The Shallow End of the Pool

I had a busy day yesterday (Sunday) as far as music is concerned. It all started when I took my daughter to the mall to see the Jonas Brothers, whose debut CD was just released. If you've never heard of them, well, then you're not a 12-year old girl. Think Hanson, but with a slightly harder edge. They played a four song acoustic set at FYE and then did a meet-and-greet afterwards. All three were extremely nice and signed my daughter's CD and thanked her for coming out and supporting them. Anybody who makes my daughter happy is OK in my book, and their music wasn't actually half bad. Very catchy pop tunes.

Sidebar- for those keeping score at home, my daughter has now met 2 of her favorite bands in the space of about 9 months (I've written previously about The Click Five, who we've actually met twice now) which hardly seems fair. I mean, I've been a KISS fan for longer than I can remember and had to wait over 25 years to meet them! These kids today don't know how easy they got it. End sidebar.

So after we finished up at the mall, I rushed to get home. Why? Because it turned out that Poison and Cinderella are playing at the Wildwood Convention Center, which is walking distance from my apartment. I hadn't bought tickets in advance because A) I wasn't sure about my work schedule, B) I wasn't sure if we'd be back from the mall in time and C) I actually didn't find out about the show until 2 days before.

A band I'd never heard of before, EndEverAfter, opened the show and actually were really good. They ripped through five songs, a nice slab of the kind of swaggering "Cock Rock" that you just don't hear anymore. You can hear a few of them at the link above.

Cinderella was next, and I was actually excited because I had never seen them live before even though they were one of my favorites in high school. Tom Keifer's voice was in rough shape; it turns out he actually has major damage to his vocal chords and needs to have surgery but didn't want to cancel the tour and elected to tough it out instead. I really felt bad for the guy- it was obvious that he was in severe pain. He must not speak for the rest of the day just to save his voice. In the end, the vocal difficulties didn't stop the band from delivering a high energy hour-long set that I really enjoyed, opening with "Fallin' Apart At The Seams" and "Push, Push." They also did "Night Songs," "Heartbreak Station," "Shelter Me," "Coming Home," "Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone," "Nobody's Fool," and "Gypsy Road" before closing with "Shake Me." Great stuff.

Poison I saw once before, about 15 years ago when they were at the peak of their popularity, and actually didn't think the show was very good (Warrant, who opened up, blew them off the stage that night). So I wasn't sure what to expect yesterday. My fears proved to be unfounded as I thought they put on a great show. My daughter is actually familiar with Poison and knew most of the songs and gleefully sang along as the band ran through "Look What The Cat Dragged In," "I Want Action," "We're An American Band," "I Won't Forget You," "Cry Tough," "Ride The Wind," "Fallen Angel," "Something To Believe In," "I Hate Every Bone In Your Body," "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," "Your Mama Don't Dance," "Unskinny Bop," "Nothin' But A Good Time," and "Talk Dirty To Me."

Then I went home, fell onto my bed, and passed right out. I think I'm getting too old for this shit.