The highlight of the weekend, without a doubt, was having front row mezzanine seats and backstage passes to see Alice Cooper, who was kicking off his summer "No More Mr. Nice Guy" tour that Friday evening.
I'd entered a contest to be the guest of bass player Chuck Garric, and won tickets with a whimsical essay about how I was a terrible father for not having taken my son to see Alice Cooper in his formative years.
I saw Alice in concert way back in 1975, the famous "Welcome to my Nightmare" tour. I was determined to see him this summer, and Biloxi was perfect since it was halfway between my home in Houston and Ed's home in Tampa.
The weather refused to cooperate, though, and we almost didn't make it. We were both supposed to arrive around 4 pm for the 8 pm show...instead we arrived at 7:30 in Gulfport, about 15 minutes away from the casino.
We rented a car from Budget in world-record time, and showed a healthy disregard for Mississippi traffic speed laws as we hightailed it to the casino. We got to the "will call" line for our backstage badges and tickets with literally TWO minutes to spare!
The concert was excellent, it was a great show. I finally got to hear "Elected" live...and after the encores, Alice had the band do a metal version of Lady GaGa's "Born This Way".
Afterwards we were milling around the stage entrance when Chuck Garric walked back on stage (which had 2 dozen roadies tearing it down incredibly fast) and Chuck called me out by name. Ed and I got to go up on stage and Chuck was a gracious host. He answered a lot of questions, and even asked a few ("What did ya think of the GaGa number honestly?") He gave us bass picks and we took photos.
I'd forgotten how loud those shows can be, and we were sitting directly in front of the bass amplifier rig, so it took a while to recover my hearing!
