*Official* Poison appreciation thread

[bosk1]

    Okay, yeah, just kidding!   

I'm listening to Extreme's live Take Us Alive at work.  Since I don't have the album here, I brought it up on YouTube, and I noticed down the play list a bit, it is showing a Poison show, so that's why I thought of them.  Figured I'd post because...why not?

I remember these guys being ALL OVER the music mags and MTV back in the day even before they had released their first album, and I couldn't figure out why.  I remember at the time thinking they looked ridiculous, and thinking to myself, "I have never heard of these guys, and best I can tell, they don't even have an album out.  So why are they being crammed down the public's throats like this as if they actually are somebody?"  Because of that, I was already sort of annoyed and predisposed against them by the time their album dropped.  Their first few album cycles also basically coincided fairly closely with Cinderella's, who broke on the scene about the same time.  I felt like Cinderella had much more musical integrity and just wrote better songs.  So I guess I felt sort of a resentment toward Poison for always seeming to be a bit more popular and have their albums do a bit better on each release cycle.

But then I saw them at a festival show, warming up the crowd before Whitesnake and Motley Crue, and I was pretty impressed with what a fun show they put on.  So I warmed up a bit and bought the first album.  And I liked it for what it was.  Same with the next two albums.  I can't say I loved them.  But they each had a few fun songs that I enjoyed enough.  After that, they pretty much fell off my radar, and I have never revisited them.  I never felt the need to buy any of their albums when I switched from cassettes to CDs in the early '90s.  Looking back, a few of their hits (including their cover of Rock N Roll All Nite on the Less Than Zero soundtrack) are pretty good, and I enjoy them when they pop up on a Pandora station or something. 

[Grappler]

They're worth a greatest hits record, which is all I have from them.   I saw them in 2000 with Dokken and Cinderella opening, and enjoyed seeing both of those bands more than Poison, but at least I can say that I've seen them.  I can't believe that was 18 years ago....

[ProfessorPeart]

I own the first 4 albums and the live one. I lean more towards the last 2 as they leaned more blues/rock than hair band. Especially, Native Tongue with Richie Kotzen.

They are one of the few legit hair bands that I actually own. They are also one band that actually deserves the genre designation. Bit of a guilty pleasure.

[Kwyjibo]

Saw them on tour opening for Aerosmith and Whitesnake. They put on a good show but looked even more ridiculous than Steven Tyler and David Coverdale in their hair/perm prime.

And they had some good tunes but never really made me buy their records. And Every Rose Has It's Thorn is just an atrocious cheesy song. And normally I'm a sucker for hair metal power ballads.

[Samsara]

Look what the cat dragged in. The fallen angel himself, bosk. 

For the record, I don't hate Poison. But aside from the hits we all remember from back in the day, I wouldn't really call myself a fan, either.

[El Barto]

Still hate 'em. Saw them open for Roudness and Cinderella back before anybody knew who they were. We were surprised to see that they were dudes when they came out, after only seeing the posters in the lobby.

[bosk1]

I wouldn't really call myself a fan

Look what the cat dragged in. The fallen angel himself, bosk. 

Your Poison puns betray you. 

[King Postwhore]

I will now only read bosk1's posts in the voice of C.C DeVille.

[bosk1]

I will now only read bosk1's posts in the voice of C.C DeVille.

  I remember seeing him on Celebrity Jeopardy years ago, and it was the first time I had ever heard him speak.  It was such an odd experience.  If you just listened to his voice and observed his mannerisms without paying attention to the substance of what he was saying, you would likely conclude that he had the intelligence and articulation of a third grader and/or addict who was in the middle of a bender.  But if you listened to the substance of his words, it was like he was a complete savant.  It was such a huge disconnect between how dumb and burned out he sounded vs. how smart he actually was.

[King Postwhore]

   No joke.  Imagine a conversation between C.C and Fran Drescher?!

My ears would seizure.

[bosk1]

[Cool Chris]

Every Rose has its Thorn was one of my favorite rock ballads at the time, and I quite dug Nothing but a Good Time as well. That's all I got.

[bosk1]

...and I quite dug Nothing but a Good Time as well.

I remember figuring out that main guitar riff and thinking that, while it wasn't difficult at all, there were some neat, unexpected little quirks about it that made it kinda fun to noodle through.

[pg1067]

I vaguely recall seeing Poison open for David Lee Roth in mid-1988 (if I recall correctly, a girl I was sort of dating but didn't really like that much bought the tickets).  Can't say I remember anything about it except that Poison (and other glam metal bands) were inexplicably popular with some of the hottest girls I'd ever seen.  I had a hard time coming to grips with that since the members of Poison were almost hotter than some of the girls who were fans.  I recall that my introduction to Poison was by finding Look What the Cat Dragged In at a local record store and wondering what the fuck I was looking at.  A couple of their hits are listenable, but Poison has never really been anything but a joke band in my view (a view that has been exacerbated by all of Bret Michaels post-80s silliness).

[King Postwhore]

That reminds me of the Ratt/Poison tour.  This comedian thought what other bands would be a good double bill by their names.

Rush/Traffic
Madonna/Supertramp


ect....

[Setlist Scotty]

Same with the next two albums.  I can't say I loved them.  But they each had a few fun songs that I enjoyed enough.  After that, they pretty much fell off my radar, and I have never revisited them.

This pretty much sums it up for me. I think my first exposure to them was when I was at a friend's house, and he blasted the opening of Talk Dirty to Me - he didn't like the rest of the song, but he liked the intro. Beyond that, I never checked out their debut album.

But, I have to admit that the very first CD I ever bought was Open Up and Say Ahh. BUT I had good reason for picking it up - a classmate told me he had read that the original artwork was gonna be banned, so I wanted to snag a copy of it before that happened. The album was decent enough but fairly unmemorable aside from the singles. Picked up Flesh and Blood (once again, before the artwork was changed) and liked it just about as much.

In 1991 they were supposed to play Milwaukee with Slaughter and Bullet Boys opening up, so I picked up tickets to check them out. But this was right around the time they were having trouble with CC, and so canceled a week or two before the show was to happen. Tesla was brought in as a last minute replacement with Slaughter still opening (not sure what happened to the BB), and they put on an amazing show - one of my favorite non-Rush, non-DT concerts. I still would love to get a bootleg of that particular show. Anyway, as it would turn out, I never did get to see Poison and my interest in them waned shortly after that.
 
 

Saw them open for Roudness and Cinderella back before anybody knew who they were.

[Cool Chris]

Madonna/Supertramp

 

[Mebert78]

"Something to Believe In" is the bomb diggity!  I also like "Life Goes On" and "Ride the Wind."  Oh, and I was obsessed with "Unskinny Bop" back in the day.  I think I need to buy their greatest hits!

[cramx3]

They're worth a greatest hits record, which is all I have from them.   

I also have a greatest hits album and never got past that.  There's only a few songs I really liked by them and Bret Michaels had that Rock of Love show that was so terrible.  I really kind of started to hate them.  But last year they opened for Def Leppard and was really surprised with how much I enjoyed their show.  They rocked live.  So while I don't really like them per say, I respect them much more and can enjoy listening to them.

[KevShmev]

Fallen Angel is really the only song I liked a lot by them at the time back in the 80's, although Talk Dirty to Me later became a fun song when I went through my bar/clubbing phase (hair metal gets girls running to the dance floor like their asses are on fire).  None of their songs were ones I actively disliked, but I just liked Europe, Dokken, Whitesnake and Stryper a lot more when I was knee deep in the hair metal of the latter 80's.

[jingle.boy]

Loved them up to Native Tongue.  Every album got successively better - Native Tongue made my Top 50 list.

First time I took a quick glance at the cover to Look What The Cat Dragged In, I thought "those chicks are pretty hot".  Then I actually looked at the cover, and threw up in my mouth a little.  Still ended up buying it once Action and TDTM made it big.  Saw them open for DLR, and saw the Poison/Slaughter/Bullet Boys show - Bullet Boys absolutely blew.  A buddy of mine worked the backstage stuff at the venue (Canada's Wonderland, so an outdoor venue), and he told me a few days after the show, the db readings were within 3 or 4 decibels of the engineering limit for the grandstand.  I believe it too... it still to this day was the loudest concert I've ever been at - too loud to tell you the truth.

Anyhoo... lost track of any of their output after Native Tongue.  Still love 3 out of those 4 albums - LWTCDI is more of a nostalgic appreciation piece.  Those songs just aren't very good at all.

[bl5150]

Open Up..........was one of my earlier albums .  Love On The ROcks, Fallen Angel and Nothin But A Good Time got plenty of air play at the time but Unskinny Bop was the end for me - bloody awful     There are some good tunes on the album but that song was just too much for me.

I did also get Native Tongue due to Kotzen and enjoyed a few songs on that.   Didn't bother with much after that despite being a fan of Blues Saraceno as a solo artist -  I probably have Crack A Smie somewhere but can't remember anything about it.

[bosk1]

First time I took a quick glance at the cover to Look What The Cat Dragged In, I thought "those chicks are pretty hot".  Then I actually looked at the cover, and threw up in my mouth a little. 

Yeah, similar story with me and Stryper.  ...the only difference being that, upon discovering that Michael Sweet was a man, my reaction was along the lines of:  "I'm...almost still okay with that."

[TAC]

Is this really a thread?

[King Postwhore]

Is this really a thread?

[Cool Chris]

More like:



TAC, if this isn't your bag, there is a brand new Genesis thread! See ya there!

[TAC]

I already voted!

[King Postwhore]

 

[jingle.boy]

Don't call me Shirley.

[The Walrus]

I saw Poison live once, unfortunately. It was in 2011, when they toured with the New York Dolls and Motley Crue. At the end of nearly every verse of the entire set, Bret Michaels give a shoutout to C.C. DeVille. Almost every single one. And you can be damn sure before and at the end of every guitar solo, too. It just became hilarious about 4 songs in. Halfway through Crue's set we started to look at each other and shout C.C. DeVille when the solos were about to kick in and it just got funnier each time.

I dunno, I've never actually met a Poison fan, but probably half the people at that show were wearing their shirts. Whole lot of teenagers too. That was the weirdest part of the whole night, and I saw people doing heroin next to people boning in the restrooms.

[nobloodyname]

Absolutely love Poison's first four albums. There's a definite progression in their music through them, as a previous poster said.

I have an enormous soft stop for Open Up since it really was my gateway album to metal. Yes, I know that'll sound a bit silly but this was in 1988 and my exposure to music at that point had mostly just been chart music. I can sing pretty much every word of every song to this day. Fallen Angel, Nothin' but A Good Time, Look but You Can't Touch, Every Rose and, of course, Your Mama Don't Dance (which they really made their own) - all great tracks. And the rest of the album is pretty good, too.

Native Tongue is a cracking album, really benefits from Richie Kotzen's songwriting and background vocals. In fact, it's come out in recent years that it was a virtually a Kotzen solo album.

They're just a novelty act these days, touring the US in the summer playing the same old setlist, night in and night out.

[kaos2900]

They had some really great songs and I'm not talking about their more well known hits. Life Loves Tragedy, Valley of Lost Souls, etc. They are a band that progressively got better with each album. Sad to see how much wasted potential there is/was to put out some good new music.

[jingle.boy]

They had some really great songs and I'm not talking about their more well known hits. Life Loves Tragedy, Valley of Lost Souls, etc. They are a band that progressively got better with each album. Sad to see how much wasted potential there is/was to put out some good new music.

[nobloodyname]

They had some really great songs and I'm not talking about their more well known hits. Life Loves Tragedy, Valley of Lost Souls, etc. They are a band that progressively got better with each album. Sad to see how much wasted potential there is/was to put out some good new music.

Valley of Lost Souls. What a track. Love the way it builds, and then explodes into the main riff. One of my tunes of choice while cycling.

CC gets a lot of stick - not all of it warranted - but did any of you who actually enjoy Poison listen to the Samantha 7 album? I found it to be a particularly impressive slice of bubblegum rock (Bonnie Bradley was stuck in my head for what felt like years). Shame there was never a second release.

[jingle.boy]

Never heard of it.