Gruesome Twosome Concert Review

It's been a good week for me for free concert tickets. Last night I got to see the Gruesome Twosome Tour featuring Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie at Rexall Place in Edmonton courtesy of The Edmonton Sun. This was a co-headlining tour,with Alice opening last night, to a crowd of about 6,000.

This was my fifth time seeing Alice in concert and first time since 1990, so I was looking forward to seeing how he would do. After all the guy is in his 60's now. I thought he put on an alright show, he sounded good, vocals were a little strained but what do you expect after all these years. The song selection was good, opening with School's Out and playing such songs as Billion Dollar Babies,I'm Eighteen,Department Of Youth,Ballad Of Dwight Frye, what surprised me was the 2 songs in a row from the album From The Inside including the title song and Nurse Rozetta and then he had to ruin it with the god awful song Poison, man that song blows.

During Alice's set he was put to death 3 times, with the guillotine, the hanging and then the hypodermic needle during Poison. Now when I saw him years ago, the death thing happened once, now he does all three in the course of a 80 minute set. To be honest, I think Alice is killing himself with his shtick, it's getting old and he has played Edmonton, I think 3 times in the past 5 years. Little bit overkill.

I had read that this Alice tour was going to be a big production show as he hasn't played a big coliseum show in years, but to me it was more of the same old shtick.







Headlining the show was Rob Zombie, who also has played here a few times in the past couple of years. This was my second time seeing him perform (first time at Ozzfest in Vancouver 1999). Now his show was a big production, big stage,lots of lights,flashes,cool skull microphones,couple of naked women at one point streaking across the stage,lots of video images playing on screens and on his monitors, but then you have him in his Road Warrior get up and his music. Now, I don't mind some of his tunes, but after about 3 songs, they all just start to sound the same. he did play one song I like "More Human Than Human" bu the rest were just boring. Having said that though, this was definitely his crowd, he had everyone chanting Zombie and raising their fists and carrying on.




All and all not a bad show, not one I would have payed to see, but am glad I got to see it. I was really hoping to see Alice put on a bit of a better show.
I went to this show with my friend A-Bomb. he had a good comment on Rob Zombie, that I would have to agree with him on "Rob is a lazy singer".
I give this show a 6.5 out of 10.



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