July 2023 – SickthingsUK

New US Dates

Alice Cooper Announced More US Dates

Alice Cooper has announced a new batch of US shows in October after the ‘Freaks on Parade’ including three ‘Halloween Hootenanny’ shows with Rob Zombie. Pre-sale tickets and VIP Packages on sale tomorrow with code ‘SICKTHINGS’. General on-sale Friday at 10a local time. The Dates are:

October 4th 2023 St Augustine Amphitheatre, St Augustine, FL
October 5th 2023 Wilson Center, Wilmington, NC
October 7th 2023 Aiken Theatre, Evansville, IN
October 8th 2023 Wesbanco Arena, Wheeling, WV
October 10th 2023 Hobart Arena, Troy, OH
October 11th 2023 Honeywell Center, Wabash, IN
October 13th 2023 The Cason Center for the Performing Arts, Paducah, KY
October 14th 2023 Simmons Bank Arena, North Little Rock, AR
October 15th 2023 Heymann Performing Arts Center, Lafayette, LA
October 17th 2023 Stride Bank Center, Enid, OK
October 19th 2023 Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts, Colorado Springs, CO
October 20th 2023 Rio Rancho Events Center, Rio Rancho, NM
October 21st 2023 AVA Amphitheatre, Tucson, AZ
October 23rd 2023 Vina Robles Amphitheatre, Paso Robles, CA
October 25th 2023 Yaamava’ Resort & Casino – Yaamava’ Theater, Highland, CA – with Rob Zombie
October 26th 2023 Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, Reno, NV – with Rob Zombie
October 28th 2023 Zappos/Bakkt Theater, Las Vegas, NV – with Rob Zombie

The second single for ‘Road’ has just dropped but is again geolocked, so you can`t hear it until midnight YOUR local time. It’s called ‘White Line Frankenstein’ and you’ll be able to see it here or below at midnight.

Not one to sit still Nita Strauss will be hitting the road opening for Mammoth WVH (featuring Wolfgang Van Halen) in November and December. Tickets are available from MammothWVH.com now.

Hollywood Vampires UK Tour Roundup

With the conclusion of the Hollywood Vampires UK dates we can do a quick round up of the press and happenings during the tour. Ronnie Wood and Imelda May joined the band in London for the Jeff Tribute and Train Kept a Rollin’, while Black Sabbath legend Tony Iommi appeared in Birmingham for a unique version of ‘Paranoid‘ with Alice singing it! Not something you see everyday. Jimmy Page was also at the London show (again) but sadly didn’t make it onstage (again!).

Unsurprisingly the tour generated a great deal of press. Also unsurprisingly most of it just revolved around Johnny Depp’s every move or satorial choice. As usual I will ignore all those and concentrate on worthwhile articles or reviews about the band and/or shows.

Firstly there was the surprise appearance of Alice on ‘Good Morning Britain’ on Monday. It was a short interview and there wasn’t really anything new said but nice to see him back on UK TV. You can see a version of it on YouTube., but sadly they have blurred out the images and footage (presumably for copyright reasons). If you’re in the UK the show is currently still available on ITVX. You want Monday 10th July show and Alice appears around 1 hour 56 minutes into the show.

There’s been various show reviews/photos, including Scarborough: Yahoo, Yorkshire Post, Northern Echo, Soundsphere Swansea: WalesOnline Planet Rock. Manchester: Daily Mail, RamZine, JustJared. London:, Far Out, The Telegraph (paywall), The Upcoming, Daily Express, TotalRock, Birmingham: BirminghamLive, BirminghamWorld and here, Express & Star, Metal Planet.

While in Manchester Alice was out and about shopping and was spotted buying a T-shirt for Johnny Depp. This, of course, also made the news.

The Arizona Republic has an interesting article about the early days of the band in Phoenix and their mentor Jack Curtis, who will be inducted into the ‘Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame’ on Sunday, with comments from Dennis Dunaway. They also have a new article on Michael Bruce’s induction into the AZ Hall of fame on the same day.

Nita Strauss made her solo show at the Whisky in LA special by geting engaged to long time boyfriend and band drummer Josh live on stage. Congrats both! Naturally it was caught on video which you can see here. There’s also new Nita Strauss interviews this week from Metal Global, and the Mistress Carrie Podcast.

If you remember back in April 2022 Solid Rock announced there would be Alice Cooper Arizona car license plates, and then it all went quiet. But now it appears they are finally available to order and it also appears anyone can order one! On top of that $17 from each sale goes to Solid Rock.

New Nita Strauss Album Released Today

New Nita Strauss Album ‘The Call Of The Void’ Released Today

The new Nita Strauss album ‘The Call of the Void’ is out today and there’s a new animated video for ‘Digital Bullets’ featuring Chris Motionless from Motionless in White who opened for Alice a few years ago. You can check out the video here or below. Nita will be live on ‘Rock Feed’ on Sunday at 9.30pm which you’ll find here.

The Northern Echo has a review of Wednesday’s Scarborough Hollywood Vampires show.

The ‘Talk Louder Podcast’ has a long interview with Neal Smith promoting his new ‘Killsmith Goes West’ album. Check it out here.

Lastly, just a note to say that I know the Twitter feed on the news page is currently broken. For some reason Twitter have disabled/broken their own embed code, so there isn’t much I can do. Hopefully they will fix it but with the mess Twitter is in at the moment who knows. If it isn’t fixed after a while I’ll search for some alternative.

New Interviews

Michael Allen, author of the excellent ‘Living And Touring with Alice Cooper & Other Stories’, will be appearing on 959 The Rat’s ‘Electric Ballroom’ tomorrow at 8pm ET to chat about the book and his experiences in the earliest days of Alice Cooper. You can listen live here.
Mike will also be appearing at the Peregrine Book Company in Prescott, AZ on July 8th at 2pm to chat about the book and sign copies.

Michael Bruce is to be inducted into the Arizona Music & Entertainment Hall Of Fame on July 16th at 4pm. The event takes place at the Madison Center for the Arts in Phoenix, AZ.

Rock and Roll Globe have an interview about the recent deluxe reissues with liner notes co-author and former Creem editor Bill Holdship.

Goldmine has Ryan Roxie listing the ’10 albums that changed my life’

Nita Strauss is still doing the promotional rounds for ‘The Call to The Void’ which is released next week. She’s been chatting to the ‘Talk This Way Podcast‘ and ‘Radioactive with Mike Z‘ which includes some chat about the new Alice Cooper album.