Alice Cooper's Christmas Pudding came back as a wild ride full of unexpected highlights

A week before Christmas Pudding returned to the rotating stage of the historic Celebrity Theatre, Alice Cooper told The Republic, "I love the idea of a show where you don't have any idea what's gonna happen next."

He was referring, of course, to the often surreal combination — or pudding — of musical guests that, as he said, can lead to "Rob Zombie and Pat Boone together."

This year's Pudding was as mixed a bag as ever, from the wonderment of Felix Cavaliere soulfully groovin' his way through the Rascals' greatest hits to the post-grunge singalongs and glammed-out showmanship of Collective Soul's Ed Roland.

Ace Frehley commanded the stage with his Space Ace persona while proving that Kiss didn't really need makeup with rockers as timeless as "Cold Gin" and "Shock Me" at their disposal.

Orianthi shredded her way through a headbanging set of heroic guitar leads, including one smoldering blues, while giving Roland a run for the money on the fashion-forward front.

The night ended, as always, with everyone crowding the stage after "School's Out" to join in a sloppy but spirited cover of "Run Rudolph Run," a seasonal favorite most often associated with Chuck Berry's classic recording.

Mark McGrath dialed it up to 11

But the man whose presence guaranteed that this would be a show "where you don't have any idea what's gonna happen next" was Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, whose eagerness to please and unbridled enthusiasm both clearly go to 11.

And it went beyond his own performance, wildly entertaining though it was.

As the first of the headlining acts to perform, McGrath hit the stage like a weather event, repeatedly calling the audience "brothers and sisters" and instructing them with "If you love Alice Cooper, let me hear you sing" as he opened his set of breezy, island-flavored pop with "Every Morning."

"You remember the '90s," he said at the song's conclusion, following through with a self-effacing, "Remember when people used to highlight their hair?"

And if you weren't on board with McGrath's whole dynamic at that point?

He'd already left the station, slipping a bit of the Rascals song "Groovin'" — which, in this case, was "with all my homies in Arizona" — into a set that ended as you knew it would, with an over-the-top performance of Sugar Ray's "Fly."

Then, he signed off with "I'm gonna go cry backstage 'cause I love you so much."

As Cooper would later remark during his own performance, "First of all, I want to say Mark McGrath raised the bar and everybody else had to move up to that bar."

The thing about McGrath, though, is he never really went away. He was hyping the crowd for Cavaliere, singing along to Roland's set from the foot of the stage and having what appeared to be a religious epiphany during Frehley's set.

His front-row shenanigans peaked during Cooper's performance, by which point you knew it was only a matter of time before he found himself on stage, which is exactly what happened when Cooper guitarist Ryan Roxie invited him on stage to smack a tambourine around on "School's Out."

I won't call it "playing tambourine."

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McGrath was like a wedding guest who interrupts the best man's speech to talk about the bride in ways that are both wildly inappropriate and oddly charming, interrupting Cooper more than once to share his heartfelt admiration for a man he called "one of the most beautiful human beings I've ever met."

It was only a matter of time before he'd dropped to his knees to recreate the classic "We're not worthy" scene from "Wayne's World."

Cooper was clearly amused, extending his hand for McGrath to kiss.

"Someday," Cooper quipped, "Mark's gonna come out of his shell."

Kids from Cooper's Solid Rock Teen Centers took center stage

The festivities started some five hours earlier with the Bucket Brigade, a percussion group of kids from Alice Cooper's Solid Rock Teen Centers.

Christmas Pudding is a benefit to underwrite the music, art and dance programs those centers offer kids from 12 to 20 at no charge.

In addition to raising money, in part through a series of auctions interspersed throughout the evening, Pudding trains a spotlight on the work those centers do.

The Solid Rock Dancers earned a spontaneous standing ovation for a performance that took the audience on an entertaining whirlwind tour of music history from big-band jazz to "Gangnam Style" and "Uptown Funk."

Highlights ranged from Sheryl Cooper making her breathtaking Pudding debut as a performer, swing-dancing with Hodgie Jo, the teen centers' director of dance, to former Proof is in the Pudding winner Japhar Pullen channeling his inner Michael Jackson.

That kid is a star in the making.

This year, for the first time ever, Cooper's Proof is in the Pudding talent contest had a tie for first place in the band category, so both bands got a chance to play.

The Sintrics and KOZA are both on the heavier side of the musical spectrum and blessed with powerful lead vocalists who bring a lot of presence to the stage.

The solo winner, Isaiah Tilson, is more a pop guy, singing along to prerecorded tracks on a cover of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and a heartfelt original, "Love Through the Ages."

The headliners lived up to that billing

Most of the headlining singers at Pudding were backed by Nashville's Sixwire, who earned a standing ovation for a medley of 20-some classic guitar riffs, from "Smoke on the Water" and "Freebird" to "Oh, Pretty Woman," "Day Tripper" and "School's Out."

It took a while to sort out Cavaliere's keyboards issues, which led to an opening song, "It's a Beautiful Morning," that clearly didn't have the impact it deserved, despite a really nice lead vocal.

But the sound got dialed in as the set moved on through a soulful rendition of "Groovin'" that worked in bits of "My Girl" and "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)," "People Got to Be Free" (which included a snippet of "Nowhere to Run") and "Good Lovin'."

Cavaliere was in great voice and good spirits, radiating the charisma of a natural entertainer.

Speaking of charisma, Roland brought amazing stage moves and a killer suit to the proceedings, dusting off the post-grunge smashes "Heavy," "December" and "Shine," which inspired a massive singalong and earned a huge response.

Frehley took the stage in a shirt that tried its damnedest to be louder than his Les Paul guitar, setting the tone for his performance with, "I'm gonna start with a song that's close to my heart because I got electrocuted back in the '70s. It's called 'Shock Me.'"

Does he give some variation on that introduction every time he plays?

I'd like to think so. It was perfect.

Frehley kept the focus squarely on his Kiss years, following "Shock Me" with a headbanging "Parasite" and a version of "Cold Gin" that made a solid case for the Space Ace as a criminally underrated lead guitarist.

And he did it all while exuding the casual Spicoli-esque charm that used to drive Gene Simmons crazy.

Orianthi followed Frehley, backed by Cooper's touring band, of which she was an awe-inspiring member for two world tours in the early 2010s.

They played with the natural chemistry of former bandmates, locking into the swaggering groove of "Contagious" and the anthemic chorus hook of "Sinners Hymn" with real conviction.

After changing it up with the slow-burning "How Do You Sleep?," which featured Orianthi's most impassioned lead guitar work of the night, they signed off with a Jimi Hendrix cover, "Purple Haze," which featured Orianthi going to town on the wah-wah pedal.

Alice Cooper's band also shined

Cooper's band took a turn in the spotlight for a muscular cover of T. Rex's "20th Century Boy" with Roxie on lead vocals before the man of the hour emerged to kick off his set with two '70s classics, "Under My Wheels" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy."

After tipping a hat to his glam-metal days with the comeback hit "Poison," he turned his attention to more recent fare — his cover of the Velvet Underground's "Rock & Roll" that kicks off this year's "Detroit Stories" and "Fallen in Love" from 2017's "Paranormal."

They set the tone for the blues-rocking swagger of "Fallen in Love" with a call-and-response between guitarist Tommy Henriksen and Cooper himself on the blues harp, which he really ought to play more often.

"You didn't know I was a blues guy, did ya?" Cooper asked when the song was over.

Then, he called Orianthi and keyboard player Teddy 'Zig Zag' Andreadis up to join him on the song that gave the Alice Cooper group their mainstream breakthrough 50 years ago this year, "I'm Eighteen."

Before he sang it, though, he told the crowd, "Now, when I'm singing this, the word is 18, not 80, all right?"

They closed the show with a rockin' Christmas classic

In keeping with tradition, "School's Out" brought the set to a crowd-pleasing climax, giving way to the reckless abandon of "Run Rudolph Run."

That song is always a freewheeling highlight, giving each guitarist a chance to show off all their best Chuck Berry licks in the time it takes to figure out which amp the sound technician would've turned up if the order of the solos wasn't so completely random.

But they introduced an extra element of smile-inducing chaos this year — McGrath gamely shouting along with real gusto despite not necessarily doing anything to make you think he'd ever heard the song before.

It also raised a ton of money for a great cause, due in part to auctioneer Adam Christing employing hilarity to inspire a bidding war on an Alice Cooper mosaic made from 5,000 guitar picks.

It sold for $120,000.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Alice Cooper's Christmas Pudding 2021 had plenty of unexpected treats