Day second of the festival in Kavarna. The first thing that makes impression is that the crowds around the stadium seem to be dropped off. Obviously many people have traveled only for the concert of Manowar and various reasons have called them back to residence. A kind of sad picture was the loose handful of people who waited for one of the classics of rock around 8 PM on 6th of July at the Kaliakra Stadium. But my worries appeared to be groundless. From 500-600 people for the performance of Sixth Sense, for Alice Cooper the audience grew at least 10 times.

What could one tell for the second major name on the bill? Some ten years ago a VJ for the rock and metal how on MTV announced a song of Alice Cooper with the words: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Alice Cooper! Alice Cooper! Alice Cooper!”. Accept that this quote is also the beginning of my story. Because the man, the artist, the actor and the singer Vincent Furnier is an extremely charismatic person who grabs the attention and rewards the spectators.

Splendorous, theatrical, professional and impressive is the show of the father of the shock rock, the man who brought a certain mask as an indivisible part of the artistic image and infallible signature. The two painted in black eyes, with a line dropped upright in the middle like drawn by the trembling finger of lunatic, lavishly soaked in the black powder, were watching the growing crowd from a huge white transparent, hanged above the drums while the Russian opening act was playing serious and quite nice hard rock under the last sunbeams in Kavarna. This time the t-shirts of the people were stamped with favorite rock dinosaurs; bands like Queen, Pink Floyd, Yes and Ozzy Osbourne dominated on the dress-code, beating the heavy metal majesties. People led easy conversations and (un)calmly waited for the beginning of the show. And it started shortly after 9.30 PM when a big, fiery flag with the name of Alice Cooper fell in front of the stage and behind it we saw the silhouette with a cane and a top-hat. And then appeared another silhouette. Of a man who stabbed deadly the first one. The flag was lifted, the corpse of a woman fell in the feet of Alice and the show began.

In fact that was a performance, a staging with a soundtrack of classic American hard rock. Everyone that has been at the Academic Stadium 8 years ago or has seen on video or on PC concerts of the star knows that it is about a show. Without dialogues with the public (that would be unnatural in the concept of the psycho-vaudeville), only spectacle and great hard rock.

I won’t throw myself into details of the scenery, the splendid costumes or the various mutes. The concert was an hurricane of favorite tracks for different generations of admirers. “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, the dancing “Under My Wheel”, the megahit from 1971 “I’m Eighteen” followed one after another, the enacted scenes before us were swelling over with dark humor and theatrically-comical horror, babies were slaughtered, beauties were slain, chains and gallows were carried around while there exploded a hit after hit.

The accent fell on the peak of Alice Cooper’s career – the 70’s but there weren’t forgotten also great songs of the next two decades; the singer sent us back in the 80’s with the immortal ballad “Poison” which made young and mature people, men and women to clap with hands and sing along one of the most memorable refrains in the hard rock. “Lost in America” and “Feed My Frankenstein” were a sip from the 90’s and for his last releases Alice reminded us mostly with tracks out of “Dirty Diamonds” (2005).
Everything else was the directed play that presented visually generous bouquet with some of the most loved songs of the shock rock icon. Of course we couldn’t pass without “School’s Out”, we also heard a jolly medley of classic Cooper pieces (“Killer”, “Welcome to My Nightmare”), his necrophilia revelation “I Love the Dead” as like spectacular solos on drums and percussions. But, you see, behind the drums there sits none else than the drum player of the other masked heroes of America, Kiss – Eric Singer. He and the boys on the strings made strong concert and gave stable shoulder to Alice Cooper for the vocals (let’s face it, he has never been an extraordinary singer) and gave themselves out until the end with constant energy flowing of them.

Maybe you have noticed how many song titles I have cited. Well, in some cases they speak more than anything else. And so, after a hundred minutes of splendid show, good mood and favorite hits, we’ve sent happy the second evening of the three-days festival. And what have In Flames and Slayer prepared? We will learn in a few hours...

Report:В Ivaylo AlexandrovВ 

Photos: Victor Alexandrov

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