Friday October 28th J.D Legends celebrated the most hallowed and cherished weekend of horror fans, metalheads, witches, cave dwellers, sewer rats and coven followers with a tribute to the originator and Godfather of shock rock Alice Cooper. Like Rob Zombie’s said, Cooper did everything first and we’ve been respectfully copying him ever since.
Coop’s Nightmare: The Alice Cooper Experience brought the dressed up crowd a younger version and vision of Alice played by Curtis Carr, catapulting fans back to the ‘70s and ‘80s era of Coop. The show featured a career spanning set, from classics and old school, to ‘80s, ‘90s and modern day, even some early-deep cuts, literary and musically. A show starting with a friendly hello, ending with the school bell, with all the props and visuals fans expected from old Black Eyes and the darkly beloved Nightmare Nurse played vicious and vixen-like by Curtis’ better-half beauty Anna Carr. It was an all-ages, family friendly, cutting edge show delivered in similar likeness and fashion to the Godfather’s macabre mayhem. In makeup and character, Coop’s likeness to a young Alice was sometimes eerie, often scary, like a guillotine chopped time warp, slicing off decades of leather, blood and snake oil.
J.D.’s got most of the shows bells and whistles, including costume changes, props and mandatory stained guillotine. Over 20 tunes were played including straight jacket memories, stalking nightmares, guillotine dreams, sword play, spider legs, trash, creepy dolls and inflated balloons. It was an arena/pavilion show delivered at club level with great Vaudeville.
Iron Maiden Eddie, grisly goons and Michael Myers among others showed up for the show, haunting and hunting the crowd with Myers getting some feminine attention without the knife.
Dayton’s Guilty Pleasure started the evening with a spot-lit arena vibe and clothes to match. A collection of high energy, sparkling, shiny decadent tunes from the ‘80s and ’90s were brought from the MTV era to modern YouTube influencers, with the band getting close and friendly with the crowd a few times. The crowd got snake bit (before Coop) by Coverdale, the never satisfied leather-clad guns from L.A. were still insatiable.
The DR.was in so the Sunset Strip Crüe didn’t go away mad. The cell-phone glow came out bright as the fireflies waved and filmed the Warranted white leather sounds of “Heaven.”
Literal electricity buzzed and jolted for “Little Suzie.” While the softest loaded Lies were strummed on acoustic, with “Patience.”
The set neared the end with an extra charge of Australian volts and school boy charm, straight from as down under on the highway as the afterlife got.“ They ended with a not-so Quiet Riot and a loud, classic dose of Metal Health and headbanging.
The stage resembled a flashback to the ‘80s, early 90s with trash cans and tarnished props blood-dripped and soaked from frequent use.
Jake Wolfe, Julian Adams, Tim ‘Mothy’ Samples, Kenny ‘Pickles’ Tomko, and John Schorle made the noise and sounds propelling young Alice to the stage, making the waking nightmare real to ears and eyes. With a black eyed smear and sneer Coop emerged playing with sharp things ,taunting the crowd as the original carnival of sin had begun.
The show slithered and coiled heavy on old school material with several selections from classic records with bloody pieces of late ‘90s to modern tunes spliced in but like the master would say, be chrool to you scuel.
Red caped and devilishly dappered, the top hat Billion Dollar hits started early with Coop and CO. arriving with a genuine “Hello, Hooray,” he show began. One of Father Alice’s most classic and popular tunes, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” got hell’s treatment, recalling a shocking cinema history.
Bloody and ready with the tools of the trade, he deemed us all worthy enough to be called Stoopid on “Feed My Frankenstein.” They went vintage classic on his voyage to Hell and his debut “Nightmare.”
One of the coolest and well performed songs involving a straight jacket, nurse, clipboard and needle was acted out in front J.D. Legends. You’d almost of thought it was the real thing, with the Carr couple paying tribute to the authentic original married maniacs, saluting Mr. Fry with a hard clipboard crack..
The golden-age of the guillotine shined through with Nurse Coop giving Alice a quicker fate than the meat grinder. Swords, greenbacks and jousting happened on “Billion Dollar Babies,” while Love It To Death got a double dose of love.
Creepy dolls are par for the course in horror and heavy music and “Cold Ethyl” delivered the most normal-creepy doll to grace a Franklin stage. Though fans took an instant; hands on liking to ‘her.’
“Welcome to my Nightmare” took it back ‘70s style with very pre-Slash top hat. They got close, romantic and personal on “Only Women Bleed” with the two Coops portraying the perfect (deranged) stage couple.
Concert staple and crowd pleaser “Poison” made our blood hot like lace on sweat. We were all eighteen again with the black shirted treatment…
Beavis and Butthead commented track “Lost in America” gave fans one Last Temptation while “Fallen in Love” gave a solo Paranormal experience.
The “Teenage Frankenstein” Constricted and recoiled, while the nightmare continued sinfully sweet, stained black with moist devilish cake and creepy spiders. The multilegged black widows joined forces together to mate, in performance..
The bells rang representing everything juvenile about school and everything loved and cherished about summer. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School got some vintage encore love along with Dazed and Confused. It was a show ending party marking night one of the famous scary weekend . Balloons without creepy clowns fell from the ceiling with confetti spewing everywhere. It was kinda like Cooper meets KISS in the early days, minus the ascending drum riser and explosions.
The circus took a bow, thanking everyone for indulging them. Something wicked had come to Franklin.
Facebook – www.facebook.com/CoopsNightmare
Site – https://coopsnightmare.com/
Images by Mike Ritchie
