Review Summary: A valid historical document, but a milquetoast musical release.
With veteran rock bands, there are a few things you can expect. Comebacks are one of them, often with the musicians swearing that they’re about more than just the money and that all their differences have been put aside. Similarly, once a comeback occurs, you can expect a slew of cash-grabbing, attention-seeking releases, with very few of them consisting of original material. And when that well runs out, you can expect the band to go back to the past and unearth sometimes that might possibly make them a few extra couple of million dollars.
Poison’s reunion followed all these patterns, and, like many similar ones, eventually found itself forced into the last step described in the previous paragraph. With cover albums, ballad collections, best-ofs and live packages all exhausted, the band had to dip into their past to try and draw a rabbit out of their hat. Hence
Seven Days Live, an undeniably important historical document which is, however, no more than average in the actual musical chapter.
This album’s main strength lies in its uniqueness: after all, apart from drab album
Native Tongue, there is precious little evidence of guitarist Richie Kotzen’s stint in Poison. The chemistry between Kotzen and the other band members was never really there the way it was with C.C.DeVille, and the axeman left shortly after the completion of the tour, eventually making a name for himself with both Mr. Big and his own, dignified solo career. However, the aforementioned tour spawned a video, released in 1993, and which would serve as the basis for an audio recording 15 years later.
Now, live recordings were nothing new to Poison, which at this point had no less than two in their discography; however,
Seven Days Live holds some significant differences in regard to those albums, not the least of which lies in the setlist. One glance will immediately tell you what’s wrong: too much
Native Tongue. A few period-pieces from that album were to be expected, since this was the tour for it; however, nobody really expected half an album’s worth of filler tracks from that dire record, which sadly is what the fan gets here. Worse still, the live setting does precious little to enhance these tracks, which – apart from the nice stripped-bare version of
Stand – sound exactly as boring as they did in the studio album. The audience is not exactly helpful, either, only really manifesting itself in the big hit songs, and contributing to make this a poor live experience.
Which is not to say all is bad, though; after all, there’s still half an album’s worth of those tracks nobody expects to be left out of a Poison live album. And these – which include
Stand – are significantly better than the ones from
Native Tongue, both because the audience finally gets behind the band and because of Richie Kotzen’s guitar style. That’s right, the one thing that didn’t work on
Native Tongue is the one thing that works in these songs, with Kotzen showing a penchant for deviating from C.C.DeVille’s original solos, but also to make them better.
Fallen Angel and
Look What The Cat Dragged In are the two best examples of how his intricate, rococo guitar style can make an old hit acquire a whole new identity. Unfortunately, unlike previous albums, this one has no guitar solo – a shame, since it would have been interesting to compare Kotzen’s approach to that to DeVille’s.
Other than the aforementioned differences, there is nothing out of the ordinary.
Ride The Wind is still the best song Poison ever wrote, Rikki Rockett gets his – increasingly short – moment in the spotlight, poor
Good Love gets a proper butchering, and Bret Michaels swears like a mother*cker. Meaning, it’s a Poison live album, with all the good, bad and risible connotations that entails. And, much as the other live albums, it is essential to nobody, pretty much constituting a novelty item for fans and collectors. The historical aspect does give it an edge over
Swallow This and
Power To The People, but Poison’s definitive live album wouldn’t be released until the following year.
Recommended Tracks
Ride The Wind
Stand
Look What The Cat Dragged In
