Design Challenges

Poison'ed by Rock of Love

My wife bought tickets to see Poison in concert this past labor day weekend. I think it came about because she has been watching Rock of Love, a reality TV show on VH1, where Brett Michaels is trying to find the girl who will rock his world.

In this show, he basically has 20 sluts to pick from and week after week he dismisses them and in the end he will supposedly date one for a while. VH1 puts it like this instead, Twenty lucky ladies will get their chance for an All-Access pass to Bret Michaels' heart and to share in all his superstar lifestyle. Bret will invite twenty handpicked beautiful women to move into his rock and roll palace in the Hollywood Hills and compete for his heart. They must win over his mind and his body by proving their love for Bret, their passion for rock and their potential to be the perfect "Rock Star Girlfriend."

Anyways, I digress, so we went down to the Times Union Center-Performing Art in downtown JAX and got ready to check out the show. The concert was better than I expect it, though my expectations were really, really low. Poison was the headlining band, but Vains of Jenna and Ratt opened up.

Vains of Jenna is an up and coming Swedish band. They were pretty good and kind of remind me of a new Guns n Roses. They played for a good half hour and though the acoustics were just ok, you could still feel the soul in the music and lyrics. These guys are alright and I see a long future for them.

On the other hand, I can't say the same for Ratt, man they are old. Sometimes you must know when to quit. These dudes definitely missed their prime. I must confess, I barely remember hearing of them in the 80's and vaguely recall hearing the song which made them a popular 80's Hair Band, Round and Round. The only saving grace through the 45 minute torturous set was that we had 3rd row seating which makes any bad concert a decent one.

Lastly, Poison took the stage. They rock out for a good hour and the crowd cheer and went wild. The dudes in front of us were past drunk, and so was most of the crowd, but one of them kept looking out for the Rock of Love babes, I think the TV show is really what is driving that tour to selling out. There were some highlights to the concert though. CC did a great 5-6 minute guitar solo and so did drummer Rikki Rockett. Both solo were accompanied by great stage displays of lighting and fire effects. Rockett was elevated by hydraulics to give the audience a view from below the ground during the standing ovation performance. Brett seems to be loosing his voice, but is always great to see and hear that which reminds you of the older days and reminisce in the mind of the good times, which are only getting better as I age.

The bottom line is that though Poison nor Ratt would have been my first choice of concert, I was glad that the wife bought tickets as it provided for a great night out. I do have to say that they were some funky people in attendance and the two couples sitting in the orw in front of us almost put up as great a show as the bands. To briefly explain, the two wives started making out, the husbands tried to separate them to end up in a threesome (foursome, except the dudes were abstaining from kissing each other, phewww!!!!) tongue twisting event, followed by the two wives dry humping the husbands for the three hour long concert experience. These were people in their thirties, closer to forty, you would have thought they would have gotten that out of their system many years ago; or at the very least know better to take it to the privacy of their own homes. Oh well, it provided for some fun talk among the neighboring crowd.

Labels: concert, Jacksonville, Poison, Ratt, Vains of Jenna