Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

Friday, October 27, 1995     Page:

Scott Free’s “Alice Cooper Show”
   
With guests Orfan AnnyTonight at Cheers, Rt. 309, Mountaintop; 9:30
p.m.-1:30 a.m.; cover — $3; info: 474-5522
    John Hessler, of Scott Free gives a wild performance
   
Frightfully real fun with `Alice’
   
Welcome to Scott Free’s Nightmare.
   
Decapitations, funerals, coffins, snakes — and of course, the music of
Alice Cooper — will all be a part of a special Alice Cooper tribute show
tonight at Cheers in Mountaintop.
   
In keeping with the spirit of Halloween, Scott Free will be pulling out all
the stops in an effort to recreate the magic — or black magic — of rock’s
reigning prince of darkness.
   
According to bassist Scott Weiler, the show begins with a funeral
procession entering the club and working its way to the stage. Among those in
the procession are the grim reaper, a few eerily dressed women holding candles
and pallbearers donning hockey masks. As the coffin reaches the stage, the
voice of the late Vincent Price echoes through the club, delivering a speech
about “The Black Widow.”
   
Just then, “Alice,” played by Scott Free vocalist John Hessler, launches
into the Cooper song of the same title.
   
It’s a nightmare that’s only beginning.
   
Scott Free, which consists of Weiler, Hessler, Chris Anastasio, guitar;
Michael “The K” Humbert, drums; and “Doc,” keyboards, hails from the
Philadelphia area. Weiler says the group began doing the tribute show on a
smaller scale a few years ago, and that the production has escalated with each
passing year.
   
For tonight’s show, there will be a guillotine in which Hessler’s head is
lopped off — which Weiler says “looks absolutely real” — and a recount of
the story of “Cold Ethyl.”
   
“Cold Ethyl” another Cooper song, is a supposedly true story about a man
who, after killing his wife, put her in a refrigerator and continued to have a
“relationship” with her.
   
“Alice wrote about this,” says Weiler, “so what we’ve done is we’ve got an
old beat up refrigerator and we threw red blood (paint) all over it — and
wrote the word “Ethyl” on it. (We) got a blow-up doll from the over-21 store
— and it’s in the refrigerator. During that song, Johnny gets the blow-up
doll out and has his way with her. It’s a lot of fun.”
   
But Scott Free won’t be the only ones performing on stage tonight. There
are nearly a dozen people in the cast.
   
And then there’s “Berma.”
   
“We have a 10 foot python that comes out in the second song,” says Weiler,
adding that Berma will be making her debut at this year’s show, replacing the
7-foot boa, “Jesse,” who held the job the past two years.
   
“She weighs 65 lbs.,” he says. “She is huge. Needless to say, Johnny’s been
familiarizing himself with the snake.”
   
He’d better be.
   
According to Weiler, Hessler and Berma get pretty close.
   
“He goes off stage during the intro to `Welcome To My Nightmare’ and they
rap the snake around him,” he says. “He comes out and sings the entire song
with this snake wrapped around him. It’s a lot of fun — it’s something to
see.”
   
Weiler says that Scott Free not only pulls off the Alice Copper tribute
visually, but musically as well.
   
“Our lead singer is an amazing guy,” he says of Hessler. “He can sing
anything from Jon Anderson of Yes to Steve Perry of Journey. He’s almost like
a ventriloquist with his voice and he sounds an incredibly lot like Alice
Cooper. He’s just got that raspy `just ate razor blades for breakfast’ kind of
voice for Alice. If you look at the picture, he actually looks like Alice.”
   
Weiler says that Scott Free only performs the Alice Cooper show during
Halloween week. Normally, he says, they play everything from alternative to
classic rock to progressive music, with a set list including tunes by Alice In
Chains, Rush, Green Day, Soundgarden, Rush and Led Zeppelin.
   
“We try to do a little bit of everything,” he says. “We have great
musicians, no egos, everybody is really easy to work with.”
   
Weiler credits the R and L production company of Pat Reed, Todd Loper, John
Peters as being integral as part of the tribute show. Based out of Temple
University, he says they’re the ones that make the props and thus make it
happen. “Our production crew is amazing,” he says. “They build all the stuff
— the guillotines, the caskets — they just do a great job. Without them,
there’s no way we could pull this off.”
   
So if you want to get a head start (pun intended) on Halloween, check out
Scott Free tonight at Cheers. We haven’t revealed all of their tricks —
there’s lots of other surprises as well.
   
“There’s a lot of intense work that goes into this show,” says Weiler.
“It’s a lot of fun.”
   
That wasn’t very nice, Bob
   
The usually cordial Robert Plant, on stage last week at The Buffalo
Memorial Auditorium, took a sarcastic shot at the current Eagles reunion.
   
When explaining why he and Jimmy Page were using orchestras and global
instrumentation in their new music and in reworking Zeppelin classics, Plant
quipped, “We wanted to do something more interesting than `Hotel California.’

   
Ouch.
   
Cellar Full of Noise
   
This week on The Cellar Full of Noise, Mike Naydock will play original
music by Kid Trouzers, Cross Breed, The Mange and more. Showtime is Sunday at
8 p.m. on WZMT, 97.9 FM — The Mountain.
   
Models & Tribes
   
Tonight, The Weekender will hold its annual “Model of The Year Party” at
Market Street Square. The models will arrive at the club around 9 p.m., and
those attending can vote for their favorite beauty between 9 and 11:30 p.m.
   
Alternative favorites Tribes will also be on hand for a performance, and
the winner will be announced at midnight.
   
Should be fun.
   
KISS “Unplugged”
   
I have seen it.
   
MTV has given me a sneak peak of this Tuesday’s “KISS — Unplugged”
performance.
   
I don’t want to ruin it for you, but if you like “old” KISS, you’d better
not miss it. You’ve probably heard by now that something very special happened
at the taping.
   
It did.
   
Trust me, it’s incredible.
   
Showtime is Tuesday at 9 p.m on MTV.
   
New club in Kingston
   
Next Friday will be the grand opening of Amnesia, a new club located on
Market Street in Kingston.
   
We’ll give you all the details next Friday.
   
~