POISON – “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (1988 Capitol 3″ CD single)
This is a beautiful item that I’m happy to have in my collection. 3″ CD singles were uncommon, but you’ve probably seen one before. What is less common is the clamshell 3″ case that this Poison single came in. A lot of 3″ singles came in regular 5″ cases, or a cardboard sleeve. Clamshells are rare. This one, called a “Gem Pak” (patent pending) was specifically made to house a “CD3”, another outdated term. It’s made of white plastic and the artwork is in the form of a sticker which covers the front, back and spine of the case. The Gem Pak’s flaw (patent pending!) is that it does not hold the disc in securely. It wants to pop out. Take care when handling one of these that the disc doesn’t fall out when you open it.
I’m a defender of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. I loved it as a kid. I remember some people saying it might be “too country”, which is wasn’t. It’s just an acoustic ballad but a well written one and deserving of its success, if not its notoriety. It tended to spawn a generation of soundalikes, a fuzzy swarm of late 80s acousti-balladry that ultimately only served to take bands like Poison down, while ushering in the grunge era. “Every Rose” broke down walls for Poison, but the backlash was inevitable. When Bill & Ted quoted it to get into heaven in 1991, it was already all over. I can hear all that history when I listen to this single. It’s an excellent song, and even C.C.’s solo, as inarticulate as it is, still fits like an electrically heated glove.
The B-side “Livin’ for the Minute” shows off the heavier side of Poison. Fans might forget that Poison liked to really spit one out every now and then. C.C.’s solo is bonkers on this one, but perfectly suited to the frantic tune. Bret really cuts loose too. Poison actually have some pretty cool B-sides.
These tracks are both available on the remastered Open Up and Say…Ahh!! CD, but you gotta snap this one up if you find it in the wild.
POISON – Look What the Cat Dragged In (1986, 2006 Capitol remaster)
I remember seeing this album in the racks of our local Zellers store. I didn’t know the band. I thought CC Deville was pretty cute.
Taking the gender-bending makeup of the mid-80’s to its logical end point, Poison stormed out of Hollywood and onto the charts. They did this with a handful of great singles, including “Talk Dirty to Me”, “Cry Tough”, and “I Won’t Forget You”. Also huge, but barely tolerable as a song, was the singalong “I Want Action”.
Bass “rapin’?” Good god!
Armed with just $23,000, Poison recorded Look What the Cat Dragged In with producer Ric Browde (Ted Nugent, W.A.S.P.) in less than two weeks. What they emerged with was a fun, raunchy and terrible sounding album with some big hits and plenty of filler.
“Cry Tough” was a tight little opener, a hot and bright rocker about going out and givin’ er. “You gotta cry tough, out on the streets, to make your dreams happen!” sings Bret Michaels in full-on cheerleader mode. Unfortunately the sonics of the album leave much to be desired. The guitar, drum and vocal sounds are demo quality at best, but that’s what you get for $23,000 and Ric Browde.
The other singles were all huge. “Talk Dirty to Me” is now minor staple, and “I Want Action” (annoying as it is) is another. The ballad “I Won’t Forget You” is an album highlight, well before Bret & co. had mastered the art of writing hit ballads. Low key, basic and electric, “I Won’t Forget You” is very different from “Every Rose” and some of the later broken-hearted Poison love songs. Paul Stanley has a cameo in the road-ready music video, which didn’t hurt.
That leaves a hell of a lot of room for filler, and Look What the Cat Dragged In has plenty. Of the album tracks, the decent ones include the saucy glam-slam rawking title track, and another song called “Want Some, Need Some”. Both tunes could have used some last-minute tightening up, but neither are as bad as the dreck on the tail end of the album: “#1 Bad Boy”, “Blame it on You” and the horrid “Mama Let Me Go to the Show” all suck absolutely. “Play Dirty” on side one is also pretty awful.
Even with the quality issues in sound and songwriting, Look What the Cat Dragged In sold over 3,000,000 copies. 20 years later, it was given a fresh remastering and three bonus tracks. The remastering could not fix the audio issues, but the bonus tracks are pretty good. Single remixes of “I Want Action” and “I Won’t Forget You” are marginally better than the original album tracks. Somebody realized that they were sonically deficient, and the remixes help a teeny tiny bit. Then Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” is added to the end, a song that got more exposure on the covers album Poison’d! The bonus tracks go a long way towards making the album a little more listenable from start to end.
2/5 stars
Ah, Poison! The band everybody loved to hate! In spite of that, Poison made a couple pretty good albums. Flesh & Blood is the best of the original C.C. DeVille era, and probably their most successful. It spawned a huge headlining tour that also produced a double live album. Flesh & Blood was also their “get serious” album, although in that regard it was only a partial success. The idea was to write and record more mature music and lyrics, something that C.C. was opposed to. He saw nothing wrong with the glam-slam-king-of-noize direction that they started on, and maintained that Look What the Cat Dragged In was their high point. He saw the introduction of blues influences as diluting the Poison sound he liked.
That’s all bullshingles. Flesh & Blood is the best thing C.C. has done, and is second only to Poison’s Native Tongue album with Richie Kotzen. C.C. was still far from a great guitar player, but on most tracks it’s his most accessible and least annoying playing. (On others…well, we’ll get there.) Take the opening track “Valley of Lost Souls” for example (preceded by a jokey answering machine tape called “Strange Days of Uncle Jack”). “Valley” rocks heavy with integrity and an edge that Poison hadn’t displayed before, and C.C. throws in a lot of tasty, toffee-like strings. His soloing will never be considered virtuoso, and his tone has always been thin and annoying, but never has C.C. generated such guitar thrills as he does on this album. (Most of it.)
I’m sure that producer Bruce Fairbairn steered this ship with a firm hand. His stamp is all over Flesh & Blood: from weird segues to rich backing vocals, this is a Fairbairn production through and through. Fairbairn was known to be a taskmaster, and I’m sure he worked C.C. (and the whole band) to the bone. The title track, “(Flesh & Blood) Sacrifice” has his patented, perfectly arranged vocal stamp. The vocals are layered and almost Leppard-lush. When we’re talking about a singer like Bret Michaels, you know it’s not going to be Pavarotti. The credits don’t list additional singers, but there are some names in the tail end of the thank-yous: Paul Laine, for example. Laine was a Vancouver local, where Poison recorded the album. Why is he being thanked? I think it’s safe to assume that Laine and others helped out in the backing vocals department. Anyway, “Sacrifice” is the second excellent song in a row. Say what you like about Poison as performers, they wrote some fucking good songs too.
“Swampjuice (Soul-O)” is some surprisingly good C.C. acoustic blues. Actually not bad at all — but just instrumental filler. As is the next song, a massive huge hit single: “Unskinny Bop”. The song is awful, the lyrics worse, and C.C.’s solo is like razor blades. I mean that in a bad way. Total shit. Garbage. “Let It Play” verges on filler, but it’s good enough. It’s simple but memorably melodic. Better is the timeless sounding single “Life Goes On”. I liked this bombastic electric ballad then, and I still do now. Michaels is a limited singer, but this is a damn good ballad. I give Fairbairn credit for the backing vocal hooks. The first side of the album closes on the forgettable but adequate hard rocker “Come Hell or High Water”.
Kicking off side two with the single “Ride the Wind” is a no-brainer. This song sounds like its title. It sounds like a car song, a rock and roll ode to the thrills of the road. I’d rank this easily among Poison’s best hits — top five. “Don’t Give Up an Inch” is filler, but “Something to Believe In” was another huge single. Hearing it again today, I find it hard to dislike. I wanted to, but I can’t. I think Bret wrote some pretty good lyrics here. The part about his best friend who died “in some Palm Springs hotel room” is about his bodyguard, a guy he was really close to. It’s pretty heartfelt, and the piano ballad still stands up as well as any by Aerosmith from the same era.
Some boring C.C. pedal steel guitar leads into “Ball and Chain”. It’s a pretty good rock boogie, but the second-to-last song “Life Loves a Tragedy” is the best track on the album. Even better than “Ride the Wind” but similar in vibe, this song shoulda woulda coulda been a hit. The soft intro fools you into thinking it’s a ballad. It’s not. It’s a ballsy rocker with another Bret Michaels lyric that you’d call more mature. “My vices have turned to habits, and my habits have turned to stone,” sings Bret. “I gotta stop living at a pace that kills, ‘fore I wake up dead.” Not poetry really, but a hell of a lot better than “Unskinny bop bop, blow me away.” The chorus kills, as does the whole song. Another top five Poison track in my book.
The album ends on a pile of shit called “Poor Boy Blues”. This may well be the worst Poison song of all time. Of all time! C.C.’s playing is so pointless, so brutal, so annoying, that I don’t know why somebody didn’t pull the guitar out of his hands. Wah-wah alone does not a solo make! This song stinks so bad. Dammit, Poison, you’re not a blues band fer fuck’s sakes! This song should have been axed, there is no reason for it to still exist.
The 2006 remastered edition has two bonus tracks. The first is a disappointing acoustic version of “Something to Believe In” from the “Life Goes On” single B-side. It has new lyrics (erasing one of the things I liked about the song) and absolutely pointless guitar playing by C.C. His solos and melodies go nowhere. It’s just a guy playing all kinds of notes on an acoustic guitar that don’t have any direction: There’s no tension, no release, no hooks. This version sucks. Lastly there’s “God Save the Queen”, an instrumental demo version. This too sucks. More directionless soloing from C.C. over the Pistols riff. That’s all it is.
Interestingly the remastered edition has two changes that I’ve noticed. The cover is the “censored” version without the extra blood on the arm. This is a US import, and I think in Canada we had the other cover originally. Second, the reprise of “Strange Days of Uncle Jack” that closes the album is missing. Normally this would fade in from the end of “Poor Boy Blues”. Now, “Poor Boy Blues” ends with a few seconds of silence where that reprise used to be. I don’t know why they did that. I’m assuming somebody mistakenly used a version of the song from a compilation album.
I know I’ve been hard on Poison in this review, but this is actually a great album. Take away “Unskinny Bop” and “Poor Boy Blues” and I would call it pretty damn solid. As for the remaster? Disappointing.
Dedicated to Iron Tom Sharpe, who doesn’t understand that sometimes you just have to blow off steam and review a shitty album.
POISON – Hollyweird (2002 Cyanide Music)
I have a soft spot for Poison, and I have every album. Every album that is, except Hollyweird. After several spins in-store, I realized this was never an album I was going to listen to again. (Although I did, for this review actually — you’re welcome.) Let’s face it, a “classic Poison lineup” reunion is not exactly earthshaking, especially when they traded down a true maestro in Blues Saraceno for CC to return. Not to mention Richie Kotzen before him. CC will never be classified as a guitar hero. It’s CC’s songwriting that he brings to the Poison table, that and some sloppily good rhythms. However Poison’s songwriting on Hollyweird is much like the production values — flat and dull.
13 songs clocking in at just over 40 minutes, this is a collection of short pop rockers and ballads. The cover of “Squeeze Box” is pretty putrid, and Who fans would cringe if they happened upon it. Most of the originals are just plain dull, lacking the bombast, hooks, flash and excitement of any previous Poison album, Native Tongue included. If only Poison could have continued along the lines that they were pursuing with Crack A Smile, or even re-recorded it with CC. Alas, this is the worst of all Poison studio albums, and it was such a lame duck that the band never recorded another one (as of 2014, this is the most recent Poison studio album aside from the covers-only Poison’d).
The opening and riff to “Hollyweird” is pretty decent, but the song itself is pretty suck-tastic. Maybe I should take back what I said about CC. He’s the only good thing about this song. “Shooting Star” (a supposed sequel to “Fallen Angel”) is annoyingly bass heavy, and Bobby Dall ain’t that great a bassist. CC’s riff is the only good thing about it, since the chorus is drowned out in mush. Thom Panuzio isn’t a hack producer by any stretch, but he didn’t even show up on Hollyweird. Then, somebody thought it would be a good idea to let CC DeVille sing lead on “Emperor’s New Clothes”. The sad thing is it’s one of the better songs (even though it sounds more like Sum 41 than Poison). CC sings three songs on Hollyweird, but who cares?
Lowlights: Stinky “Squeeze Box,” whack “Wishful Thinkin’,” generic “Get Ya Some,” dull “Devil Woman,” horrible “Home”…or should I say “Homes,” since both Bret and CC have their own versions of this pop-punk wannabe? (In a row!)
Welcome back to WTF Search Terms. These are real search terms that somehow led people to mikeladano.com. Today, I thought I’d answer some people’s musical questions.
1.why is lenny kravitz last two cds a disappointment
Lenny Kravitz has sucked since cutting off his dreads. Scientists call it “Samson Syndrome”.
2.whats the dirt on richie kotzen screwing bandmates wifes
Great question. Kotzen was actually screwing Rikki Rockett’s girlfriend/fiance while on tour with Poison. Kotzen later married her after being terminated by Poison.
3.glenn tipton can’t play anymore
Incorrect.
4. iron maiden lyrics “what information do you need”
“We want…information…information…information!” – The Prisoner
5. does blackie lawless ever talk to anyone? 2013
Blackie Lawless has taken a vow of silence and now speaks through a computer like Stephen Hawking.
6. i wonder book list of names in the rock roll band kiss used to be in ks benny gene simmons paul stanley ace frehley peter criss and vinnie vincent
When this one slid into my hot little hands, I couldn’t help but laugh. Double Dose of Poison? Look at that cover. Someone forget to give Bret the memo, the 80’s are over. But it was summer, and Poison were touring with the Crue. The cougars were on the prowl, and if that’s not enough reason for a classic rock band to release an album, I don’t know what is.
However, let us not forget, Poison haven’t released any new original music since the dreadful Hollyweird in…God is it almost 10 years already? So when your band is creatively on ice, all you can do is repackage the hits. By my reckoning, Poison have done that very thing almost as many times as they’ve released studio albums.
Anyway, enough of my lecturing. Let’s dig into the album, a very generous slice of Poison, albeit one that wears out its welcome prematurely. The album is wisely sparked off with “Talk Dirty To Me”, their first hit, and still a firecracker 25 (!) years later. Sequenced chronologically, this is followed by the equally familiar “I Want Action”. The lesser known (but still classy) ballad “I Won’t Forget You” is here. So is perhaps the best single for the first album, “Cry Tough” which still has that youthful energy. The perennial “Look What The Cat Dragged In” tops off the material from the first album It’s an inferior song, but one that has proven to have legs over two decades later.
By the second album, Poison had tightened up their chops and songwriting a bit, and the still-great “Nothin’ But A Good Time” is next. The rest of the ’88-’89 singles follow in due course: “Fallen Angel”, “Every Rose” (of course!)” and “Your Mama Don’t Dance”. So far, CD 1 works. It sticks to (mostly) the hits, with the ballads sprinkled about sparingly, exactly as any good rock album should work.
But the first disc ain’t over yet, although this is where the chronological concept is ditched. From album #3, here’s the dreadfully awful “Unskinny Bop” (please, nobody really likes this song)! It’s followed by the Kiss cover “Rock N’ Roll All Nite” which was actually recorded between albums #1 and #2. But the other three singles from album #3 follow in short order: “Ride The Wind”, “Something To Believe In” (another ballad) and “Life Goes On” (wait…two ballads in a row?). Then from album #3, we jump to album #5. “Stand” is the third ballad in a row. While it is more a soul song with the great Richie Kotzen now filling CC Deville’s shoes, it still serves to slow down this disc almost to the point of skipping. Then, for whatever reason, the compilation skips to albums #7 and #8 (the worst album Poison ever did, Hollyweird). “The Last Song” from Power To The People is…holy crap…another (boring) ballad. It is followed by the cover “Shooting Star”. What the devil were they thinking? Four ballads in a row? Sure, we’re not young anymore, but we’re not comatose.
Onto disc two. Keep in mind, Poison have used up most of their hit ammunition on disc one. Disc two relies heavily on covers from the Poison’d album. That’s five more covers for those keeping score, bringing the total of covers on this whole compilation to eight. Eight freaking covers out of 35 songs, that’s 23% covers — almost a quarter of the album! Come on, guys. We know you had all your hits in a brief period of the late 80’s and early 90’s, but what about the great album tracks? Where’s “Ball And Chain”? Where’s “(Flesh & Blood) Sacrifice”? “Valley of Lost Souls”? Where are all the great album tracks that prove Poison was more than a handful of singles? Well, some are here: “Look But You Can’t Touch”, “Love On The Rocks”, but mostly we’re into the covers. If you already have Poison’d, then this disc is pretty redundant. A few tracks from the underrated Crack A Smile CD (with Blues Saraceno on guitar) are here, such as the swanky’ “Sexual Thang”. A few rarities too, “Gotta Face The Hangman” and “Livin’ For The Minute”… but they are rarities for a reason. They don’t hold up to the quality of the hits.
Highlights on this second disc are the bright and sparkling rocker “So Tell Me Why” from album #4 (the live + studio CD Swallow This Live) and a deuce with Richie Kotzen: “Fire And Ice” and “Bastard Son of a Thousand Blues”. The disc, very unwisely, ends with perhaps the worst and most overplayed Poison song in history, “Poor Boy Blues”. Bret, I know you like the blues. I know you like them a lot. But Poison are not a blues band. Never were. Never will be. The closest you ever got was when Richie was in the band. 20 freakin’ years ago.
That about sums it up. If you want a really good, solid, to the point Poison hits album, choose one of these two:
1986-1996 Greatest Hits
The Best of Poison: 20 Years of Rock
Both are single discs, but are boiled down to the basics.
Let’s face it, if you’re a big Poison fan, you already have all these songs, because they’re all on the CDs. If you’re not a big Poison fan…you don’t really want all these songs.
2/5 stars
Disc one:
01. Nothin' But A Good Time
02. Talk Dirty To Me
03. Look What The Cat Dragged In
04. Be The One
05. We're An American Band
06. Life Goes On
07. Every Rose Has Its Thorn
08. Stand
09. Livin' For The Minute
10. Little Willy
11. (Flesh & Blood) Sacrifice
12. I Won't Forget You
13. Rock And Roll All Nite
14. Love On The Rocks
15. Suffragette City
16. Lay Your Body Down
17. Until You Suffer Some (Fire And Ice)
18. No More Lookin' Back (Poison Jazz)
_______________________________________________________________
Disc two:01. Unskinny Bop
02. Cry Tough
03. I Want Action
04. Your Mama Don't Dance
05. Something To Believe In
06. Fallen Angel
07. Ride The Wind
08. Bastard Son Of A Thousand Blues
09. Sexual Thing
10. Can't You See
11. So Tell Me Why
12. What I Like About You
13. Face The Hangman
14. Cover Of The Rolling Stone
15. Poor Boy Blues
16. Look But You Can't Touch
17. Theatre Of The Soul
In 1991, hard rock was breathing its last gasp (for the moment, anyway) and Swallow This Live is a perfect example of how this happened. Many rock fans were fed up with substandard releases, and this is one of the biggest turds of that era.
Swallow This Live was a double — yes, you heard that right — a double-live CD from a band who only had three studio albums! And Poison are not Kiss. On the cassette version, two tracks were missing: “Life Goes On”, and “No More Looking Back”. I think Poison instead should have excluded Rikki Rockett’s painful, overly long drum solo. They definitely should have cut C.C. (billed here as “Cecil”) DeVille’s horrendous guitar flatulance.
Poison imploded before this was even released. The fact that C.C. DeVille was only seen in the video for “So Tell Me Why” for a matter of seconds spoke volumes. (Opening lyric of the song: “I’d like to put to bed the rumours”.) This was after the train wreck that was the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. There’s C.C. with bright pink hair, not able to play an entire song…it was no surprise when he was fired, although the band waited until after the release of Swallow This Live to tell anybody.
C.C. also hated the bluesy, more serious direction that Poison’s music was taking, which was fully realized on their next studio album, Native Tongue. With guitar maestro Richie Kotzen as the catalyst, Poison finally delivered a mature piece of work which of course did not sell. But that’s another story.
Here, we have a very rough sounding live disc, overly long, and embarassingly bad. Every song is superior in its studio version, making this album completely redundant. Ironically, coming from the band who once said, “Fans comes to see us play, not PRESS play,” you can hear lots of backing vocal tapes, especially on “I Want Action”. You do get basically every hit that Poison ever had, which was an impressive amount. However, even that couldn’t pad out a full 2 CD release, so they also played some really terrible songs live. “Look What the Cat Dragged In” is awful, but even worse is the blues massacre, “Poor Boy Blues”. Bret’s ad-lib is a cheesy mess.
The only reason to buy this CD is the new studio material Two of the new songs are among the best that Poison had recorded up to this time. “So Tell Me Why” is a firecracker of a song, a brilliant rocker held aloft by fantastic guitar melodies. “Only Time Will Tell” is one of their best ballads, along the lines of “Life Goes On” or “I Won’t Forget You” crossed with some Native Tongue maturity.
If you can get Swallow This Live at a decent price (I used to sell it around $8.99), pick it up for the new studio stuff, but don’t blame me if C.C.’s live guitar solo makes your ears bleed! (Note: I know this has been reissued as a single disc with various track omissions, so buy according to your needs.)
2/5 stars
Don’t forget that Poison’s second album was originally to be called Swallow This!
POISON – Open Up and Say…Ahh! (1988. 2006 Captiol remaster)
Man, did I feel old when this 20th Anniversary Edition came out. I remember buying the cassette back in ’89 (the year after it was released). I even conned my dad out of the $10 for it by saying it was for a school project! (It was…sort of.) I purchased this at A&A Records & Tapes on the way home from school.
I’m glad that today, Poison are still around (as a live entity, anyway), and back to the same four guys who rose to fame in the 80’s. Although Flesh & Blood is a good album, and Native Tongue is criminally ignored, Open Up and Say…Ahh! is actually quite strong and best represents the early Poison sound.
Starting off with “Love On The Rocks” (featuring the lyric “swallow this” which was actually the original title of this album), Poison are off to a strong start. The riff is catchy, somewhere between glam rock and old classic rock n’ roll. What C.C. Deville brings to the party is a love of rock n’ roll, and that’s why when he left. The band went more bluesy, too bluesy for his tastes. That and the drug addiction did C.C. in. I don’t evem mind his guitar sound on this, I kind of like it. It’s overdriven and shrill, but it rocks and C.C. manipulates his instrument to pull off some cool sub-Frehley solos.
From there it’s the classic “Nothing But A Good Time”. The riff seems ripped off from “Deuce” by Kiss, but then later re-ripped off by Kiss for their song “Never Enough”! Anyway, you know the hits already, so I won’t spend too much time discussing these songs. Suffice to say that I still hear “Nothin’ But A Good Time” on the radio.
What was actually surprising was that Open Up and Say…Ahh! is more than the sum of its singles. The album tracks are almost entirely as strong. “Back to the Rocking Horse” is another fun, catchy Poison rocker, followed by the harmonica-laden-shoulda-been-a-single “Good Love”. “Tearin’ Down The Walls” ended side one on a fairly strong note, and actually features some interesting changes.
Side two started with “Look But You Can’t Touch”, a juvenile sex song (it sounded juvenile to me even then), which nonetheless has a lot of energy. Then, three singles in a row: “Fallen Angel” (best song on the album), “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (no comment required), and the Loggins & Messina cover “Your Mama Don’t Dance”. Why was bassist Bobby Dall getting arrested in that video? I still don’t know! The album ended with “Bad To Be Good”, a bit too slow and ploddy, and the weakest song on the record.
This special edition has just a scant two bonus tracks, and one is a useless interview. Most people will stop the CD before the interview. The other is the very raw B-side “Livin’ For The Minute” which, if memory serves, was originally the B-side on the “Every Rose” 7″ single. It’s a fast rocker, demo-quality, and is more akin to the sound of the first Poison album. I don’t know where the interview comes from. In all my years of collecting singles, I’ve never run across it before, so if you care about it, it does seem to be a genuine rarity. “Livin’ For The Minute” has been released multiple times elsewhere. (Missing is the B-side “Gotta Face the Hangman”, available on the Crack A Smile CD.)
Also of note, if you had the censored version of this cover, the original has been restored on this edition. Yes, this cover was censored. Columbia House sold a version with the tongue and everything below blacked out. Packaging-wise, don’t expect much else.
As an album, this is fun and has a great 80’s sound, thanks to the production talents of Tom Werman. Younger kids will dig it for the pop punk-like energy. Older fans will want it for nostalgia purposes. That, and it still rocks really well.
As much as I usually maligned C.C. DeVille (Swallow This Live is almost unlistenable), I really like his work here. He may be no guitar wizard, but at some point you have to recognize the fun guitar playing here. It’s like toffee — sticky, sweet, and good. Too much might make you sick, but in moderation, it hits the spot. And really, he weaves some really fun melodic fills over his riffs, like icing on a cake.
RICHIE KOTZEN – Electric Joy by Richie Kotzen (1991 Shrapnel)
Albums by Richie Kotzen were impossible to find in Canada. My only exposure to his music was “Dream of a New Day”, from his second album Fever Dream. Fever Dream was his first vocal album, but Kotzen returned to instrumentals on his third, Electric Joy. I’d seen his picture in dozens of guitar magazines, but hadn’t heard his tunes until “Dream of a New Day” was included on the Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey soundtrack.
His debut album was a hit with the shredders, but three albums in, Kotzen had already delivered three completely different pieces of work. Electric Joy has some of the playfulness of the debut, but is mostly a jaw-dropping collection of intricately composed pieces that skirt multiple genres including funk, country, bluegrass, jazz, fusion, and blues. If I had to pick out an influence, I would say that Electric Joy sounds like Richie had been listening to a lot of the “two Steves”: Vai and Morse. His technique is top-notch.
I first got this on a trip to Frankenmuth, Michigan. My parents made a point of going there every spring and I started tagging along, and then later on my friend Peter joined us as well. We’d stay at the Bavarian Inn and on the way back to Ontario, we’d stop at the stores in Port Huron, where I found this as well as old rare Savatage cassettes.
“B Funk” opens the album with some light-speed bluegrass-y licks, but it keeps changing, from a funked up rocker with shredding, to a melodic “chorus” section. Then it’s back to the bluegrass from space.
At this point I’ll point out that Kotzen plays all the instruments except drums, himself. That’s Richie’s standby Atma Anur on drums. What this means is, that incredibly dexterous bassline you’re hearing on “B Funk” is also performed by Kotzen! And it’s almost every bit as stunning as the guitar!
“Electric Toy” begins ballady, with some lyrical Vai-like moments. Of course, Kotzen can’t help but do what he does, so there are different sections, some at lickity-split tempos. This is followed by “Shufina”, which is essentially a blues jam. Kotzen’s deep bends are appropriate, but before too long he’s harmonizing with himself on some unconventional melodies.
A smoking hot riff ignites “Acid Lips”, little lightning licks flicker in and out, but this one has a solid groove. (It can’t be easy grooving with yourself on bass.) “Slow Blues” contains some of Richie’s most lyrical lead work. If you can imagine the lead guitar taking on the role of a singer, then “Slow Blues” is probably the most accessible song on the album.
The next song “High Wire” is uncatagorizable, suffice to say that like all of Electric Joy it combines quirky notes with shreddery, funk and groove. My favourite song is “Dr. Glee”. It sounds like it seems it should – gleeful. I find this pleasant melody to be very summery. Kotzen guitar has so many different sounds and shades, even just within this one song.
“Hot Rails” is another one that sounds like advertized…a train racing down the track. Kotzen’s slide work is anything but simple. This one’s so fast it’s hard to keep track of all the cool different guitar parts. It almost sounds like Kotzen wrote a blues shuffle, and then decided to hit fast forward on his tape deck and learn it at that speed!
Electric Joy closes with “The Deece Song”, which thankfully is mid-tempo allowing us to catch our collective breath. It’s another great performance, similar in style to “Dr. Glee”. It has its sweeping Satriani moments as well.
The production on the album is very dry, which is different from what a lot of the other instrumentalists were doing at the time. While this means it might take some more time to penetrate an album that is loaded to the brim with dense ideas already, it is a worthwhile endevour.
In a bizarre turn of events, Kotzen briefly put his solo career on hold. He received a phone call from Bret Michaels. The Poison frontman was looking for a replacement for the departed CC Deville. The fact that Kotzen was from Pennsylvania, not already in a band, and wrote and sang original material caught Michaels’ eye in a magazine article. Having a shredder, but one with some feel too, might garner Poison some respect in the tough 1990’s.
Kotzen did succeed in co-writing (and in some cases, writing entire songs himself) their most accomplished album, Native Tongue. Of course, it did not sell. The Poison relationship imploded because of another relationship: the one that Kotzen was secretly having with drummer Rikki Rockett’s fiance! Kotzen eventually married her, and he was replaced in Poison by another shredder, Blues Saraceno (who was in the running with Kotzen in the first place).
POISON – “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (1988 Capitol 3″ CD single)
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