View Gallery

An impressive tour – Deep Purple and Alice Cooper for a night of rocking and truth be told, on a cool night at Blossom in Cuyahoga Falls, OH on September 9th, it was Mr. Cooper who should have headlined the show and not the aging Purple.

Cooper’s stage show might be second to none and his backing band is probably the best he’s ever had with Nita Strauss, Ryan Roxie, Chuck Garric, Tommy Henriksen, and Glen Sobel. All the bells and whistles of a Cooper show was intact, including Alice being put in the guillotine, electrocuting himself, and countless other shenanigans. Putting a satisfying show with tracks like “Poison”, the Wayne’s World famous “Feed My Frankenstein”, “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Brutal Planet” and an impressive closing of “School’s Out”, the audience had their fill of kickass rock ‘n’ roll.

By comparison, Deep Purple was much more toned down, but these guys are all basically in their ‘70s besides guitarist Steve Morse so I’ll cut them some slack. Ian Gillan was a little animated and can’t quite sing like he used, but overall he did an admirable job, though “Highway Star” does provide some vocal problems. Most memorable moments was Don Airey’s enjoyable and whimsical keyboard solo and hearing stone cold classics like “Perfect Strangers” and “Hush”. Fun stuff, but Alice stole the show and more people were buzzing about him after the show then they were of Purple.