Stephen
Poison did well with their debut, "Look What The Cat Dragged In", in 1986, and they successfully spread the venom with the follow-up, "Open Up and Say.. Ahh!", spawning four singles, including the well-known acoustical piece of "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". They stripped the heavy metal element from the debut and put a more stadium-oriented hard rock and commercial touch to the songs. The result is beyond any devil's expectation, racking up 10 million sales worldwide and boost their name to become the big contender for Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses.
While many claims this is their best album, I hardly agree as I think Poison reached their peak later with "Flesh & Blood". Sure this has a lot of strong and classic tracks, but with some decent songs such as "Love On The Rocks", the Def Leppard-rip of "Tearin' Down The Walls", and the worst filler, "Bad To Be Good", this album suffered from what we called the songwriting consistency. My fave picks of the album are "Nothin' But A Good Time", a firey party starter, the stripper's naughty anthem of "Look But You Can't Touch", the bodyshaker Loggins and Messina cover of "Your Mama Don't Dance", the painful ballad of "Every Rose", but the top of the mountain is undoubtly the fame-and-fortune journey of "Fallen Angel".
The production is raw and thin. The volume level is very low you have to double-pump your speaker, I haven't got the remastered version yet but I hope they've resolved this issue. "Open Up And Say.. Aah!" is still a very good release, lots of fun and excitement, and with this album, Poison taught you how to live life and party hard. As long as you don't drive drunk, kill somebody, and blow up your liver, that's quite a harmless lesson to learn.