Sat. Oct. 25

 Halloween approaches and so does Alice Cooper. Like death and taxes, my friend. I once asked Alice - this was some time in the '80s - about the character he created. He maintained, adamantly, for the nth time, no doubt, that it was just a character. Which was not him. It was once maybe close to him, but that was in his beer-swilling days of the late-'60s/early-'70s and the Alice we have known for years has been a wise guy who's a great entertainer with a superb sense of his back catalog - which is to say he knows it's his best stuff and he flaunts it in concert. He's also a scratch golfer, a funny guy and someone who took good-humored umbrage at Marilyn Manson's name choice and obvious ode d'Alice. He and his band are at the Orpheum Saturday Oct. 25, playing a two-hour show - a stop on the "This Won't Hurt ... Much" tour - that will include a boa constrictor, a straightjacket ("The Ballad of Dwight Frye"), bloody little baby dolls ("Dead Babies") and a hanging (his, during "Killer"). Alice has executed himself in a number of modes over the years. Hanging is the classic case, which I first saw on his "Killer" tour of, um, 1974. I've also seen him beheaded, which is another kind of fun, with one of the guys holding up a torn Alice prop head and the stage trickery convincing us that this time Alice has really bought the farm. Of course, he always comes back - used to come back triumphantly singing "Elected," which would be very appropriate on this tour. He does play it, along wth "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "I’m 18," "Be My Lover," "Halo of Flies," "Desperado," "Muscle of Love," "Lost in America," "Welcome to My Nightmare," "I Love the Dead," "Only Women Bleed," "Under My Wheels," "School’s Out," "Dirty Diamonds" (the token new one) and "Billion Dollar Babies." It's a rock show, a hard-rock show. And, Cooper, at 60, has kept himself in fighting trim shape. (No beer for three decades helps that cause.) It's amusing sometimes to think how Cooper and his music changed rock way back when - radical, violent, stagey - and how much of a choreographed show it seems now. That's not a knock. Theatricality is not necessarily a bad thing. Most things that go on on any stage are planned. Rock bands try and nurture the "illusion" of spontanaeity. The radical end of rock - the sex, the horror - has been pushed further than Alice had it by Manson, by the Genitorturers and, probably by dozens of death metal bands flying below my radar. Controversy City is not where Alice Cooper lives. He lives in the land of Classic Rock. Oh, it's sorta twisted in subject manner, like the "Halloween" movies or "Friday the 13th" movies. But it's an established slice (and dice!) of the mainstream. Has been for a long time. Accept that. Accept the fact that we've all aged and Alice better than most of us. He keeps his pretend edge on stage and has a merry olde time on the links off stage. Opening at 7:30 is Wednesday 13. Tickets: $39.50 - $29.50.

One Hamilton Place, 617-931-2000 www.ticketmaster.com