Poison, Def Leppard, Lita Ford 2012 Concert Tour Review New York

By Mark Capuano

Poison, Def Leppard, Lita Ford 2012 Concert Tour Review New York.

The 2012 Lita Ford, Poison, Def Leppard concert tour was a huge hit on August 17th in Western New York. Just goes to show how timeless great music is and how so many people are starving to hear the old classic rock tunes they grew up with. I caught the show in Dairen Lake just between Buffalo and Rochester, New York. It was a jammed packed outdoor concert. The aroma in the air was that of a very familiar smell (Strange how you can’t smoke cigarettes, but anything else goes). Oh and how I still love to see the women lift up their tops 🙂 (I forgot all about that feature). I did find the pregnant women in front of me with a big beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other quite strange though.

Lita Ford kicked off the show with a good old strong heavy metal sound. The guitar was clear, yet powerful and the drums had a strong full punch. The band sounded great! She played some songs from her new album Living Like A Runaway and finished her set with one of her more famous songs Kiss Me Deadly. I would say Lita Ford had a better sound then Poison, but Poison had more popular songs and a better stage setup.

Lita Ford: Kiss me Deadly

After Lita finished, Poison took the stage and got the crowd going with Look What The Cat Dragged In. Poison performed many of the great classic bubble gum pop songs we have all grown to love such as Look What The Cat Dragged In, Unskinny Bop, Nothing But A Good Time, Fallen Angel, Every Rose Has It’s Thorn, Talk Dirty To Me, and many more…

Poison: Talk Dirty To Me

Poison truly did rock the house as you could tell from all the Bret Michaels imposters running around and they delivered and excellent performance. Their songs sounded just as I remembered them. Bret Michaels even took a moment between song to welcome some of our US military in attendance and thank them for all they do. Bret also gave us the inside scoop on the next Apprentice TV Series coming up the All Star Apprentice featuring all of the past winners including himself.

After everyone had a moment to rest up and recover from all the wild partying with Poison, Def Leppard took the stage and not to be upstaged by anyone. The last time I saw Def Leppard was in the 80’s on the High ‘n’ Dry Tour. I believe they were opening for Queensryche at the time. They were great then and I have to say, I didn’t expect too much and especially after seeing Lita Ford and Poison, I figured it wasn’t going to get any better, but it did. Not only was their sound and stage bigger and better, the music just seemed perfectly mixed and powerful. You could feel the bass in your chest, the sound was full, and the guitar just totally ripped. Prior to attending the show I didn’t realize who was playing guitar for Def Leppard, but upon hearing them I realized why they sounded so much better. Now I realize why the guitar was so full and awesome and why the solos screamed like never before, because Vivian Campbell former rip artist and total bad ass formerly with Ronnie James Dio and Whitesnake was in control. Vivian Campbell makes every band better. I know I should have already known this since he has been with them for a while, but somehow I missed it.

Def Leppard put on a great show too, to cap off a well rounded evening of total rock music hits performing many classic songs like High ‘n’ Dry, Bringin’ On The Heartbreak, Photograph, Love Bites, Animal, Rocket, Pour Some Sugar On Me, Let’s Get Rocked, and many other popular songs.

All-n-All a great show with plenty of good hit music to go around. If the concert tour is coming to your town, I strongly suggest seeing it. If nothing less, you will have nothing but a good time 🙂