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Music

Whos still got the sting?

Rating: NNNNN

Summer is the season for almost extinct dino-rockers to come out of hiding. With the Scorpions laying waste to the Molson Amphitheatre (909 Lakeshore West) Sunday (August 26) and Poison rocking the same venue two days later (Tuesday, August 28), we celebrate the season?s last gasp by trying to determine which of the titans of the genre is closer to making a comeback.

POISON SCORPIONS
POISON with RATT at Molson Amphitheatre (909 Lakeshore West), Tuesday (August 28). $29.50-$42.50. 416-870-8000. SCORPIONS at Molson Amphitheatre (909 Lakeshore West), Sunday (August 26). $39.50-$55.50. 416-870-8000.
RAUNCHY COVERS RAUNCHY COVERS
Sunset Strip hooligans release Look What The Cat Dragged In in 1986, picturing four hot, glamorous ?chicks? on the cover. Those babes turn out to be Bret Michaels, Bobby Dall, Rikki Rockett and C.C. DeVille. It sells 2 million copies of good-time party rock, with MTV rotating the shit out of juvenile sex-ed video Talk Dirty To Me. The Spinal Tap scene involving their offensive Smell The Glove album cover is directly lifted from the career of these German metal gods. Virgin Killer (1976) depicts a far from legal naked girl Lovedrive (1979) has a women?s breast being stretched like gum and, the apex of album-cover idiocy, 1980?s Animal Magnetism shows a girl kneeling before a man?s crotch while a dog looks on.
LINEUP LORE LINEUP LORE
DeVille made such an impression auditioning for Poison, they passed on an unknown guitarist named Slash. That guy went on to form a band called G N? R with Steven Adler, who also failed Poison?s scrupulous criteria. Singer Klaus Meine suffered a career-threatening vocal cord ailment after Lovedrive, forcing guitarists Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs to bring in high-pitched wailer Don Dokken (of Dokken fame) for 1982?s Blackout. But Meine made a full recovery, returned and promptly erased any evidence of Dokken?s contribution on the record.
THE PENSION SONG PENSION SONG
1988?s Open Up And Say… Ahh! quadruples their sales based on megahit Every Rose Has Its Thorn. The number-one power ballad was written by Michaels after his heart was ripped out by a two-timing L.A. stripper. The single propels the band to soaring commercial highs and deep critical lows. The fall of Communism never sounded as good as it did on metal ballad Wind Of Change, the Scorpions? last chart topper, from 1990?s Crazy World. The song was written by Meine after the band rocked Russia in 88 (it name-checks Moscow locales like Moskova and Gorky Park). Huge Scorpions fan Vladimir Putin recently invited the group to rock the Kremlin.
THE GRUNGE PLUNGE 90s GRUNGE PLUNGE
Ruptures in the group boil over at the 1991 MTV Awards, when DeVille ? coked-up and wasted ? botches a performance and a fistfight breaks out. DeVille is pink-slipped and replaced by Rich Kotzen for 93?s Native Tongue. The album tanks, and Kotzen is bounced for boinking Rockett?s fiancee. While hair metallists scurry in the wake of alternative and grunge, the Scorpions set out to exploit fans in far-reaching places that music trends take longer to reach. Exotic music markets like Malaysia, Lebanon, Ukraine and Chile are visited on the 1996-97 Pure Instinct tour. New material, meanwhile, is released to evaporating levels of interest.
BAD DIRECTIONS BAD DIRECTIONS
In the midst of recording Crack A Smile (1994), a record reportedly exploring new sounds with guitarist Blues Saraceno, Michaels totals his Ferrari. The label shelves the unheard masterpiece, opting for a greatest-hits package. It doesn?t see light until the new millennium. Hardcore fans are turned off by 1999?s Eye II Eye, a misguided attempt at a new sound, including electronic drum tracks and experimentation with funk, a genre not commonly associated with German metal. Subsequent collab with the Berlin Philharmonic is better received, though Metallica?s identical manoeuvre only two years earlier dogged its credibility.
WHO WINS IN THE END? WHO WINS IN THE END?
Poison resurface with Power To The People in 2000, and Hollyweird and recent covers album Poison?d! eventually follow. However, DeVille and Michaels get better reviews for their onscreen work, DeVille being his cracked-out self on The Surreal Life and Michaels in a sex tape with Pamela Anderson. When did it stop being about the music? The Scorpions? motto has always been ?Don?t stop at the top,? and although the top is no longer visible in the rearview mirror, Scorpions have no plans to arrest a rock career that has been going 35 years and is still strong in parts of the world. The verdict: these Krauts still got the sting.

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