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Post by Kapitan on Nov 10, 2019 15:18:54 GMT
Poison, Open Up and Say … Ah! (1988)The arena-and-radio-ready riff of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” hit the airwaves (and MTV) in early April 1988, barely over half a year since the previous album’s final hit, “I Won’t Forget You,” and really only a year since Look What the Cat Dragged In took off. Of course, Poison’s debut took six or nine months to catch fire: the band was recording the follow-up even as those last singles were still on the charts. KISS singer and rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley was originally slated to produce the album, but scheduling challenges took him off the project. The band turned to the wildly successful producer Tom Werman instead. Werman had a history of delivering chart success to hard rock and heavy metal bands … only to see those bands complain about his commercial-sounding results. (Cheap Trick, Motley Crue, and Twisted Sister all have complained about Werman having “ruined” their albums. No royalties have been returned as of this writing.) Poison was never one to complain about commercially viable hard rock music: it was their very essence. And so “Nothin’ But a Good Time,” one of their many vapid, deliriously substance-free singalongs, was a good bet to be a hit. An MTV hit, the video continued the tradition of a brief narrative (the working man doing dishes in a restaurant with the boss on his case) that includes the band's previous single, in this case their Less Than Zero soundtrack cover of KISS's "Rock and Roll All Nite" on the radio. And between C.C. DeVille’s KISS-like riff and Bret Michaels’ anthemic refrain, it was: #6 in the USA, a strong result to maintain and even build on their momentum from 1987. The second single—and with Poison it was all about the singles—was “Fallen Angel,” a surprisingly solid power pop song initially brought to the group by DeVille. If Poison had any substance beyond trying to get laid, getting laid, and having gotten laid, it was the sort of rags-to-riches, you-can-do-it-if-you-try theme found here. But literature it ain’t. Instead it’s a big, memorable refrain and hooky guitar lines. It got heavy MTV airplay for the video featuring Michaels’ then-girlfriend Susie Hatton and reached #12 on the Billboard charts. After a pair of summer singles, it was the October 1988 release that catapulted Poison even higher into the popular culture, a country-tinged power ballad called “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” Indeed, Open Up… had several hints of Michaels’s twangier side—an Aerosmith inheritance?—including “Bad to Be Good” and “Good Love,” a southern boogie featuring some surprisingly competent harmonica by Michaels. But it was “Every Rose” that, for all its clumsy lyrical sincerity and period-piece cliches, ensured Michaels’s place alongside Jon Bon Jovi as the prototypical glam heartthrob of the day. It was their first and only #1. February 1989 saw the release of yet another Top Ten-single, a cover of Loggins & Messina’s “Your Mama Don’t Dance.” Another dose of the southern-lite rock and roll, the song fits perfectly into Poison’s repertoire of melodic, hooky hits. It also gave DeVille ample opportunity to insert his Ace Frehley, Brian May, Jimmy Page inspired playing. It’s blues based, but not bluesy, always well structured and tuneful if pushing the edges of good taste. (Good taste being low on the list of Poison’s priorities, to be sure.) The non-singles are generally forgettable. The best of that bunch is “Back to the Rocking Horse,” a straight ahead rocker that approaches power pop with the big vocals of the refrain. But when 40 percent of the album comprises singles, it’s barely noticeable that the rest is filler. Because there just isn’t much “the rest” there. The album was even more successful than their debut, peaking at #2 and going quintuple platinum in the US.
Rolling Stone gave it one star.
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bellbottoms
Pacific Coast Highway
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Post by bellbottoms on Nov 11, 2019 13:55:10 GMT
A funny thing happened while I was listening to Open Up and Say Ahhh!.
I was on the train and had about an hour of travel ahead of me, so it was a good time to give it a listen. I found it on spotify, and immediately recognized the album cover. Checked out the track listing and identified a few right away that I definitely know - Nothin’ But a Good Time, Every Rose has its Thorn, and Your Mama Don’t Dance. Pretty much all in line with what I expected.
I hit play on Love on the Rocks and immediately thought whoa, this is familiar, somehow I know this one. Good song.
Nothin’ But a Good Time then took me back on a “signing into a hairbrush in my room” nostalgia trip, as expected.
Then Back to the Rocking Horse came on and I went, “wait… I know this one too. Someone I know must have had this…”
As Good Love began, the realization set in: I FRIGGIN’ HAD THIS TAPE! How could I have forgotten that? Good Love was one of my favourite songs on this album back in the day, especially the way Bret pronounces it… “good lohve”. I always got a kick out of that.
Tearin’ Down the Walls and Look But You Can’t Touch, more fantastic songs that I had completely forgotten about. How could this have happened…
And then. Fallen Angel. Cue 13 year old me standing on my bed with that hairbrush up to my face, singing this as loud as I possibly could. Turns out I still love love love this song. If I had been at home while I was listening to this album, I would have been standing on some piece of furniture with some other makeshift microphone. But I was on a train, so that couldn’t happen. But so many feelings. It's now stuck in my head, and it can stay there for a while, I'm totally fine with that.
Every Rose has its Thorn, of course, was a massive song in heavy, heavy rotation on my favourite radio station. It stayed in rotation for a few years, at least. Remember when songs didn’t just drop off the face of the earth after a few months? Anyway, a few years later this song would get a devastated 16 year old me through my first break-up. This song will never not take me back there. But not in a sad way. More in an “if I could write myself a letter from the future” kind of way, to tell teen me it was all going to be fine.
Do you know how hard it was to hear Your Mama Don’t Dance whilst seated on a quiet train and not cause a scene? I had to listen to it quietly, all my myself. Such a drag.
So yeah. When this thread started, I thought, I know and enjoy some of these songs, and this should be fun. I am in disbelief that somehow I wrote this album out of my memory. I have no idea what happened to that tape. But it was absolutely a big part of my tween and teen years. Did I just… grow up? Ugh, gross. Really makes me wonder what else I’ve written out…
As for how many stars it deserves... maybe I was a fan of this album before I had "taste". But I'd like to think I've developed at least some level of good taste by now, and I still really, really liked it. As in, will be listening to it again later. As in... I will probably be buying a new physical copy because it's a part of me that I want back.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 11, 2019 14:09:04 GMT
As for how many stars it deserves... maybe I was a fan of this album before I had "taste". But I'd like to think I've developed at least some level of good taste by now, and I still really, really liked it. I know exactly what you mean here. I tend not to be especially nostalgic, but I’ve found that the “taste” thing has opened and reopened over time. What I’d discarded partly to stay in the good graces of pop culture as opposed to my actual enjoyment, or avoided for the same reasons, sometime in my mid-30s I began to discover or rediscover. Now I just acknowledge different kinds of good. There’s technical brilliance, innovation, popular appeal, sex appeal, intellectual stimulation, literary value...endless combinations of traits in music that can lead to almost polar opposites both being good. Poison somehow is both pretty bad and really good.
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Post by kds on Nov 11, 2019 14:18:06 GMT
In my opinion, no other song perfectly sums up the 80s hard song scene better than Nothin' But a Good Time, both musically and lyrically.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 11, 2019 14:29:07 GMT
In my opinion, no other song perfectly sums up the 80s hard song scene better than Nothin' But a Good Time, both musically and lyrically. I’d definitely put it up there, right in the middle of the heavier “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister and the maybe poppier and even more appealing to women “Livin On aPrayer” by Bon Jovi. For non-power ballad hard rock (but not really metal), those are almost the holy trinity.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 17, 2019 1:12:11 GMT
Poison, Flesh & Blood (1991)
Well, that didn’t take long. Poison managed to succumb to the typical downfalls of rock bands after only two albums. Their third, the 1991 hit Flesh & Blood, certainly wasn’t a commercial flop, but its bid for artistic respectability just as some members—notably guitarist C.C. Deville—were struggling with drug problems torpedoed the group.
They didn’t disappear afterward, but they just as well might’ve.
Fewer and further between are the silly party songs, replaced by frontman Bret Michaels’s swampy southern rawk, often addressing more serious topics. Everything is bigger, too, with more (14!) and longer (12 longer than three and a half minutes) songs. There’s a tedious intro, “Strange Days of Uncle Jack,” and a Page-esque acoustic guitar solo, “Swampjuice (Soul-O).”
With all due respect to the first four tracks on the album, it’s a welcome moment when the lead-off single, “Unskinny Bop,” finally rolls around. While the song’s blues-influenced riff didn’t quite fit into the group’s previous stadium-filling party anthem sound, its refrain and nonsensical-but-sexual lyric did. It reached #3 on the US charts.
It’s amusing that as Michaels seemed to be making a bid for respectability, DeVille was flipping off the world. His guitar solo in “Unskinny Bop” might be the least tasteful example of overplaying in recorded history, the best example of the ‘80s there is (despite being released in 1990).
But it’s not as if this album were a disaster. “Let It Play,” one of those southern rockers, is delightful, even if Poison’s Pennsylvania-and-Los Angeles roots make as much sense as do the Rolling Stones’ London roots for their Mississippi delta blues. On the opposite end of the musical spectrum, DeVille’s power ballad “Life Goes On” plays it straight with layered guitar and vocal harmonies throughout and a huge refrain. Bassist Bobby Dall’s ode to motorcycling, “Ride the Wind,” is another stadium-ready, big-chorus highlight. The latter two were singles, reaching #35 and #25, respectively.
The album’s other big single was the somewhat tedious social commentary “Something To Believe In.” It doubles down on the near-country leanings of the previous album’s hit “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” adds piano and even more drawl, and tosses in everything from televangelists to Vietnam veterans. Oof. But that said, it isn’t a terrible song. It’s typically tuneful. DeVille’s solo is interesting. It was a hit, #4 on the charts.
After that it’s at best a mixed bag. “Don’t Give Up an Inch” sounds like a typical Poison album track, an oversexed, singalong rocker with lyrics Gene Simmons would be proud to call his own. “Poor Boy Blues” is embarrassing in its faux blues affectations. “Valley Of Lost Souls” is pretty good when it finally gets around to happening (after the tedious album opener and its own extended intro). But it’s all forgettable.
And then there were none. Poison, like their spirit animal KISS, went on to release a wholly unnecessary live album after their third studio album. Unlike KISS, they had already had huge success and the live album was extraneous, a commercial disaster (#51) compared to what they had done before.
Two years later (1993), there was another album, but with guitarist Ritchie Kotzen in the place of DeVille, whose drug problems had fueled irreconcilable differences at the time. It did … fine. But grunge was a thing. Poison wasn’t. There were several reality shows. Greatest hits collections. New studio albums. Reunions. Life goes on.
It was fun while it lasted.
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Post by kds on Nov 17, 2019 5:06:32 GMT
It's easy to forget that the 80s hard rock scene was still alive and well for the first couple years of the 90s. I recall a time when active rock radio would play Unskinny Bop, Enter Sandman, November Rain, and Smells Like Teen Spirit. But, it was short lived.
This was really the last true Poison album in my opinion. The version with Ritchie Kotzen was just a poor attempt to try to hang with the cool kids.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 17, 2019 14:08:13 GMT
This was really the last true Poison album in my opinion. The version with Ritchie Kotzen was just a poor attempt to try to hang with the cool kids. Mine, too, which is why I'm ending the series here.
Kotzen is really a great musician and guitarist. It's a shame he was so ill-fitted to Poison. But I doubt anyone would have made much difference, whether CC DeVille, Kotzen, Blues Saraceno (who joined after Kotzen), or anyone else. The problems were also just within the band itself and its relationship to the music world at large.
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Post by kds on Nov 18, 2019 13:56:17 GMT
And it seems Poison has accepted the fact that they would really have to do a Bon Jovi esque change to their sound to release relevant music in the 21st century, so they play package tours on the nostalgia circuit, playing setlists of songs from those first three albums.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 18, 2019 14:16:33 GMT
Wasn’t Bret Michaels’ solo career kind of a Bon Joviesque country reimagining? (I have to admit I checked out on all that, the reality shows, etc.
I think in the end Poison wanted to be Poison, not and knew they could make a reasonable living at it. By most accounts they’ve held up musically better than most from that era.
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Post by kds on Nov 18, 2019 14:35:14 GMT
Wasn’t Bret Michaels’ solo career kind of a Bon Joviesque country reimagining? (I have to admit I checked out on all that, the reality shows, etc. I think in the end Poison wanted to be Poison, not and knew they could make a reasonable living at it. By most accounts they’ve held up musically better than most from that era. I think Bret dabbled in country, but I can't recall. Poison can surely play bigger venues than a lot of other bands from that era. They also have all four members on the road, but is pretty rare for one of those bands.
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bellbottoms
Pacific Coast Highway
Posts: 727
Likes: 201
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Post by bellbottoms on Nov 18, 2019 14:36:39 GMT
Well I guess I'll be sitting this one out from a full album perspective - I can't find it on spotify or a complete set of videos on youtube... I suppose I could look harder for it but it didn't come easy so I'm just gonna let it go.
I remember the songs Unskinny Bop and Something to Believe In from back in the day and I liked both of them then, but listening to those two songs now, I have to say the only one I take with me is Something to Believe In. Not to say that Unskinny Bop doesn't have good things about it, but I don't feel the need to seek it out again.
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Post by Kapitan on Nov 18, 2019 14:40:15 GMT
I don't feel the need to seek it out again. I think that sums up the album, frankly.
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Post by kds on Nov 18, 2019 16:54:36 GMT
Speaking of Poison, all signs are pointing to a package tour in 2020 with Poison, Def Leppard, and Motley Crue (whose retirement lasted only slightly longer than KISS's first retirement).
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Nov 18, 2019 21:40:25 GMT
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