Lita Ford... Poison... Def Leppard

Our first trip to the outdoor ampitheatre at Red Rock Casino was a trip back in time, Def Leppard's 'Rock of Ages' tour featuring the openers Poison and Lita Ford.  We (I) shoulda listened to Tanya and left earlier to have supper out there but in my mind, I knew we had lots of time to get there.  We did, of course, but we (I) didn't calculate for the traffic snarl at the off-ramp to the casino.  The traffic was backed up for a mile and we completely missed joining the queu in the lineup to get off the highway.  So we drove for a bit, hit the next turnoff to turn around and come back, which was actually quite a bit quicker.

We wound our way through the casino and into the stadium grounds, entered under the bleachers and into the venue.  Its a really nice little 10,000 seat ampitheatre, with high aluminum bleachers on 3 sides, the stage on the end and chairs packed into the green carpeted floor area.  The stadium reminded me of a pro tennis venue, or somewhere they might hold a national dog show or professional dodgeball competition.  But we were in for a rock show.  Lita had already started up the evening and was laying it on heavy.  I didn't know she was the lead guitar player of her band, and had her Warlock guitar fired up full blast!  The sound was loud, with ear splitting squealing of the high gain guitars.  There was no doubt this would be an intense night of music.  Lita lit the fuse and left no prisoners, the crowd was primed.  As the sun set to the right of the stage and dusk filled the air, anticipation for Poison vibrated through the crowd.

Seats on the floor were $100 or more but we opted for the $50 seats up in the stands.  Waaay up in the stands.  It was steep, row U!  But there isn't a bad seat in the house.  Well, except for having to sit on aluminum for 4hrs, crammed in like sardines.  I don't know what the deal is with people claiming other people's seats.  You have your ticket, sit there.  Don't fuckin' wander and look for something better, especially if the place is sold out.  Some squatters claimed the whole row of seats beside us and a mexican jackass elbowed in beside me.  I never questioned whether it was their seats or not, but I might have shot a look for jostling into me like that... I never did figure out if it was a boy or a girl.  It was just a very hard and worn person who looked maybe 30, spoke like a woman but looked somewhere in between and acted like a cocky 18yr old jackass.  I looked at him/her, and he/she looked back, as if daring me to say something.  They didn't stay, the ticket holders came and claimed the seats at the end of the row and they moved on.

These concerts make me feel old.  I'm feeling less tolerant of people as I go, it might be the crankiness of not being able to let 'er rip like back in the good ol' days, which is also a blessing because I can remember the shows better by not indulging.  And I've missed some great shows due to my own stupid misbehaviours.  But I'm edgier with people and that's not good.  I must appear to be one of those clean-cut, uptight, well dressed and respectable middle age gentlemen sitting there without a drink, with his pretty little wife beside him with her head glued to her cellphone.  That makes me feel old, sitting there, sober, confined and controlled and unable to groove to the music like I would like to.  Its a different experience, the music isn't nearly as good as when the senses aren't skewed a bit, at least not a show like this from our bird's eye point of view.  However, it was a good perspective to watch the crowd, and it was a pretty good crowd-show.

Sooo many hot women here!  All the 80's kids came out to see the bands that made being bad sooo good.  Tight shirts, short skirts, big tits, wild hair, tatooes and denim and loose women... y'know, that pretty much describes the Vegas locals.  The locals really like to have fun, but so do the visitors to Vegas.  I'm honing in on the scent of who and what the locals are now, although sometimes its tough to tell who's local and who is not.  I'm guessing the older couple beside us who never looked up from their cellphones the entire night except to get that token picture to say, "I was there", they weren't locals.  The sour fat kid wedged in front of us with his mom, they weren't locals.  The boy/girl mexican fuck with the attitude and that crew, they were locals.  It was a pretty rowdy crowd all around with a lot of drunks and a lot of cheering.  Beer was spilt and flung on me on two different occasions.  I hate drunks when I'm not drinking, listening to that drawling babble all around.  Idiots.  Old Man Jones just wipes the beer away and sighs back to the memories of the good ol' days.

Tanya, and I think a lot of the crowd there, were there to see Brett Michaels and Poison.  I mocked her a bit, because what I knew of Poison... the hair band, the bad boy attitude in makeup and girls clothes and hairspray, the show... I just never respected that image or their cock-rock style of music.  But I'll say this now, that that was a great fuckin' show!  I've also gained some respect over the years for the bands that went that way, who put out this image that grabbed your attention whether you liked it or not, and let the world know they didn't really give a shit about what you think.  They wanted to party and they wanted you to join them, so if you didn't like it, you could fuck off.  It was your women they were after anyway, so you either accepted it or you let your women go it alone with those greasy bastards.  That attitude and their cock-rock anthems gets in your bones, and I guess that's why the girls get so horny over it all.  I never realized this either, that Poison is mostly a 3-piece band, with a keyboard player in a supporting role off to the side of the stage.  The sound was huge but  murky at times which could be attributed to the slight desert wind coming through the stadium or our alignment with the speaker system to our seats.  The bass was super heavy.  The boys worked the crowd pretty good and got everyone in a frenzy.  C.C. DeVille whipped the crowd relentlessly with his intense guitar virtuousity while Bobby Dall (!!) pounded us in the balls all night with his big bass!  There's no denying it, theirs is a straight up, no frills or gimmicks hard rock show.  Poison can still deliver the stuff that made them famous, and Vegas loves Poison!

Their final number of the night was one of their biggest hits and a song I've been covering for years and had relegated to my 'cheeze' list... 'Every Rose has its Thorn'.  What a joy to stand up there and sing along with the band and 10,000 other adoring fans who knew all the words.  A classic moment that somehow felt I'd finally come full circle after all this time!

I was anxious to see Def Leppard.  Something about their music is in my blood, maybe its because its been a soundtrack of my life for the last 25yrs... twenty five years!!!  We got up to stretch our legs and go for a walk around the top of the stands, and when we came back after a few minutes, a whole new crew of people had claimed our seats.  Jeezus!  We managed to get the reluctant cows moved down a few spaces so we could squeeze back into our designated spaces and soon the crowd came back and crammed in all around us again.  Why that lady brought that sour fat kid back up there I don't know.  He wasn't enjoying it, and was quite disgusted at my bare feet on the seat beside him during the Poison show, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  They switched places for the Def Leppard show and took up valuable knee space.  The girl beside me seemed quite unimpressed with the tactics I had used to move them over, but whatever.  She was a dancer-girl, so she was up for most of the show which gave me some room.  We were elbow to elbow, knees-to-back to knees-to-back, everyone sitting angled, way too confined for my liking.

Joe Elliot came out and told us that Def Leppard had been coming to play Vegas for 30 years, since the very beginning, and that it was the 25th anniversary of their breakout album 'Adrenalize'.  Now I know for sure, I'm getting old!

Def Leppard is renowned for their light show, and that was really cool to see.  But its not your stand up and groove type music, and was a bit of a letdown after the energy and the grit of the Poison set.  Their guitar player, Phil Collen, comes out shirtless and, well, I don't mind saying that this guy has a freakin' amazing body!  He's 55yrs old and cut like a 25yr old.  I aspire to look like this when I'm 55.  Tanya was thrilled over him.  He is a great guitar player and a master at using his effects to create artful, screeching solos, making his guitars wail over the music even more so than what we've come to know on the recorded versions on their albums.  It was really interesting to hear a master like that in action and hear those chilling Def Leppard riffs send electricity through the night.

Noticably missing from the Def Leppard's sound was the sailing vocal range of Joe Elliot.  Maybe he can't hit those high notes anymore, or it was all studio trickery on the albums, I don't know.  He's 53yrs old so maybe my expectations were too high.  But that was a huge missing piece of the Def Leppard sound and Elliot more often than not elected a lower octave for vocal leads and choruses that used to define those songs and set him apart as a lead singer.  He was still amazing and performed excellently, but unfortunately those missing pieces were the parts I had come to hear him sing.

Their drummer, Rick Allen, is a one-armed tour-de-force.  If you don't know the story, he lost an arm in a car accident in 1984.  That should have been the end of it, right?  No, he came back and became an even better drummer than he was before, or so claims Joe.  His is an amazing tale of perseverance over the odds, and it was amazing to see him in action.  Especially his drum solo, his feet worked the double bass pedal so fast the beats melded into one another.  His drums too, were heavily effected with reverb.  One pound on the eighth count was a super-beat, so freakin' heavy and oppressive it threatened to cave in the eardrums.  It must have been overwhelming on the floor cause it shook the stadium from where we were.  There again, a little slurring of the mind might not have noticed that or thought that it was really cool.  I've never been a real big fan of heavily effected guitars or overly produced sounds, I like my rock gritty and honest.  That's not Def Leppard.  They are in a league of their own in the music they create and that's what makes them special.

Halfway through their set, all five members came out to the middle of the crowd on the extended stage and sat together with Joe on a flight case for an acoustic singalong session.  The wind whispered over the crowd as the boys played a four-guitar acoustic medly of songs for ten minutes.  Rick was on the shaker.  Then it was back to the audial assault of the hits, and they played them all.  They had a great light show and stage setting with a full LED backdrop behind them so the visuals were great, but on the whole it was missing a certain something.  Maybe the excitement of being on the floor watching the show up close?  Maybe a good, skewed mental state for full effect?  Or maybe Def Leppard is just not your get-up-and-groove type music, just really good listening.  I really enjoyed the show, it was very fulfilling to see the boys live and experience the music that has been with me for so long. 

Thanks for reading.

TRJ