You got too many bees in your honey
Am I just another word in your page, yeah, yeah
So sang Mr Bret Michaels in 1990, showing a blatant lack of apicultural knowledge. Listen Bret, honey is formed by bees from nectar using a process of continual regurgitation and evaporation, thus creating a food source when food is scarcer for the hive during the winter months. You don’t get bees in it. What you may have been better writing about Bret, is so-called Toxic Honey*, which is honey made from rhodedendron and oleanders (amongst select other flowers) which can cause honey intoxication, symptoms involve extreme perspiration, dizziness and narcolepsy.
So anyway, that’s him told.
Poison Unskinny Bop, was a 12″ I was looking forward to hearing tonight for some harmless picture disc fun. I remember when it came out I got quite excited because it was all slinky, boppy and dancey. I’ve always thought of Poison as a pop band really, a good one. I still listen to Open Up and Say ….. Ahh! fairly often and enjoy it too and don’t get me started on teenage trauma and ‘Every Rose Has it’s Thorn’. Hell, I could dance to this one.
Unskinny Bop starts with a neat fast picking intro called ‘Swamp Juice (Soul-o)’, before hitting the title track. Sadly I found it all a bit clumsy and flat when I listened to it again tonight, even the skittish rhythm and C.C DeVille’s guitar fills and frills that I liked so much first time around. Maybe it’s a mood thing but I really couldn’t see what I used to like so much here.
I never bought Flesh & Blood the LP this came from, it was far cheaper to tape my mate Geraint’s copy, but I liked it, particularly the ballad ‘Somethin’ to Believe In’ – I do have a bit of a fatal weakness for 80s/90s ballads, maybe one day an arch enemy will be able to exploit it. My second fave track was a really strong AOR-ish one called ‘Valley of Lost Souls’, which crops up on the B-side of Unskinny Bop, it deserved a bit better I thought then and I still do actually; it’s very much of its time, but still sounded pretty good to me this evening.
The last track though (ahem), ‘Poor Boy Blues’, is an execrable idea and an even worse song that should have been strangled at birth and buried at midnight in an unmarked grave, before being urinated upon by bears. True story.
256 Down.
*the name for my forthcoming all-girl soft metal band.