{"id":41145,"date":"2008-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/seven-days-live\/"},"modified":"2008-10-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-05T00:00:00","slug":"seven-days-live","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/seven-days-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Days Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

My kids get on the bus every day and I tell them \u201cMake good choices.\u201d Bret Michaels? Make good choices, because lately, you\u2019re skidding into the crapper. The \u201cRock Of Love\u201d <\/b>release was pitiful. I was hoping this newly-issued live release, as a footnote to a dark time for the band — namely the Richie Kotzen era — would be a good choice. Sadly, no. This album captures the era in which original guitarist C.C. DeVille was replaced by Richie Kotzen; Kotzen was later kicked out and DeVille returned. This release is testimony to the fact that DeVille\u2019s guitar work really<\/i> is crucial to this band\u2019s appeal. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Vocalist\/guitarist Bret Michaels cusses too much on this release in a vain attempt to get the crowd riled up. He uses clich\u00e9s like \u201cI need your help tonight\u201d while encouraging the audience to sing. He also asks, at one point, \u201cWhere are those f***in\u2019 hands?\u201d and then, in \u201cUnskinny Bop\u201d sings \u201cWhat the f*** is going on?\u201d instead of \u201cWhat the hell is going on?\u201d Blah blah blah. It\u2019s beyond Michaels\u2019 competence to come up with something original or it was impossible the night this release was recorded. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The set list doesn\u2019t help this release either; it couldn\u2019t have been sequenced worse. The normally sharp Michaels leads his band through a disjointed escapade. Instead of continuing the \u201cHere I am, let\u2019s rock\u201d attitude of opener \u201cRide The Wind,\u201d the band launches into their ballad, called \u201cSomething To Believe In.\u201d They follow that up with the equally low voltage \u201cStand.\u201d Things finally get on track a bit for \u201cFallen Angel\u201d and \u201cLook What The Cat Dragged In\u201d before suffering through \u201cUntil You Suffer Some (Fire & Ice).\u201d Their debut single \u201cTalk Dirty To Me\u201d gets tucked into the end of their set list and its effect is nullified. When they come back for an encore, they play \u201cEvery Rose Has Its Thorn\u201d instead of rocking.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Believe it or not, sometimes Kotzen doesn\u2019t play the riffs well. It surprised me because I used to see Kotzen in the Shrapnel Records ads in the music magazines I read when I was younger. In concert, Kotzen misses the intro lick before the verse in \u201cSomething To Believe In.\u201d Either that or it is played so softly that you can\u2019t hear it. He also takes too many liberties with the riff in \u201cFallen Angel.\u201d He doesn\u2019t play the guitar neck slide leading into the solo that DeVille plays. The case could be made that Kotzen coming to Poison wasn\u2019t his cup of vodka. Maybe he was bored. After all, to go from earning respect as a guitar shredder to playing DeVille\u2019s trademark sloppiness must not have been difficult. What would be difficult would be DeVille \u2018owning\u2019 these songs and, despite all of Kotzen\u2019s technical abilities, the inability to replicate DeVille\u2019s personal touch. In other places, Kotzen sounds too precise, making the guitar sound too polished for a Poison release. This sounds like a cover band playing Poison songs. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Believe it or not, I do like Poison. I just have a higher standard than the band did when they decided to release this album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6053],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-41145","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-poison","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41145"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}