The following is a review of two Poison shows. One from the 1999 "Exile From Mainstream" tour. The other being the 2000 "Power to the People" tour.

"Exile From Mainstream" Tour 1999
With Special Guests RATT, GREAT WHITE and L.A. GUNS
The Meadows Music Theatre Hartford, CT July 13, 1999

7:00. First Act. L.A. Guns, I think. Only Tracii and Steve remain from the original lineup. In fact even Steve left the band for awhile there. On lead vocals was singer #4, Jizzy Pearl, from the band Love/Hate. I had just seen L.A. Guns the previous November at Infinity in Springfield, MA, which is a good size club holding 500 people, I believe. That's not saying 500 people were actually there. Only about 100 or so showed up and the band didn't even start playing until around midnight. It wasn't a memorable show by any means but I did notice that Jizzy scored himself a really hot groupie that night.
The Meadows show wasn't much better, only bigger. 12,000 people this time. They played a short half hour set of their most well known songs, including "Never Enough", "The Ballad of Jayne", "Kiss My Love Goodbye" and a new song "Girl You Turn Me On". As far as their performance goes, let's just say these guys really lucked out getting this gig.
Up next were the blues rock band Great White. Even though their set was also only a half hour. It was about a half hour too long. Singer Jack Russell kept mentioning trying to bring back the '80's while the band played a bunch of their songs from the '80's totally ignoring their recent 10 albums! Although they did play one new song "Rollin' Stoned".
Next came Ratt. Years ago Poison opened for them. Technically this was a co-headlining show but they went on before Poison. I gotta say I was surprised. I had heard that Ratt wasn't good live but musically they were the tightest band all night. One hit after the next. Pure hard rock nostalgia. Which leads us to...
Poison, who without a doubt stole the show. C.C. DeVille is a mad man. Rikki and Bobby are playing great and Bret's got just as much charisma as ever. Not to mention the light show. The audience was getting so fired up that they had to stop the show twice!! Once during "I Want Action" and again during "Something to Believe In" when a girl jumped up on stage and hugged Bret so tight she actually pulled him away from the microphone. Security, however, was getting a little rough with the fans. Bret got ticked off and told the audience to get as close to the stage as they could. Then about 12,000 people were all of a sudden 20 feet from the stage where we remained for the rest of the show.
There's a little bit of irony to all of this. You see, even though it was Poison's show, they were the only band that did not have a new record. Funny enough, over the next year, L.A. Guns would reunite with all of the original band members, Mark Kendall (lead guitar) would leave Great White and Stephen Pearcy (lead vocals) would leave Ratt. Jizzy Pearl would take his place. Even C.C. DeVille left Poison and was temporarily replaced by Tracii Guns (even MORE irony).
Now of course C.C. is back with Poison, has his own band Samantha 7 (formerly known as The Stepmothers) and Poison have released, "Power to the People", a new live album with 5 new studio songs.

"Power to the People" Tour 2000
With Special Guests CINDERELLA, DOKKEN and SLAUGHTER
The Meadows Music Theatre Hartford, CT June 16, 2000

One Year Later: We arrived right around show time, 6:00. They say rock shows never start on time. This one did. We could hear Mark Slaughter hitting those high notes from the parking lot. By the time we made it inside, the bands half hour set was over. We only saw them walking off the stage.
During the Dokken set, which included the highlights, "Alone Again" and "In My Dreams", I was introduced to a girlfriend of a friend of a friend. She was a little drunk at the time. While Cinderella was playing I noticed a stretcher was being carried through the aisles. It turns out the girl passed out. You gotta love rock n roll shows! Don't worry, I'm sure she's fine now. As for Cinderella, these guys need some new songs too. Their set included all the hits, half of which were ballads. They even did a slow acoustic blues version of "The Last Mile". It was a very low key Cinderella show. It was good though, but different then I expected.
Towards the end of their set, a friend I was with was given two floor tickets by security. The problem was there were five of us. I'm not gonna tell you how we pulled this off but we all ended up with much closer seats for the rest of the show.
Now for Poison. This was the first week of a very important tour. With the release of their new album it was the first new music we've heard from them since reuniting with C.C. DeVille a few years ago.
As usual they opened with "Look What The Cat Dragged In". The energy level was the highest it had been all night. The band continued with the old songs including "Something to Believe In" and "Let it Play". Everything was going fine until they broke into the title track "Power to the People". The audience just STOPPED!! There was no movement, no nothing. It got even worse as the next song was the new "I Hate Every Bone in Your Body But Mine" sung by C.C. The whole situation was pretty surreal. It was like we weren't even at a Poison show anymore.
For what it's worth though, the album does include two great new songs, "Can't Bring Me Down" and "Strange", neither of which was played that night. As the band encored with "Talk Dirty to Me" everything seemed back to normal. But the infamous VH-1 Behind the Music conclusion remains, "Will Poison be a part of tomorrow or are they already heavy metal history?" They'll need a lot more than a handful of new songs on a third "hits" compilation to prove themselves once again.