06/11/01

The pop-metal band Poison hasn't released a full album's worth of new music since 1993's "Native Tongue." But the midstate four felt they had to scratch their incessant road itch somehow.

The posting of the new song "Rock Star" on their Web site, www.poisonweb.com, was a good enough excuse.

So here they were last night at The Star Pavilion at Hersheypark Stadium, leading the charge of the 2001 Glam Slam Metal Jam, a tour that also features fellow '80s alumni Warrant, Quiet Riot, and Enuff Z'nuff.

Singer Bret Michaels and drummer Rikki Rockett (both of Mechanicsburg), bassist Bobby Dall of Wormleysburg), and guitarist C.C. DeVille (a New Yorker by birth) opened on a flaming red stage amid flames and fog to "Look What the Cat Dragged In," proving that, in the words of Quiet Riot singer Kevin DuBrow, the '80s weren't just a decade but a state of mind.

Warrant delivered a surprisingly tight and heavy performance loaded with hits.

Singer Jani Lane and company came on to War's "Low Rider" and launched into their first big song, "Down Boys."

Quiet Riot are the tour's veterans; they hit the top back in 1983 with "Metal Health," the first metal album to reach number one on Billboard's charts. Unlike Poison, QR does have a new album out, the wryly-titled "Guilty Pleasures."

Singer Kevin DuBrow (in a gold sequined vest you could surely see from the grass seats) and the rest of the band entered to the strains of the James Bond theme music and launched into "Vicious Circle" from the new album.

Openers Enuff Z'nuff strode on, ironically, to Spinal Tap's "Stonehenge" and kicked things off with the Beatles' "Revolution" (no, they don't wear their influences on their sleeves, do they?)

Due to deadline constraints, The Patriot-News was unable to review the entire concert.