Still hard to believe the (mostly) original Alice Cooper played Good Records last week; still hard to believe that set list too, performed in front of a crowd of 200, give or take. Moments that magical don't stumble along very often. And we've one man to thank for it: Good Records' Chris Penn, seen off to the side of the stage shedding tears of joy while the rest of the crowd sang along with "I'm Eighteen" and "School's Out" and other timeless anthems ("Elected" especially).
Maybe you've seen the Periscope of the show; maybe, a few of the YouTube clips. This morning, there's something even better: Steve Gaddis' pro-shot version of "No More Mr. Nice Guy," an excerpt from the film Penn's making about the event. He says this morning he's not sure how it will be released or when. But Penn had a crew shoot the entire affair, from the Q&A with the original band (bassist Dennis Dunaway, guitarist Michael Bruce and drummer Neal Smith) to the post-chat signing to the entirety of the show.
Rolling Stone debuted the clip this morning, along with some words from Alice himself about how the show came together.
Says the former Vincent Furnier, "We were playing a show in Dallas and had a night off the same night Dennis, Neal and Mike were doing a signing down the street. The guys were doing a small show to promote Dennis' new book. Of course, I was going to be there! We are all still close, and I want to play with the original guys any chance I get!"
(What you didn't know: Cooper and current guitarist Ryan Roxie were picked up by and delivered to Good Records by the man who owns it, Polyphonic Spree frontman Tim DeLaughter, who spent the entire night roadie-ing for the Cooper band. Cooper got to the venue at 9:45 with his wife of almost 40 years, Sheryl Goddard; hung out in a back room for about 30 minutes; then stuck around in the backfor about 20 minutes to visit with his old bandmates and sign a few autographs. When someone told him how great he is, Furnier deflected the compliment and pointed to Dunaway and Bruce and Smith. "Those guys," he said, "wrote the songs.")
I asked Penn this morning if the movie has a title. He said, yeah, it'll be called Thank God For Chris Penn. It had better be.
