Review Summary: A textbook case of misanthropy gone wrong.
Bret Michaels. Nowadays we know him as the charisma-less star of one of the dumbest reality shows ever, as well as an amateur “actor” in highly questionable “art” movies. However, there was a time when he was known to all and sundry as merely the lead singer for Poison, one of the most successful second-tier bands of the glam universe. Putting out two seminal albums in the eighties, the band then spent the rest of their career struggling to recapture their flame, all while getting lost in Michaels’ countrified experiments. Their albums decreased steadily in quality, and the group eventually decided to break up. Michaels, however, would not give up that easily, and continued to milk his five minutes of fame by any means necessary.
One such means was, believe it or not, a movie. No, not the Pam Anderson sextape we were talking about before. An honest-to-God Hollywood movie, which Bret financed, wrote, directed and starred in. And, of course, this little misanthropic project would not be complete without Michaels writing the soundtrack, as well. Hence, the record we are analyzing today, which ended up being far more than a crummy soundtrack to a crummy movie, instead becoming something of a landmark in Poison’s history. Not only because it launched Michaels’ pathetic solo career, but also because it cause the rift between the lead singer and guitarist C.C.DeVille to mend, eventually leading to the resurgence of Poison. However, sadly, its merits pretty much end there.
To put it bluntly, this is terrible. If anything, it should teach Michaels that sometimes trying to do everything yourself is not the best course to take. The songwriting’s poor, the production is
very poor (the whole thing sounds like an unfinished demo) and the rhythm section sounds like it was programmed with ten-cent software. Plus, even when a good song tries to surface, the misplaced attempts at modernity completely kill it, making this album virtually worthless.
And the worst part is, early on, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be that way. Opener
Party Rock Band is a decent song, with clever and chuckle-worthy self-referential lyrics (
”in 1986, fans pulled at my hair/now it’s 1996 and there is none there/girls used to talk dirty to me/but now it just hurts when I pee”). Even if musically it’s not all that good (someone should tell Michaels and DeVille that ‘Poison meets Green Day’ is not something people are calling for) this song gets by on its tongue-and-cheek nature, and actually promises a better album than
A Letter From Death Row ends up being. The following two songs, while dull, are also not terrible, with the second being a country-rock anthem the kind
Flesh And Blood had in droves and the third a stereotypical power-ballad.
By this point, we are bored, but not appalled. Sadly, it is not to last. As soon as
I’d Die For You rolls around, we realize the crap is about to hit the propeller pretty darn soon. And sure enough, it does. Terrible attempts at modernizing the hard-rock sound begin to pop up, and the album suffers in consequence. Rock bottom is hit on
Little Willy, which sadly has nothing to do with the competent Poison cover; instead, it’s a laughable collaboration with a tenth-tier r’n’b/rap “artist”, which makes
Power To The People sound like a masterpiece in comparison. And while there is never anything as bad as that again, the following songs range from boring to flat-out poor, containing very few moments of interest for the listener. A good song pops up exactly once, in the form of the title track, a decent stomp with another good set of lyrics; at the very end, there is another sketch of a good idea,
Steel Bar Blues, but it’s over far too quickly, leaving a sense of frustrating incompletion. Everything else is absolutely worthless, and should constitute grounds for Michaels to deny this little episode ever existed.
Unfortunately, the lead singer isn’t doing that, and continues to resurface these songs in his various compilations; you, however, should do the right thing and pretend this whole debacle is nothing but a joke someone made in their bedroom to denigrate Michaels’ name. That still won’t make it good, but at least it will make it funny. Kindly avoid.
Recommended Tracks
Party Rock Band
A Letter From Death Row
