Three new shows in France have been announced. They are:
September 3rd - Marseille, Le Dome
September 5th - Bordeaux, Arkea Arena
September 20th - Paris, La Seine Musicale
Tickets appear to go on sale on December 18th.

Ryan Roxie has a new digital single out today. It's 'Big Rock Show', the short opening track from his 'Imagine Your Reality' album which features Glen Sobel and Tommy Henriksen. There's a unusual lyric video to promote the song shot entirely on an iPhone Xr, and made especially for viewing in 'Portrait Mode'! To mark the launch Roxie will be streaming a 'LIVE Guitar Lesson' to teach people how to play the song. This will take place tonight at approx. 6:30 pm (Swedish Time) and you can tune in via Roxie's facebook page or Instagram Live (@ryanroxie).
You can hear the track via Spotify or Apple Music.

Blue Coupe play in Ashbury Park, NJ at a 20th anniversary celebration for the WRAT-FM (95.9 The Rat) show “Electric Ballroom” at House of Independents on December 30th and NJArts have an article about the show.

There's new interviews with Nita over at Guitar World, and "In The Vault With Shanda Golden" via Blabbermouth.

AltaOnline has an interesting article about the legendary Miss Christine of the GTO's, with input from Alice and Shep.

ASX have photos and a review from the xmas pudding show.

Alice Cooper's Solid Rock now have the AZ lottery ticket posters available to order. There are only 500 copies, and all are signed by Alice. Each one costs $100 as a donation to Solid Rock (plus shipping and handling) and you can order now.

Dates are starting to show up for the "Ol‘ Black Eyes is Back" 2019 tour. The latest is a batch of shows booked for Germany in September. Going by the gaps between these shows it seems certain there will be more shows added between them.

11th September - Mannheim - Sap Arena
13th September - Berlin - Max-Schmeling-Halle Berlin
18th September - Stuttgart - Porsche-Arena
23rd September - Hamburg - Barclaycard Arena Hamburg
30th September - Leipzig - Leipzig Arena
1st October - Munich - Olympiahalle München
Tickets for these go on sale December 12th.

AXS are also listing a show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on August 1st with Peter Frampton.

UPDATE: Two Spanish Shows have turned up. They are:
7th Sept - Madrid, ES - Palacio Vistalegre
8th Sept - Barcelona, ES - Sant Jordi Club
Tickets for these two seem to go on sale this Friday, December 14th.

Saturday's Christmas Pudding show seems to have been a success. As expected Joe Perry didn't make it, due to ongoing health concerns, but The Hollywood Vampires still closed the show in style playing a short set that consisted of I Want My Now / Raise The Dead / As Bad As I Am / Boogieman Surprise / My Dear Drunk Friends / Bushwackers / Baba O'Riley / Heroes / The Jack / Ace Of Spades and School's Out before being joined by the rest of the show's guests for the traditional closing 'Run Rundolph Run'. Earlier in the night Beasto Blanco also performed, and there were surprise appearances from Nita Strauss and Orianthi.
AZCentral has a full review with photos, and YouTube has some video from the show.

The soundtrack to this years TV production of 'Jesus Christ Superstar', featuring Alice as King Herod, has been nominated for a Grammy for 'Best Musical Theater Album'. The awards ceremony will be on February 10th.

Ultimate Guitar has compiles a list of 10 classic Cooper quotes which you can see here.

It's been a pretty quiet couple of weeks, and I've been holding out for some bigger news to include the smaller things but there really hasn't been much, so here's a quick catch up before reports start coming in about tomorrows Christmas Pudding show.

Ace Frehley has been chatting about his touring plans next year and has suggested he will be playing shows with Alice Cooper around July/August next year. We only have two confirmed 2019 dates so far, and they are festivals, but there's no reason to think it isn't true and I still expect 2019 tour dates soon.

Guitar World has a new interview with Alice talking about some of the guitarists he's worked with over the years.

'Do You Know Jack' has a new interview with Neal Smith promoting his 'Halloween' KillSmith compilation album which you can listen to via YouTube.

New Jersey Arts has a report from the November 30th 'Wham Bam Thank You Glam!' show at the City Winery, NYC which featured Dennis Dunaway among others. They also have video of Dennis performing 'Under My Wheels' and a few words with Cindy Smith Dunaway.

AZCentral has a great interview with Calico Cooper talking about Beasto Blanco and her career to date.

The full version of Alice's appearance with Udo Lindenberg, performing 'No More M Nice Guy' a few months back, is now available to watch on YouTube.

Nita Strauss, who's still out on tour promoting her new solo album, is still getting a fair amount of press coverage. She's interviewed on 'Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia' which you can find on Soundcloud. 

Some years back you may remember that guitar playing computer games were all the rage, and some had various Alice Cooper songs available. Well 'Rocksmith' is one such game that is still releasing content and they have a new pack of three AC songs available - 'School's Out', 'Poison', and 'Billion Dollar Babies'. They are available in the X-Box and Playstation stores.

It appears Rhino Records will be reissuing the original 'Greatest Hits' on vinyl early next year. No more details as yet.

According to the official event site Alice Cooper will be performing at the Roxodus Music Festival in Edenvale, Ontario sometime between July 11th and 13th next year. Other acts booked to play include Cheap Trick, Kid Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nickelback, Peter Frampton and Lita Ford amongst others. Tickets go on sale November 30th.

So today's the day the full Good Records performance by the original Alice Cooper band is finally released to mark 'Record Store Day 2018'. The limited edition vinyl comes in a fancy gatefold sleeve and is supposedly only available from independent record stores, although some copies are already showing up on Ebay etc, which kinda defeats the object of Record Store day which is to get people into real shops. There's a cool little video of Alice himself opening up a copy of the album up on YouTube.
Congrats to Chris Penn and his team for getting this thing finally released, and good luck to everyone in getting your copy. It's sure to be instantly collectable (and expensive)!

Other then the Astrotuff release it's been relatively quiet news-wise this week but there are a few things to pass on.

Hollywood Vampire Joe Perry is out of hospital and resting at home. He's canceled all dates on his solo tour in December, and a statement says he will be resting up for the rest of the year but would be back in action next year.

Dennis Dunaway is interviewed Fidelity High about Van Morrisons 'Astral Weeks' album. Dennis daughter Chelsea is selling prints of her 2017 Chiller Theater poster of the original Alice Cooper band. They are 17x11 and you can see the design and buy a copy here.

Alice, Sheryl and Calico were all on Fox 10 TV last week promoting the Christmas Puddng show and you should be able to see the clip on facebook. The Hollywood Vampires are set to play the show this year, although after Joe Perry's announcement it's possible he will have to skip it. Time will tell. The Pudding show is on December 8th on Phoenix and AZ Big Media also have a short interview with Alice about the show.

As usual Nita Strauss has been busy promoting her new solo album and tour. She appears on the Metal Sucks podcast, and is interviewed by LA Weekly, and chats with wrestler Becky Lynch in a new video posted by her record company on YouTube.

Lastly something that isn't news, but more of a personal plee to some of the various musician I cover here. Please, please try and find ways to making your product pre-sales and merchandise ship from both the US AND somewhere in Europe. Many fans in Europe want to support your projects and order things, but in many cases recently the cost of postage and then probable custom charges when the package arrives here are just making it too expensive.
For example I ordered Nita's album on vinyl and CD via the bundle on NitaStrauss.com. The cost of the bundle was perfectly fair and I was happy to support her in her project, but the postage and customs charges added another $36 on the $60 order! If I had ordered the same things via the KIckstarter campaign the postage would have been even more!
I understand such additional costs are out of your hands directly, however some of your bandmates have had no problems arranging shipping from Europe and thus avoiding such extra costs, which lets face it is just money down the drain. After all we could just not pre-order at all, and simply buy it from Amazon later on. But we WANT to support you and be part of the project but it's becoming increasingly expensive to do so due to these other fees and charges. It was the same situation with Dennis' 'Cold Cold Coffin' campaign, and Damon Johnson's recent releases. The postage charges in some cases were more then the cost of the item, and likely we would be hit by customs on top of that as well. I await with dread the postage and custom changes on my Astroturf album package!!!
This isn't a complaint aimed at you guys, and I'm only using Nita's campaign as an example. It's simple a request that you consider this when arranging your pre-sales and deals, to see if there is any way to avoid these hefty charges, which don't benefit either yourself or your fans, many of whom have limited disposable income. Thank you for listening.