Poison - Open Up & Say Ahhh
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Free Music Notes for Open Up & Say Ahhh
Free Music Review: Poison even bigger sells over 5 million!
Hit: 5 Stars
This band knows how to put on a show. Awesome tour Awesome album. Every song a classic. Remembered when this came out I was just about to start 7th grade. No flaws. Can't even pick a favorite cause it's so great. Buy it. 1988 back when there was real rock and exciting concerts.Free Music Review: Totally awesome!
Hit: 5 Stars
This great R&R band "POISON" is one of the most popular in 80s music scene.
Of course,it's not perfect in playing instrument,and the songs are quite simple,but this band bring us "NOTHIN' BUT A GOODE TIME"!!
Free Music Review: one of the funnest rock CD's I have ever heard
Hit: 5 Stars
Every song is Poison at its greatest. Great guitar riffs, nice bass and drums, fantastic lead vocals.Free Music Review: Open up and say, yeaahhh... not bad
Hit: 4 Stars
After doing a more or less straight cover of KISS's "Rock And Roll All Nite" for the Less Than Zero soundtrack, the bad boys of Poison released their second album, Open Up And Say Ahh!, which got into a bit of a controversy because of the album cover. So what's the big deal about a scraggly haired demonic green-eyed woman with a long tongue sticking out? Apparently a lot to the censorship folks. The edited album cover was a narrow strip that merely showed the eyes and orange slightly below and above. Fortunately, I manged to snag the unedited cover."Love On The Rocks" recalls Motley Crue and Cinderella, only not as hard as those two groups, but a good enough dose of rock and roll and swaggering bedroom antics. Another track Diamond Dave would be proud of.
"Nothin' But A Good Time" was a good choice for the first single although not as rowdy as the first single from their debut. The theme of blowing one's hard-earned money for a good time to compensate for an unsatisfying job is shown clearly here. The part before the final chorus run-through is a favorite. After CC's solo, comes the rhythmic thumping of the drums in measured time.
Going "Back To The Rocking Horse" seems like a good idea to me. After a brief been-there, done-that explanation, the narrator longs not only for a simpler time but to start all over again. Gosh, the things I'd do if I had the chance, and the world had better look out! A worthy rocker.
A bluesy harmonica and beats owing nods to to "Sweet Emotion" and "Walk This Way" is displayed on "Good Love," which is to the girl of the song what petrol is to a car. The lifestyle led by the couple in this leads neighbours saying "the things you're doing ain't natural, boy."
The naughtiest and hardest rocking non-single track here is "Look But You Can't Touch" about his trying to seduce a young thing who later doesn't seem quite as innocent as all that. When he sings "I didn't plan on spending money just to get a piece of mind", he emphasizes the word "mind", making me think, "Yeah, as opposed to something rhyming with mass." The guitar squeals in time when he sings that he gets slapped in face for making an illegal move.
"Fallen Angel", the second single, is about a small-town girl whose dreams of show business includes a life in the fast lane, "rolling the dice of her life."
A heartfelt sigh opens the heartbreaking "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", their first #1 song and a mature ballad looking back at a blown chance to make or break a relationship. After words like "like the knife that cuts you/the wound heals, but the scar, that scar remains," I thought, "And these guys did 'Talk Dirty To Me' two years ago?" This really set the standard for their other great ballad, Flesh & Blood's "Something To Believe In"
Then comes a cover of Loggins and Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance," which is good old fashioned rock and roll from the 70's. By the time this single came out, hard on the heels of the previous one, the album had run its course, hence its failing to make the Top Ten.
Things get slower, the sound lacking the ferocity of Look What The Cat Dragged In, which results in a few filler tracks, compensated for by "Every Rose..." but Bret Michael's swaggering bad-boy, play all night with beautiful women tone, is still here. Worthy followup to their debut. And when is EMI going to reissue that original cover for everyone?
Free Music Review: Essential party companion
Hit: 4 Stars
Poisons best album was unleashed in 1988 and much like Guns `n' Roses Appetite...and Motley Crues Dr Feelgood it truly captured the zeitgeist of the moment. An album that probably has very few people willing to publicly trumpet it's virtues years later but one that I'm sure remains to this day a guilty pleasure for many.
The album consists of Poisons hair metal/party metal/pop metal/whatever you wanna call it and just looking at the track listing will give you an inkling of what your going to get with numbers entitled Love on the Rocks, Nothin' But A Good Time, Look But You Can't Touch and Fallen Angel. Where the real talent of the band lay is not in musical virtuosity, nobody is going to mistake guitarist C.C. Deville for Eddie Van Halen or Paul Gilbert anytime soon, but in their ability to combine their passionate delivery with PG rated good time vibes and a simple delivery of hook laden songs. This isn't a Dream Theatre album. Nor is it heavy metal in the likeness of Judas Priest, this is hard rock with a smirk on it's face and an unfeasibly large cod piece down it's pants. And when your in the mood for it there is nothing wrong with that.
If you play this album wanting a charming portrayal of regular 80's hard rock conventions then this is it. If you want erudite examinations of the human condition then look elsewhere. But as long as you are in the right frame of mind it's hard to go past the excellent Nothin' But A Good Time or Fallen Angel. And the massive hit of Every Rose Has It's Thorn somehow caught the imagination of so many that it became the bands biggest hit which is ironic when you consider that other hair metal bands were far more into the soppy ballad than Poison who truly give the impression on this album that they'd rather get their rocks off by rocking your socks off than by buying a new house from the proceeds of another lighters in the air girlie love song.
An album so enamoured of, indeed, nuthin' but a good time that it's hard to review. But along with Dr Feelgood from the Crue and a couple of other albums circa 88-90 this would have to be the glam metal genre at it's very best. But still not five stars due to things being a bit too simple and due to some of the sentiments just coming across as a bit too try hard. Though by all accounts the band certainly lived the life, good on `em cos somebody has to do it!