Mama's fallen angels

I took Eightofadozen and Tenofadozen to the Cheap Trick/ Poison/ Def Leppard concert last Tuesday. When I bought the tickets in April I was planning on a girls' night out with Eight and Nine, but Nine is still staying with Four so I took Ten instead. He just turned 16 and he was very excited to go to a concert, even though he and Eight weren't too familiar with any of the bands. They seemed shocked and relieved to find out we had actual seats on a balcony and we wouldn't be subjected to crowd-surfing or mosh pits. I'm so glad they came! We had a great time.

Cheap Trick was up first. We got inside the arena right at 7 and we were scurrying to our seats when they were being introduced; "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the best f***ing band you will ever hear live!" After an introduction like that they had to be good. They were fabulous. Before March of this year I only knew a couple of their songs, although "I Want You to Want Me" is, in my opinion, one of the best damn rock songs out there. They sang "Southern Girls", "Surrender", "The Flame", "Dream Police" and a few others. I figured out during their last song that if you plugged your ears the music sounded much better and you could actually hear the words, so I feel like I missed out a little. I definitely will be buying their greatest hits album!

Up next was Poison and I have to say that after seeing Poison live I can understand why girls would follow them around. Bret Michaels puts on a hell of a show! They had a lot of pyrotechnics in their set, which was exciting. They rocked the crowd with classics like "Unskinny Bop", "Nothin' But a Good Time", "Talk Dirty to Me", "Your Mama Don't Dance" and of course "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". Every now and then I typed out the words to the chorus in a text message and showed it to Eight and Ten so they could sing along. At one point Bret thanked the crowd for tuning into Rock of Love to watch the "drunken debauchery and ridiculousness that is my dating life." Hilarious. During the last song his pre-teen daughter joined him on stage, which was adorable.

Def Leppard was phenomenal. Those guys know how to rock! They used the stage really well and they had fantastic video effects accompanying the music. They all performed instrumental solos, including Rick Allen who was just amazing on the drums. I heard tons of my old favorites like "Photograph", "Rock of Ages", "Armageddon It", "Animal" and "Love Bites". Some of the moments that stood out were the crowd singing the chorus to "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" and going crazy for "Pour Some Sugar on Me". Eight and Ten got up out of their seats and danced for that one! After 5 or 10 minutes of cheering the boys came back out and did an encore number with "Let's Get Rocked". What an awesome show!