"Now, we were dying laughing at the donkey with tennis shoes on..."
Originally, I'd intended to attend Ivan Moravec's recital tonight at Isaac Stern Auditorium. But the workload beckoned, and thus I'm sitting at home watching the soon-to-be-released DVD of Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper, a film of Cooper's 1973 Billion Dollar Babies tour with goofy, Hard Day's Night-like vignettes interspersed between songs. Tomorrow, I'll be writing this up for the television and home video section of Time Out. (You'll find my review of a new Motley Crue DVD in the issue that hits the stands tomorrow -- garish and gratuitous, as you might expect, but from a technical perspective one of the best concert documentations I've ever seen -- believe it.)
Originally screened in theaters, Good to See You Again is actually a very amusing film -- especially if you view it with Cooper's newly recorded commentary track enabled. (That's where the quote at the top of this post came from.) It also documents the very beginning of rock-concert theatrics, an innovation that long ago became something of a prerequisite for arena-sized shows. And there's just no denying that this particular version of the Alice Cooper Band was one hell of a rock group. Anyway, it certainly seems appropriate for the tail-end of October 31. And while this may be an example of the more service-oriented end of my gig, I'd be lying if I said there was no fun in it.
Online love to Terry Teachout, Cafe Aman, Deceptively Simple and Sieglinde -- the last of whom shared appropriate and genuinely welcome umbrage in comments attached to the thoughts I posted about the Met's current Aida on October 27.
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