Dear Diary,
Tonight I went to see Alice Cooper concert at the Roseland (which is right across the street from us). First time ever seeing Alice on stage. Got tickets because a) our friend Lester said he was going to see it and b) Chris is a big Alice Cooper fan and c) what the hell, it’s right across the street from us. Saw a lot of Mr. Cooper followers, with their black clown eye make up. It was quite er… um…. entertaining and scary all at the same time. It was like visiting the party of the living dead. There were also some peeps dressed like goth fairies and wizards (I don’t know why) , standing alongside a small group of harajuku goth girls. The majority though was a sea of balding old Alice Cooper fans (some with their kids). Um… okay.
The band that opened for Alice was “Wednesday 13”. Why Wednesday? I guess they thought Friday was too cliche. However, being that all their songs were cliche, I thought, “why stop there?” We didn’t know what they were called but they had these 2 huge spiraling black and white boards with a big “13” painted on them so I guess that’s their mark (pretty bad). What was more interesting than their music was their image. They were trying to portray this “I’m angry at the world and all of you” attitude and the lead singer looked like Marilyn Manson with dreadlocks singing heavy metal, but all I can really think of was these folks out of this environment – let’s say… at a grocery store, packing groceries on their off time? It brought a whole new image of them in my head. The topics and lyrics of their songs were all pretty cliche (satan, death, hatred…) Then came the signature song: “Fuck”. For one whole minute and a half they sang the entire song based on the word “fuck”. Oh geez, I wonder how they came up with *that* song, I laughed. The last note of their performance was this: I noticed that with all the anger and goth and heavy metal cliche they were throwing at the half-dead audience, the lead singer had taken time to shave his arm pits. Wow… I thought. Shaved armpits on an angry heavy Metal Marilyn Manson. Now that’s refreshing.
Alice’s concert was quite entertaining but I think the types of crowd that it produces is equally if not more entertaining. Not only was I shouted to (not at, just to) from various happy drunk men, I had this one very tall nordic couple with matching flowy long blond hairs showed up suddenly right in front of me and the guy turned around shouted (again) incoherent gibberish at me with a smile. All I can think of was, “ha – ha – aren’t you mad at someone as tall as us chose to stand right in front of you, of all places?” but before I can figure out what they really said, they were gone in a flash.
New York night life has its moments. On the way out of the concert to a bar where we were going to grab a late dinner, we saw one tall, lanky Mr. Cooper wanna be (with the black clown eye makeup) passed out in front of a florist, with a cop standing next to him. Obviously he had a little too much fun at the concert. Then we passed a white middle aged man crouched against a wall, at Duane Reade… relieving himself (no.2). He was facing us as he sat there patiently, in the cold, with hoards of people passing him by. He was crouched there very matter-of-factly. He was not a bum. “Only in NY” I thought, as we passed these two very strange scenes in no less than 5 minutes after the concert rush. No one seemed to pay attention to him – of course, except me – the rubber necker extraordinaire (and Chris, who said, “I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go”).
I’ve never really been an Alice Cooper fan, but I have to give it to that man. For someone who is in his 60’s, he put on a very full show with all the theatricals and singing. Not once did he wheeze. Kudos to that man.
Good night,
Reiko
Little Reiko's Diary 