This season: Black and studs are in. School’s out. (Photos by Erik Kabik | Retna. Additional photo by George Lyons.)

We suppose once you play opposite a bunch of Muppets, rocking a designer boutique isn’t too weird. Alice Cooper hit the stage at John Varvatos inside the Hard Rock Hotel, the Joint-adjacent clothing shop, to do a few songs for a select audience. Rock photographer Robert Knight was there for Cooper to do “School’s Out” with Varvatos to close the show, while former Aerosmith guitarist in the Joe Perry-less years, Jimmy Crespo, joined Cooper.

But really, once you’ve almost talked Kermit into a deal with the Devil, it’s all downhill, really.

By Jason Scavone

Hello, fashion world. (Via myspace.com/officialalicecooper)

The hell with it. Once you’ve hit the point where you’re known just as much for the celebrity golf circuit as you are for ’70s shock rock staples, you might as well play a boutique clothing shop. Following on the heels of Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper is playing John Varvatos at the Hard Rock Hotel tonight in a private show.

He’s timing things a little closer to Halloween with his Orleans show, though, which runs Friday through Sunday. Last year, he was there during September, which had people less in the mood for Halloween and more in the mood for cider donuts. Mmm. Alice Cooper beheading warm cider donuts in his stage guillotine. It just sounds so homey, doesn’t it?

By Jason Scavone

Robin Zander looks like he’s deeply suspicious of Rick Nielsen here. (Photo by Scott Harrison | Retna)

We’re starting to wonder about Cheap Trick. Sgt. Pepper Live wrapped at the Hilton a couple days ago, but they hung around town to open the John Varvatos Bowery NYC at the Hard Rock Hotel. And this is after they already got here early to do that show with Def Leppard and Poison. Something doesn’t add up …

Wait! We’ve got it. Cheap Trick is going to buy Fontainebleau. Oh my GOD, you so heard it here first. It makes sense. See, Cheap Trick’s biggest album is Live at Budokan, which is an album that refers to a thing in a place (Tokyo.) Fontainebleau is a hotel named for a hotel (Fontainebleau Miami) which refers to a thing in a place (Fontainebleau commune in Paris.) Plus, if you rearrange the letters in Live at Budokan you get “Koan ad but vile” which we can take to mean the band decries the commercial corruption of a spiritual Zen tool. And if you rearrange the letters in “Fontainebleau Las Vegas” you get “Ennui a saleable vast fog” which we can take to mean the band decries the commercial corruption of a personal existential crisis.

The pieces all add up.

Or, you know, they were there to rock out for the opening of the boutique across from Rare 120. But we like our way better.

By Jason Scavone