POPS GO THE HOLIDAYS: Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops are gearing up for their annual holiday series, a 33-show sprint of matinee and evening performances at Symphony Hall, 301 Mass Ave in Boston, beginning December 12 and running almost daily through New Year’s Eve. Tickets to the shows, which range from $20 to $95, go on sale this Monday at 8 a.m.; call (617) 266-1200, or visit www.bso.org for more info.

HIP REPLACEMENT: Hip surgery may not seem like a cool excuse for missing a show, but that’s why Paul Stanley wasn’t able to make the big "United We Stand"benefit last week. So fans of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott needn’t add embarrassment to their disappointment in learning that Elliott won’t be able to make World Music’s "Glory Bound"concert on November 4, a folk tribute package for which he was to have saluted the music of Woody Guthrie. The other two performers are still on: folk icon Odetta performing the music of Leadbelly, and Josh White Jr. performing the music of his father, Josh White Sr. And in place of Elliott, World Music is bringing in Oscar Brand, a contemporary of Guthrie’s who got his start in the 1930s opening for — yup — Leadbelly and Josh White. The concert’s at 7 p.m. at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street in Harvard Square. Tickets are $22 and $28. Call (617) 496-2222.

NEXT WEEKEND:

Alice Cooper

It’s a 75-degree afternoon in Memphis, and Alice Cooper has just gone one-under for the day. When he’s on tour — as he is now, supporting his new Dragonworld (Spitfire Records) with a jaunt that brings him to the Orpheum Theatre the day after Halloween — Cooper, a four handicap, plays golf three or four times a week. "Touring is one of the reasons I started playing golf,"he says over the phone just before soundcheck. "When I was an alcoholic, I sat in my room, watched cartoons, and drank. Now, I don’t go to AA meetings; I go play golf. You’d be surprised who you see out there too: Iggy [Pop], Lou Reed. It’s so funny, you think of Lou Reed as the most underground character on the planet, and last time I saw him it was, ‘Alice, if I’m hitting ball to the right, what am I doing wrong?’ I tell him, ‘Well, you’re probably just pushing the hands forward,’ and I’m thinking, would we be having this discussion in 1971? I don’t think so."

Teenage angst has paid off well for Cooper, the most theatrical and sanguine of rock’s shock troops back in the ’70s. But bored and old? Well, not quite. "I could write teen-angst anthems all day long; if Weezer came up to me and asked for a song, I could give them one in 10 seconds. But not for me: I don’t have angst. Angst for me is not being able to get my Porsche top up. I’m past that, and so guys my age, the Ozzys and Aerosmiths and AC/DCs — we’re the elder statesmen, we get to be cynical and crusty."

Lately, he’s been asking his audience to examine the Alice Cooper version of a philosophical question. His two most recent albums have taken place in a dark, unrelenting purgatory called Brutal Planet (also the title of his 2000 album) that represents the world’s comeuppance. "People expect me to scare the audience or shock them. The way I approached it was, instead of ‘What’s under your bed or in your closet?,’ it was, ‘What’s waiting for you at the end of your life?’ Maybe it’s nothing: you rot away in a hole in the earth. But what if you’ve got to pay the price? What if there’s consequences for your whole life, and you suddenly have to pay for your moral choices? I think that’s scarier. I’m not trying to sell that point of view, but personally I think we do have that enigma waiting for us at the end of our life."

Cooper even finds parallels between his imaginary science-fiction hell and the surreal disaster of current events. "The very strange thing was that Brutal Planet looked like Ground Zero. I wrote it two years ago, and it was about something similar, this city that’s been destroyed — I didn’t say what city, it could have been anywhere — and here’s what’s living there 10 years later: the scum, the survivors, the equivalent of cockroaches, and they’re all pretty brutal characters. The whole album was about the way the world is getting more consequence-oriented, and my question was, ‘Are you ready for this physically, mentally, and spiritually, because this is what happens when all systems fail — schools, government, religion, family.’ I was painting a picture, but I didn’t expect it to happen."

The world has gotten scarier, and heavy metal has moved on to louder, angrier, and younger audiences. But Cooper still knows which buttons to press to get the hard-rock faithful fired up: his latest stage show culminates in a beheading-in-effigy of Britney Spears. "She shows up for no reason at all, it’s completely gratuitous. But the audience seems to love it."

Alice Cooper plays the Orpheum Theatre, One Hamilton Place in Boston, next Thursday, November 1. Call (617) 931-2000.

Issue Date: October 25 - November 1, 2001