OK, who remembers this when it happened? Poison content...

baimun said:
I'm going to try and state my opinion about Poison (which I always pronounce like french fish) without sounding too harsh as I don't want to offend my friend Myz who liked them.....


... but Poison represented everything that went wrong with the days of hair metal. They took what grew from the riffs of Van Halen and turned into rock bands like Dokken and Ratt, but then combined them with a combination of costumes and theatrics stolen from the New York Dolls and Kiss. There was zero originality or creativity, just a repackaging of marketable ideas into a glitter covered cash machine.

It simply amazes me that a talent like Ritchie Kotzen played with them... almost on the level of Hendrix opening for the Beatles.

When people ignore the good music that happened in the 80's and simply point to silly, derivative, excess from that era, they'll always reference Poison. I cut Myz slack because his age happened to coincide when they were everywhere, so he missed out on when better bands were bigger.
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Well, you know what they say. Every rose has its thorn.
















:grin:
 
Poison sucked.
CC sucked.
However, I occasionally like to bust out the riff from Unskinny Bop just to piss off my bandmates.
 
micwalt said:
Poison sucked.
CC sucked.
However, I occasionally like to bust out the riff from Unskinny Bop just to piss off my bandmates.
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lol, I used to do that all the time in my last band. Anytime there was a break in practice, I would play that or some Zakk squealy bits.
 
jp_nyc said:
Wow, that video is so old that a band is using Crate gear in public. The 90s were weird.
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In the first vid you can hear the Crate amp sound. In the 80's when I taught at a music store, I used to teach on one. I did like the amp and it was that sound for that time. Kind of an all or nothing type sound.
 
micwalt said:
Ah yes, the squealy bits are a must--but I do Sykes squeals instead of Zakk squeals.
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When I was in a band with my brother in law, we used to try to out squeal each other during practice. It used to piss the other guys off, but it was hilarious.
 
jp_nyc said:
Barely. The web site says 2009 and looks like it hasn’t been updated since then. I know Crate amps are still popular with buskers in NYC. But that might just be because they’re cheap used. Interestingly, Crate is a division of Loud Technologies, which also owns Ampeg, Alvarez, Blackheart, and Mackie. Interestingly, it last traded for $0.05 as an OTC stock.
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Hmmm...at that price, we could take over the company :idea:

RELAUNCH VINTAGE CLUB AND BLACKHEART!!!! electricguitar054
 
Alex W said:
Does Crate even exist anymore? I remember hating all those solid state crate amps in the 90's but The Vintage Club series came out and I loved them.
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Crate and Ampeg were bought a decade ago and the current owners (LOUD Technologies) have had a really hard time sustaining a reliable amp line ever since. The decided to design all amps in house have have them built overseas, but their imported amp products proved warranty nightmares and were discontinued and blown out at fire sale prices relatively shortly after they were released (the Crate Palamino line and hand-wired Ampeg J20 are classic examples). IIRC, I think the former St Louis Music, which was Crate's original owner, is now doing well with the Magnatone RI's.

As to Poison, they have their fans and I don't begrudge them those, but none of their work ever struck me as influential or essential. Their music is solid, but predictable. Their timing, coming late in the metal trend, raises a chicken or egg question...were they signed because they represented a simple cliche of metal that marketers understand? Or where they a more original band that the marketers reshaped into that cliche?
 
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I also read that Slash auditioned and was offered the Poison guitarist job but declined when he found out he'd have to wear makeup etc...

Things worked out OK for him! :thu:
 
cvogue said:
I also read that Slash auditioned and was offered the Poison guitarist job but declined when he found out he'd have to wear makeup etc...

Things worked out OK for him! :thu:
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In his biography he tried out for Poison and then passed CC Deville (on the way in or out) and he knew after seeing Deville's spandex outfit that he had lost the job.
 
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I do have a Poison album, their debut. That was just to learn Talk Dirty To Me though :embarrassed:

And I did see Poison in concert back in '88, but again it was more that a bunch of my friends were all going, plus Tesla was opening for them. Tesla blew Poison off the stage, quite frankly, and all my friends agreed and they'd never heard of Tesla before that show.
 
A couple of comments on comments:

* As enjoyable and artistic as Jimi Hendrix was, backhandedly slamming the Monkees seems silly to me. Boyce/Hart and Neil Diamond - not exactly a bad bunch of songwriters, and one could certainly debate the merits of Naismith's later work, but the Monkees were far from a bad band. Perhaps you don't like melodic power pop, or imagine that professional musicians shouldn't form groups by having management types introduce or audition them, but they were very enjoyable for many people.

This of course begets the whole "popular things are often bad" trope.

As for Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl Jam echoing Metallica .... no. First, those four bands actually have little in common either culturally or musically, other than geography. I once worked for Sub Pop during the heydays of those listed; in their own ways, they all *hated* Metallica and their macho poses. AIC had friends among some of the members of Soundgarden and Nirvana (and Mudhoney, and other bands descended from the U-Men / Green River family tree) but really did not consider themselves part of "the Seattle scene," the Alice Mudgarden thing notwithstanding. Soundgarden were early lumped with Nirvana, but they went heavy and loud as Kurt just got weirder, and most of the members of those bands absolutely despised Pearl Jam, whom they saw as high school jock-types.

For your average Nirvana / Soundgarden fan, there was a lot less distance from Poison to Metallica than from Metallica to their pet band. All that changed right around 1994/after Kurt's death, when Metallica challenged themselves to make different albums, and Soundgarden began sounding more like arena rock with each release.

And let's not forget the utter enmity of Guns n' Roses, by ... well, just about every musician who got a deal after "Nevermind."

I think hair metal began dying when GnR couldn't follow up "Appetite" quickly (or well - sorry, I'm not very taken with Use Your Illusion and the two-CD thing was ridiculous), and then "Nevermind" blew up and it was done. Don't forget that "Gish" was released the same month or thereabouts, and that's one of those things where you could see it coming, but you couldn't have planned it. People's tastes changed, quickly.

Recall it wasn't just a matter of production values and stage wear - there was (at least at first) a very serious attempt to reject what was seen as the regressive ideas of hair metal. (And don't ever slag Ratt, unless you want a cage-match death battle with me.)

Music movements that try to involve politics usually insist on a break with the past, at least until they get watered down. (See: West Coast 60's psych; punk rock v. 1/c. 1977-8; EDM in the 90's). Too bad; I can appreciate the knuckle-drag of "Unskinny Bop" as well as deep cuts on Badmotorfinger, even if that's heretical.
 
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