I’ve been a Poison fan since the very beginning and there are very few bands that could put on a show as fun as Poison. Poison adopted the KISS mentality of believing that you didn’t have to be a flawless musician to rock the fuck out and have a good time. Poison created a spectacle and a party for their audience where you could forget all your trials and troubles for an hour and a half and hear some great, fun and catchy Rock & Roll music. Poison’s 1991 “Flesh & Blood” tour was pretty much the beginning of the end of this band. Substance abuse, clashing egos and a sudden shift in the music scene was putting some pressure on the self proclaimed “Glam Slam Kings of Noise.”
On this 2nd leg of the “Flesh & Blood” tour, Poison brought along Slaughter and Bulletboys as their opening acts. My buddy and I were really into the Bulletboys and were baffled as to why they were going on first. The Bulletboys had two albums out and Slaughter one but that’s ok. The Bulletboys came out opening with “Hell Yeah” from their Freakshow album and they sounded so goddamn awesome. The Bulletboys were one of those bands that people either loved or despised. They got pegged as being Van Halen wannabes but damn I thought they were awesome. They were arrogant and cocky but could back it up. They had a killer guitarist and singer who could sing his ass off. They did a lot with their 30 minutes pulling from both albums. I remember “Hang On St. Christopher” being kick ass but “THC Groove” and “Smooth Up In Ya” being the real show stoppers. They fucking killed it and we still had two more to go.
Slaughter was making huge waves and had a platinum selling debut album making them pretty big shit. Well, shit is the right word to describe these guys. I wasn’t a fan by any means but I kinda dug the first single “Up All Night” and figured that I’d give them a shot to wow me live. They came out with a pretty impressive stage set up for an opener with lights, stairs, ramps, you name it. The minute they kicked into the first song, I was a believer. A believer in the fact that they SUCK! Good lord what a crappy fucking band. They were running around and posing for the cameras like they were killing it on stage when the only thing they were killing was my ears. This even may have been one of the first times I was aware of “studio magic.” Man, you had to be David Copperfield to clean up the amount of suck that these guys exhuded. I couldn’t wait for them to get off the stage.
When Poison took to the stage, it was with a literal bang as they opened with “Look What The Cat Dragged In” like they always had (and still do). Right away I was pumped but I started to realize that behind the smoke and mirrors was a band that wasn’t what they used to be. The energy from the band was kind of off and I even commented to my buddy that they all looked sick. These guys had been out on the road for the better part of a year at this point and they looked beat to hell. They sounded like they were going through the motions and CC Deville was so whacked out of his mind on something. The rest of the band wouldn’t even go near him while he pranced around and played his extremely out of key and time guitar solos. The set list was pretty broad and covered a great variety from all three of their albums at the time but it was just painfully obvious there was something going on. Not long after the tour ended it was announced that CC Deville and left the band and was replaced by guitar virtuoso Richie Kotzen. Yeah, that’s what we said!
This was one of those shows that could have been and should have been better than it was. Luckily before and since then I have seen numerous fantastic Poison shows and had the time of my life. The Bulletboys were the MVPs of this show without a doubt. They took ownership of the stage that night and not long after were cast into obscurity.
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