-Matt Magill
I think
that the mantra for last Friday night had to be consistency. That is the best way to describe the bands
that played (I didn’t get to the show in time to see Lita Ford, anyone have a
review on the opener? Drop me a comment
and let me know how she did). Poison and
Def Leppard have been around for a long time and this is not my first time
seeing either band so I do have a baseline to go from for each.
Let’s start
with Poison as they played first (an abbreviated hour long set that hit on the
major hits of the group but still was able to throw in a decent guitar solo by
CC and an uninspired drum solo that was sandwiched by a cover of Led Zeppelin’s
“Moby Dick”). It’s pretty sad when the
cover is the highlight of the performance, but I think that is only because of
the fact that I have seen Poison so many times (they always seem to be opening
for the band that I want to see) and their performances are so consistent to
the point of being robotic now. This is
not to say that Bret Michaels is any less energetic and appreciative than he
was when I first saw them open for KISS back in ’04 (or ’05 I can’t remember),
but there are only so many times that you can hear any of Poison’s catalogue of
songs without hoping for something different to spice things up. I think that is why I enjoyed the “Moby Dick”/drum
solo interlude so much, because I had never heard it from the band before so it
broke up the familiarity of the set.
The
musicianship was good except for Rikki Rocket on drums as he seemed to be more
going through the motions than anything else.
Whereas Michaels really seemed to be feeding off of the energy that the
crowd gave back to him (and there was quite the energy in the crowd as everyone
knew every word to the songs that were played, especially since the band only
played the hits) Rocket’s performance was not on par with the rest of the
band. That was the only real blip on the
radar as the rest of the performance was solid.
Not spectacular but definitely not a bad concert. The sound quality was better than Iron Maiden
which proves to me that not all bands from the ‘80’s subscribe to the “turn
everything up as loud as it will go and hope for the best” mantra.
Aside from
the drumming, the main problem I had with that performance (and this has
nothing to do with the band itself) is just the simple act of seeing someone
old enough to be my mother (or pretty close to it) singing “Talk dirty to me,” it
just kind of creeps me out. That being
said, there were plenty of women at this show both young and old, so eye candy
was not hard to come by.
Now on to
the headliners: Def Leppard. I had not
seen Def Leppard for nearly a decade (’02 or ’03 at the New York State Fair,
and to be honest, this was before I was allergic to beer and I looked a lot
older than my nineteen years of age.
I’ll let you do the math.) A lot
of what I remember from that show was obviously the hits as well as playing all
of “side one” of the High and Dry
album (remember when you used to have to flip over the record/cassette, damn
I’m getting old). Other than that (and
the fact that our seats were way too expensive for the distance from the stage
and being stuck right behind a support beam) nothing stood out as terrible
about the performance. I was able to go
into this performance without the overindulgence of alcohol that dulled my
senses the last time (not that I didn’t pregame in the parking lot with my
“brother” [we’ve been best buds for twenty-five years, that’s pretty much brother
status in my book] Donnie, we just didn’t down a whole bottle). The performance started out ok, with the band
playing their newest single “Undefeated” from the Mirrorball live disc. It
took the band a couple songs to get the sound quality up to par but at least
the techs were tweaking it to get the best possible results unlike other
concerts I have seen recently, cough-Maiden-cough. By about the third song they were on a roll
and the only other sound issues they had all night were after a break in the
action whereupon we would be treated to a guitar/drum solo. It would then take half a song to get the
sound back to a cohesive unit.
The band,
even after over thirty years in the business, is as tight as ever and each song
of the set was studio quality. The only
real complaint, and this is a minor one, is that age has not treated the voices
of any of the band members kindly. Lead
singer Joe Elliott is no longer able to hit the high notes that he has in the
past and the rest of the band sounded slightly off key on their harmonies, just
enough to make it noticeable. To be
perfectly honest it was not a big deal though, and really, Elliott could
probably have taken the night off completely as the crowd sang every word to
every song with as much volume and enthusiasm as if they had written the songs
themselves. Elliott worked with this as
much as possible, especially when he was faced with the aforementioned high
notes (such as in the chorus to “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”) letting the crowd
take those parts of the songs.
Other than
that minor gripe, and really it’s something that can be said for pretty much
every aging singer (with the exception of maybe Paul Stanley and Bruce
Dickinson) the concert was great. My
favorite part of the night though was the brief acoustic medley. It started with Elliott seated on what looked
to be a crate the roadies use to haul equipment in with his acoustic guitar,
strumming and singing the Rolling Stones’ “You can’t always get what you
want”. Now I don’t have a million
dollars, so that is probably as close to a Rolling Stones concert as I am ever
going to get and it was a good cover. As
he was playing that, other members of the band came out, all with acoustic
guitars (except drummer Rick Allen who emerged with maracas) and they all sat
on the crate next to Elliott, almost campfire “Kumbaya” style. They then went through a medley of some of
their softer hits. While this did not
get the same rise out of the crowd that the more energetic parts of the
performance did, I enjoyed it more for its subtlety, intimacy and focus on the
musicianship of the band. The night
closed with a one song encore (really?
Just one song?) of “Rock of Ages” which I guess is pretty appropriate
considering that this was the Rock of Ages Tour, undoubtedly to piggyback on
the movie of the same name.
Overall,
this was a solid show from both bands. There
was nothing mind-blowingly spectacular, but there was also nothing about either
performance that made me want my money back or desire to split early to beat
the traffic. If you get the chance, and
you enjoy 80’s metal in the least bit, I would definitely suggest catching a
Def Leppard show. The crowd skews a
little older but most people are around my age so that was definitely not a
hindrance. There was plenty of eye candy
and only a few giant douches (which seemed to be way too close to Donnie and me
for comfort). But the general atmosphere
of the show was great and only got better once the band really got going.
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