when Bowie gravestone (backdrop) lit up. It lit up noticeably prior to Suffragette starting. The Moonie stone didn't lit up until after PW started.
As in the other thread the Doors was a downer, and surprisingly Fire seemed tired. Prior to it, either by mistake or purposely, Alice grabbed Lennon's tombstone and waited until Nita started playing and then turned the stone to face the crowd, he then looked at Lennon's name with surprise (mock?) and turned it back around and sat it down.
I was also at the Merrillville show. I agree. I didn't think the covers went over all that well. There was a good reaction when they first started, but about a song in, there were a lot of people just kind of standing there.

I was also front row, right in front of Chuck, so had a GREAT view of the guillotine. There are definitely two water shooters on it.

I noticed the Lennon tombstone during the Bowie song, and had to laugh a bit. Not really sure that was mock surprise.

Another thing that made me chuckle...I don't know if Alice is doing this frequently now or not. I don't recall having seen it before. He announced Tommy as being from Merrillville (as he always does for whatever city they're in.) Then as Tommy headed back to his mic stand, Alice mouthed "He's not from Merrillville....what?" with a grin and a shake of the head.
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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by A_MichaelUK » Sun May 08, 2016 6:04 pm

From NotSoPerfect:
"Another thing that made me chuckle...I don't know if Alice is doing this frequently now or not."

I think I've seen him do that.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by cooperrocks » Sun May 08, 2016 11:28 pm

He did that in Nashville as well.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by pitkin88 » Sun May 08, 2016 11:28 pm

Bowie was cremated maybe they should have an urn.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by SickThings » Mon May 09, 2016 2:16 pm

RemarkablyInsincere wrote:I meant the tomb stones that sit on the stage... not the backdrop. I didn't see a Bowie one, just a Lennon one.
Ah. There weren't any tombstones on the stage in Nashville (or I missed them, if there were).

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by cooperrocks » Mon May 09, 2016 6:02 pm

The tombstones lit up on the backdrop behind the drum set in Nashville.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by SickThings » Mon May 09, 2016 6:37 pm

cooperrocks wrote:The tombstones lit up on the backdrop behind the drum set in Nashville.
Right. Apparently, for Columbus they also brought out the physical "stones" used on the RTD Tour.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by AlongCameASpider27 » Mon May 09, 2016 7:48 pm

Hey I had an amazing time this past Friday in Columbus and my VIP experience was out of this world...I got to be part of an ultra rare viewing of a sound check, take pix of the Nightmare toybox box, pix with FrankenAlice, and my head in the guillotine. Even got to see Alice's quick change area which was so cool.

My VIP experience was great..Alice remembered me...had some presents for him in the form of some skittles, red vine licorice, a 50 pack of cheesy martial arts films, and a framed collage of pictures of him and Sheryl with Scripture at the bottom of it. He loved everything but revealed he has been off sugar for a year. Kyler said he and the band would take care of the candy. In my copy of the book We Love You Alice Cooper (where my story was the first listed), he wrote To Chris, no skittles...Alice Cooper. LOL.. Alice and I had a very heart to heart talk about Faith and my baptism a few years ago...it was pretty emotional and memorable.
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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by cooperrocks » Mon May 09, 2016 11:37 pm

Cool story man. I know we aren't supposed to talk religion here, so this is all I will say. I am a person of faith as well and I am thrilled to here you are too.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by RemarkablyInsincere » Sat May 21, 2016 1:58 pm

Was at the Pittsburgh show last night, and as good as Columbus was, last night was even better.

Crowd was crazy into it and in turn the energy level of Alice and the band was very high.

OWB was goose bump inducing good. Highlight of the show for me on this tour.

WOMD, which isn't my favorite song by a long shot was enjoyable in the set. Definitely better having that and one less cover in the set.

The biggest change to the show since Columbus was having someone in the toy box for much of the show. From them using puppets, to throwing toys in the air during songs. Also, Alice had to yank the crutch from whoever it was. Looked like they had clown makeup on. Might have been two different people, was hard to tell. Made for a fun element in the show so a cool addition.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by ElectedPlus » Sat May 21, 2016 2:28 pm

I saw a picture of Alice during Eighteen with a bloody bandaged neck whilst holding his severed head from the guillotine.

Supposedly this is a theatrical skit here - what's going on? Care to elaborate? Haven't come across a video of that particular song recently.

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Re: Columbus - 5/6

Post by NotSoPerfect » Sat May 21, 2016 2:34 pm

RemarkablyInsincere wrote:
The biggest change to the show since Columbus was having someone in the toy box for much of the show. From them using puppets, to throwing toys in the air during songs. Also, Alice had to yank the crutch from whoever it was. Looked like they had clown makeup on. Might have been two different people, was hard to tell. Made for a fun element in the show so a cool addition.

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I've seen pictures that make it appear that both Bujie and Amber are part of this. :)
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