Pop Reviews : Poison’s Sensitive Side Spoils the Dumb Fun

Poison’s concert at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre might turn out better on network television than it did in the flesh.

The show was taped for “ABC’s In Concert ‘91,” a late-night rock program that debuts June 7. If the producers are smart, they will edit out Poison’s main deficiencies--flaccid anthem-ballads and the world’s worst guitar solos--and keep what the band does best: simple, hormonal raunch ‘n’ roll.

Poison, one of the Hollywood hard-rock scene’s main success stories of the late ‘80s, led from strength Sunday, opening with a couple of raw and rowdy numbers from its first and best album, “Look What the Cat Dragged In.”

This simple, energetic, dumb-fun hard-rock approach worked whenever Poison went back to it, which wasn’t enough. Instead, the band got bogged down in displaying its newfound sensitive side. “Life Goes On” simply dragged; “Something to Believe In” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” at least offered catchy choruses, but the scratchy-voiced Bret Michaels didn’t have the soulfulness or the vocal strength to lift them above cliche.