If you saw someone at the State Fair that you really wanted to make fun of, that was me. I was the person there for the Poison show that didn't get the joke. Yes, that was me in the Poison shirt from 1987. Yes, that was me with the huge blonde C.C. DeVille hairdo. Go ahead, point and laugh. When your giggling has subsided for a time, I will review the show for you. Actually, I have a couple of reviews, feel free to choose your favorite.
"I waited fifteen years for that?"
"That set list wasn't very good."
"I can't believe I bothered to tease my hair."
If you say any of these out loud, be sure to use a glum tone of voice. It helps if you are looking at the ground. Maybe you should add effect by kicking a rock. Or maybe just heave a giant sigh. However you do it, be sure that everyone knows that you are mourning the fact that the band that helped shape your teenage years let you down, fully and completely.
Go ahead, ask me if I had a good time at the Poison show.
Up until the day of the show, I hadn't been very excited at all. I was supposed to see them last year at the very same State Fair, but they had to cancel because Bobby Dall hurt his back. So I used up all my looking forward to Poison points last year. Also, this was an outdoor show. We all remember what happened last time I geared up for an outdoor show. Journey canceled due to a tornado. So I didn't believe that Poison was going to happen until I saw them with my own eyes.
LCG had been all psyched up for it, cranking the Greatest Hits that I hate, and generally being revved up for the show. Not me. But then on the day of show, I was working on my Poison timeline for the anti-Greatest Hits rant. (By the way, I forgot an entry on the Poison timeline. December 1993, I went into a tattoo shop to get a tattoo. The guy who did mine? Well, there were pictures of him on the wall with Rikki Rockett. He had done Rikki's Poison tattoo that was on the cover of Flesh and Blood. Yay!)
So I was working on the timeline, and I got all giddy. Because I loved Poison! So I threw on Look What The Cat Dragged In, dug out my Cecil dogtag (and fixed it too, since it had been broken since 1987), and put on the Poison shirt I have had since eighth grade. I was ready to go! I had been under considerable peer pressure to tease my hair, but I wasn't going to cave.
Proof that the excitement got to me: I caved, and out came the styling products. I hadn't worn that hairstyle on a daily basis for fifteen years, but as long as I was wearing the dogtag for the first time in over a decade, it was time to whip out the C.C. DeVille hairdo. I don't know how you achieve your C.C. DeVille hairstyle, but I need three styling products. Mousse to add volume, styling spritz for the roots, to make sure they remain vertical, and hairspray to hold it all together. But this is a time consuming process, with the spraying and the backcombing (aka ratting) and the waiting for the spray to dry before continuing on to the next unsuspecting section of hair. So I had to take the occasional break and wander around the house talking on the phone.
First I called Aaaahj, and he wasn't so fired up about my hair or my Poison show. So I called the person I knew I could count on. Jeff J. Man, oh man, was he ever excited. First, we talked about the Poison timeline. (He is the one who reminded me that Rikki Rockett est mon frère!) Then we debated how I would like the show. He said that the Samantha 7 shows would be hard to top, and I agreed.
In fact, for weeks, LCG was insisting that once I saw C.C. DeVille, I would flip for the Poison show. I was all like, dude, I saw Samantha 7. Twice. I was two feet away from C.C. He bit the lovely bass player on top of the head. That was all of the C.C. excitement that Jeff J. and I ever needed. But I still got all excited for the show once I was talking to Jeff J. Because he and I were the biggest Poison fans ever. (I knew I could count on Jeff J.)
On the way to the show, LCG and I debated what the opening song would be. I thought Nothin' But A Good Time. He said no, too early. We threw songs back and forth until it occurred to me that they could very well be starting the set with Look What The Cat Dragged In, same as always.
So, the following are text messages that I sent myself during the show. It had never occurred to me to bring a notebook. I was so positive that the Poison show was going to be the greatest thing ever, and it would burn itself into my mind. I didn't need to write anything down! Yeah, right.
9:05 LWT
Yes, they started the set with Look What The Cat Dragged In. That song isn't very good. It never has been, and it never will be. Bobby was wearing a really ugly outfit and had a really bad bleach job.
9:05 TDTME
What? Well, I'm ready to go home. Talk Dirty To Me is the second song in the set? Excuse me? Sure, Poison had bigger hits, but did any of them shine as brightly as Talk Dirty To Me? No! No single after Talk Dirty To Me had the energy and low-budget charm. Well, maybe I Want Action did. But how did the breakout hit end up second on the set list? I was prepared to wait patiently through the entire show for Talk Dirty To Me. I wasn't ready for it! They caught me off guard.
9:06 Who Song
Oh yes, you are reading my note right. It says Who Song. As in a song off the new Poison album Hollyweird. As in a song by The Who as played by Poison. As in Squeeze Box. Ohhhhhhh, my ears were burning. Burning I tell you! I went off. "They've got a lot of #$^@$%^@#$% nerve thinking they have the right to record a Who song! Who covers should be done by good bands."
9:07 I Want AC
What? Well. Hmm. I got nothing. They burned through three songs from Look What The Cat Dragged In in the first ten minutes. What does that mean for me? It means that I have to sit through a whole bunch of horseshit from Open Up And Say...Ahh! and Flesh and Blood. Because odds are good if they have already played the two big hits, they aren't going to pull out Cry Tough or I Won't Forget You. And it's a cinch that they won't be dusting off Blame It On You for the encore, so I get to sit through the rest of the horseshit set with nothing to look forward to.
9:11 So Much Stick Twirling
I didn't want to forget that Rikki Rockett was in high gear for stick twirling.
9:11 Flying Vs
Nor did I want to forget that C.C. DeVille was playing Flying Vs exclusively that night.
9:12 Lame Solo
Well, yay. Guitar solo. Has anyone noticed that C.C. DeVille is a great guitar player because of his flash and his style and his personality? He is a great personality who happens to play guitar. He can play rhythm okay, but it is never, ever a good idea to let him take a guitar solo.
9:13 Ice Cream Man He Is No Neal Schon
Well, at this point C.C.'s solo started to sound suspiciously like Ice Cream Man. And apparently, that night I decided that guitarists should be rated on the Neal Schon scale. Because Neal Schon is really good.
9:16 CC Sings
C.C. got to sing a song from the new album that he wrote. Yay! I love it when C.C. sings! I had a delightful flashback to the Samantha 7 shows, because of course C.C. can't sing without talking for about six hours before he actually starts. "Okay, so they're gonna let me sing a song. Is that okay? But you gotta clap really loud so they let me sing again tomorrow!" Oh, he is so darling in his little western shirt. C.C. DeVille is my favorite! And the song was good too.
9:32 Drum Solo That Was OK
You may note the 16-minute gap between text messages. That is because I was starting to get a little glum after C.C. sang. I told LCG that I couldn't even enjoy a concert anymore because I was too busy text messaging myself. You know, I gots to be thorough for the web site. He confiscated my phone and said, "You can play reporter on your own time. This is my time, and you are going to enjoy Poison." I don't remember why I got my phone back, I think it was so I could call Jeff J. during the drum solo. I enjoyed the drum solo because it was chock full of clichés. LCG giggled through the whole thing. "He (giggle, snicker) isn't (giggle, snort) a very (giggle) good (snicker) drummer (giggle, giggle, snicker)." I found it very enjoyable, but that may have been because it was Rikki Rockett.
9:43 Maracas! UBop
This is my last entry of the night. As you can see by the exclamation point, I was very happy that Bret Michaels was playing maracas. I wasn't so happy about the Unskinny Bop part. And at that point, I was fairly bummed out by the show. Sure, they eventually played Rock And Roll All Nite, but that didn't even perk me up.
LCG: "Wait. It's okay with you if they cover KISS but not The Who?"
Dragon: "First of all, this was their single on the Less Than Zero soundtrack. They have actually recorded this song before. Second, KISS is a crappy band, so they may cover KISS all they want. They have no business covering The Who."
What else happened? Oh, Bret made sure to point out that Minnesota had some of the most beautiful women in the world or some crap like that. Oh, man. I don't know which is more sad, the fact that he is still using tired late eighties crowd banter, or the fact that he sounded like he sincerely believed his tired crowd banter.
Of course I had to sit through Every Rose Has Its Thorn and Something To Believe In. I think they played Your Mama Don't Dance as well. That's okay, I like that song. But the pacing was just not working out for me. By the time they hit such old favorites as Rock And Roll All Nite and Your Mama Don't Dance, I was ready to go home. Well, I was ready to go home after Talk Dirty To Me. And the set was really short. It was only about an hour and ten minutes. Only one encore, and that was Nothin' But A Good Time, which offended me.
No, the song doesn't offend me, I'm okay with having a good time, but even if that song was a bigger hit than Talk Dirty To Me, it was not as important. And now that I am paying attention, I notice that there were three cover songs in the set. An hour and ten minutes and three covers? Maybe Poison really isn't the huge band that everyone thought. I don't know. I am going to heave a sigh now. LCG had a really good time at the show, which is nice. He wasn't let down at all.
As we walked back to the car, well, I was downtrodden. I was staring at the ground, and I think my chin was quivering too. I don't know if I have ever been so disappointed by a concert, and I took it really hard. "I think," said he, "that the problem is, they essentially played the Greatest Hits album that you hate." Yeah, that's true. That set list wasn't very good.
What would teenaged me think? I mean, who could have foreseen this happening? I can't even send a memo to my teenaged self, like I did after the Vince Neil show. What would it say? "That blue paint stain you got on your Poison shirt during eighth grade art class while talking to Jeff J. is still there. Oh, and by the way, you finally saw Poison and didn't care for it." I have to go heave a sigh and kick the ground now. I can't believe I waited fifteen years for that.