By Michael Pflughoeft, special to OnMilwaukee.com   Published May 22, 2012 at 8:13 AM

I'll be celebrating the Fourth of July here in Milwaukee along with a recent inductee into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame – America's favorite theatrical rocker, Alice Cooper – as he shares the Marcus Amphitheater stage with metal monsters Iron Maiden.

I've been a huge Alice Cooper fan since the day in 5th grade I wore an "Alice as Medusa" T-shirt to school that put the entire teaching staff into a tizzy (Hey, to my highly impressionable 11-year-old mind, any artist that can elicit that type of reaction just from a T-shirt was totally awesome.).

If you're an Alice fan and think you know Alice like I know Alice, you can celebrate your Coop knowledge by answering a few simple (well, not that simple) Alice Cooper questions and win a copy of "The Strange Case of Alice Cooper – Live 1979 – Madhouse Rock Tour" for your efforts.

Commercially unavailable (other than bootlegs of the original VHS release) for more than 30 years, "The Strange Case of Alice Cooper" was recorded live on April 9, 1979, in San Diego during a stop on the "Madhouse Rock" tour in support of Alice's classic "From The Inside" record.

"From The Inside" and the subsequent Madhouse Rock Tour were both inspired by Alice's alcoholism-induced stay in a New York sanitarium and the bizarre cast of characters he encountered there. (This was well before the existence of cushy rehab joints like The Betty Ford Clinic.)

Although he's remarkably thin and pale after drying out, the newly sober, focused, even more menacing Alice presents one his most engaging stage shows – featuring giant dancing bottles of alcohol, a 9-foot-tall Cyclops (from "Welcome to My Nightmare"), sadistic nurses and many more twisted antics. His band on this tour – the dual guitars of Steve Hunter and Davey Johnstone, Prakash John on bass, Whitey Glan on drums and Fred Mandel on keyboards – was tight and extremely talented.

I saw this show twice – in Milwaukee and in Madison – and if you've never seen it, it's definitely worth checking out. The DVD also features an audio commentary by Alice Cooper. Here's a link to "No More Mr. Nice Guy" from the DVD:

So here you go – see if you can answer the following Alice Cooper trivia questions. The first five people to answer all six correctly will win a copy of "The Strange Case of Alice Cooper."

Good luck and as always – "Remember the Coop."

  1. What two Arizona high schools did the members of the original Alice Cooper Group attend? (Hint: they're both named in the song "Alma Mater" on "School's Out.")
  2. Which famous lyricist co-wrote all of the songs on "From the Inside" with Alice?
  3. Where might you find Alice Cooper waxing poetic about our fair city of "mill-e-wah-que" – which is Algonquin for "the good land?"
  4. Which major motion picture currently in theaters features Alice Cooper?
  5. Alice's current bass player, Chuck Garric, has also played with another famous actor / singer. Name him.
  6. Each year Alice and his wife Sheryl host an amazing holiday charity concert in Phoenix. What's it called?