Poison- Look What the Cat Dragged In (Capitol, 1986)
Current Gemm price: $2.20- $536.25
By: Pepsi Sheen
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If yer talkin' model-banging millionaires in pink lip-gloss, make mine old Duran Duran over these guys, anyday. They have like, 100 better songs, and Andy "Every Song Is Bang A Gong" Taylor  outrocks Republican crack-head C.C. Deville with one whammy-bar tied behind his back. "Talk Dirty To Me" was one of the best videos of the hairspray era. Unfortunately, Poison had pretty much shot their whole "creative" confetti-cannon load by the end of that three minutes and twenty seconds long video, which was really just Hanoi Rocks' "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" dumbed down and rehashed, with a bigger budget for David Lee Roth style-ramps and day-glo amps thrown in. To say that Poison were all the worst parts of Motley Crue mixed in with all the worst parts of Duran Duran does a great disservice to both the "wild boys" and those other "#1 badboys" who figure they're STILL kickin' ass, on the wild side, mind you, but fuggit, I'm feelin' kinda "wild" myself, rightchere, what with these strains of "Ya gotta cry tough right out on the streets/ to make your dreams happen..." floatin' through my head...
  
These gratutitous (hairdressing, lifeguard) poseurs only ever had three or four ideas to begin with, (ripping-Off Cheap Trick, DLR, Kiss, "Two Steps From The Move", and ok, maybe the Bay City Rollers) and by the second album, they were imitating, like, Bon Jovi and Loggins & Messina. Metal-heads still argue about who was more important-Motley Crue or Poison. Uhh..."Too Fast For Love" VS. "Look what The Cat Dragged In"? "Shout At The Devil" or "Open Up & Say Ahhh"? Vince and his sewer rat whine and all their misguided motley monkey machismo could even still outrock Poison--even with T-Bone in hand-cuffs. Chicks endowed Poison with their mythological metal stature, cos chicks always, always fall for the money and threads-Poison were sorta like the 80's Strokes. Glam for pussies or glam for pussy, whichever way you look at it, these guys barely ever produced half an album's worth of decent songs. "Unskinny Bop"(???) Are you KIDDING ME? You can sorta tell C.C. WANTS to be cool so badly, which is whyt he keeps quitting the band to form all these faux arena-punk outfits like, uhh, Samantha 7 (and wasn't there one called The Ex-Husbands, or somethin'?), but he's just too rich to be good, he's too invested in Republicanism and crack, and his obsessive desire to become Steve Stevens...waitaminute! YOU EVER SEE THOSE TWO IN THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME? Shit! I've solved a decades-long mystery, friends, but WHY, STEVE? Why would you wanna play for that bald poseur Brett Michaels, when you co-wrote "Rebel Yell" with Billy Idol??? It has something to do with "Two Steps From The Move"-that's all I know. Hmmm...
  
C.C. wisely(?) split Poison for awhile, after getting beat-up by life-guard Brett and kicked off their tour bus, and abandoned on the side of the road; and hired SPIKE from the LONDON QUIREBOYS to help him ruin some old Hank Williams song, but really, no matter how many other bands C.C. forms, he'll always be back to argue with bald poseur Brett Michaels some more. He can't help it-it's all that money and crack. It makes people think Bill O'Reilley and Ollie North are their friends. Dementia. And that confusing secret identity. Just think, I'd bought into that whole "VH1 Behind The Music" story about how his "house of whores had become a house of horrors", when really, he'd just been donning a black wig and gigging with Michael Jackson and the Atomic Playboys! But seriously, jokes, how these guys lasted as long as they did positively baffles me. POISON just sucked ass didn't they? As many of you know, that's how you get places in this culture-look at the celebrities of today! Carson Dailey? Ashton Kutcher? The White Stripes? Paris Hilton? JUST SUCK ASS! It's the winning-formula. Phelching makes phenomenon's out of hairdressers and golf-caddies! Sucking ass sells millions. "Fallen Angel", "I Want Action", "Nothin' But A Good Time", "Talk Dirty To Me", fuck, let's even give 'em "Cry Tough", cos it was catchy, if shamelessly insipid.. OK, so that's five good songs, not counting lame power ballads like "I Won't Forget You Baby" and "Every Rose Has It's Thorn". But who among us can remember anything about any of these following tunes whatsoever:  "Play Dirty", "Look What the Cat Dragged In", "Want Some, Need Some", "Blame It on You", "#1 Bad Boy", "Let Me Go to the Show"??? Everyone you ever knew, even the mighty Sleazegrinder probably (Ahem. I have never OWNED a fuckin' Poison record in my life, although I will concede that EVERYBODY I KNEW had it- Sleaze), owned this album on cassette at some point--it sold millions---and all I can remember about any of these songs is well--NOTHING!  They did manage to kinda rip off a buncha references to Motley Crue titles from "Too Fast For Love"- (i.e. "#1"..."; "...The Show") which musta pissed Nikki Sixx off to no end!
  
I don't hate Poison, I just shudder when people take them seriously. Their bio at their website talks about all the years they spent "paying their dues" (richboy talk for livin' hand to mouth for a couple of weeks) and even claims some unnamed critic compared them to (only Brett Michaels would ever try to float this shit): "Kiss meets the Sex Pistols-on acid." Remember how every single jocks-gone-glam, mall-rat, party band insisted on comparing themselves to the pasty, poor, confrontational, revolutionary, Sex Pistols? Fuckin' absurd. MTV and Poison really kinda ruined rock'n'roll for about a decade-by shamelessly commercializing it, and watering it down, to where people were so sick of fake cowboy ballads and empty anthems and shiny trousers that they all decided to pretend they were needle-creeps, moaned on and on about their inner-child, and refused to wash their ugly flannels for five or six years in grunge-y protest. To this day, whenever I'm talking about "glam" to civilians, they're inevitably envisioning these four blow-dried doofs in their Lip Service vests, sliding outta big dayglo-green lip-prints. It's frustrating. Where I grew up, people mighta still called 'em fags while waiting in line to buy tickets to their concerts, but everybody gave their consent, ultimately, that Poison could be referred to as heavy metal. I'll never understand. They even made ME wanna listen to the Jesus And Mary Chain, and dress drab, and button my shirts up all the way. As Kim Fowley said to me recently, "When you pay to play, all things are possible!"  

Further:
Aqua Net (let's face it.)
Revlon
Poison official website

-Pepsi Sheen

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