Rokken down in Tampa town

Web log: 10:21 p.m. 07/28/2008

Welcome to the first blog of my life.

Kristin has instructed me to chronicle our experience at the July 22 Poison/Dokken/Sebastian Bach concert at Tampa's Ford Amphitheatre. I guess she thinks I'm obligated because we got free tickets. It's like when your employer sends you to a nice locale for a conference, and you think you'll enjoy a few days away from the office at a free hotel with free food. But then when you get back, your boss demands a memo on what you learned and how you'll use it to become a better employee.

So what did I learn at the concert? Not much, except that rock 'n' roll is still a great way to spend a summer evening, even if the players and most of the crowd are well past their prime.

Sebastian Bach, the ex-Skid Row frontman, was first up. Although the tickets listed the start time as 7 p.m., we could hear he and his band take the stage as we approached the ticket booth at about 6:50. So we missed the first couple of songs, but one was the Aerosmith cover "Back in the Saddle" from Bach's new CD, so that was no great loss. Once we found our seats, we were in for a great start to our show. Throughout his set, Bach proved why he belongs among the top lead singers from the '80s and early '90s. He stalked the stage, hitting every high note and scream, and prodded the half-interested Poison crowd to wake up and rawk. The set included a good mix of Skid Row songs and stuff from the new CD, "Angel Down." Highlights were "Monkey Business" (my favorite Skid Row song) and the closer, "Youth Gone Wild," but I was impressed with the new stuff, too, encouraging me to buy the CD. On a side note, the lead guitarist from Sebastian's "Baching" band looked creepily like the late "Dimebag" Darrell of Pantera fame.

Next up, Dokken. If you know anything about me, you know that Dokken has been my favorite band since July 1985, when I first heard "In My Dreams" in the back of Ty Fiegel's car on the way to American Legion baseball games. OK, you probably didn't know all of that detail, but you know I dig Dokken. So my review of this part of the show will probably be more harsh than it should be, but I have high standards. First the good part: This is the seventh time I've seen Dokken live, and it's probably the best they've sounded since 1995. The band is basically a Don Dokken solo project, considering that he is the only member remaining from the "classic lineup" that last played together in 1997. But hired guns Jeff Martin (drummer, Badlands, Racer X) and Chris McCarvill (bassist, House of Lords, Obsession) are seasoned pros who can not only play the songs but provide backup vocals that are crucial to Dokken's harmonies. Plus, new guitarist Jon Levin is an old-school shredder who sounds just like Dokken's old guitarist, George Lynch. Unfortunately, we saw the next-to-last show for Martin, who was fired after the West Palm Beach show. But he sounded good to me. Highlights of the set were "Breaking the Chains," which sounded heavier than I've ever heard it, and "In My Dreams," which featured a surprise pyrotechnic blast. There were negatives, starting with the fact that Dokken did not play anything from the new CD "Lightning Strikes Again." We also were cheated out of a song. I noticed Don going backstage midway though the set and talking to some official-looking dude. Later, that official signaled the number 1 to Don, which I guessed meant that Dokken should play just one more song, which they did after Don whispered something to each member. According to other set lists I've seen, we lost out on "Tooth & Nail", which is not one of my favorites, but still. Also, Don's crowd patter was an at all-time low, which is saying something. Halfway through the set, he joked, "Well, we've gotta get going. That's it." The only way the band would stay, he said, is if everybody yelled "F--- you." Wow. Why, as an opener, would you ever threaten to leave early? Does Don really think a Poison crowd is going to stop him from exiting the stage? He also did the old joke where he says he wrote a song during the Civil War and for some reason took credit for writing the song "Just Got Lucky" when everybody who owns "Tooth & Nail" knows Jeff Pilson wrote that song. See, I told you I would be too harsh. But, annoyances aside, it was still a thrill to see and hear Dokken one more time. You never know when it might be the last time.

Poison took the stage as night fell. They stormed out to "Look What the Cat Dragged In", and I couldn't believe the energy. These guys are in their mid-40s now, and they're sprinting around the stage, up and down stairs, for 80 minutes. It's pretty amazing. It probably helped that they had two days off right before Tampa, but they put on a heckuva show. Despite all his jackassery on reality TV, Bret Michaels is a great frontman and leader. And he, C.C. and Bobby seemed to interact well on stage despite all the past grievances between them. They played all the hits and most of the first CD. I'd forgotten how much I had liked all those songs back in the day. It surprised me to realize as I prepared for the show that I didn't own a Poison CD. I have all the old stuff on cassette, but I'd never bothered to update the collection. I might have to now. I didn't understand, though, the necessity of having C.C. and Rikki do solos. I'm sure it's for pacing and to get the other guys off stage for a while, but musicianship is not Poison's forte. They had just one encore, so maybe they could add an encore to get some rest and forgo the solos. It also got tiring to hear Bret say "C.C., play me that guitar" before the solo in every song. By the time it was actually part of a song -- "C.C., pick up that guitar and talk to me" -- in "Talk Dirty to Me" we had already heard a version of it six or seven times. Also, there was a cool video screen behind the stage that Poison put to good use, but several of the graphic elements said "Poison 2007" from last year's tour. Now, I don't know PowerPoint, but I bet it wouldn't be too hard to update that.

So, to sum up, it was a rockin' night in Tampa, and we got more than our money's worth!

-Tim