The Besnard Lakes Go See Ratt!

ChartAttack sent Steve Raegele and Nicky Lizee from the Polaris Music Prize-nominated The Besnard Lakes on a Montreal-to-Toronto road trip to check out classic hair-metallers Ratt when they performed on Tuesday at the Molson Amphitheatre with Poison.

Here's what Raegele wrote:

Summer is a strange time for those of us in world-famous, jet-setting indie rock bands from Montreal. As I take a break from swimming Scrooge McDuck-style in my pool of gold bullion, I reflect on the past few months and laugh maniacally. Being in The Besnard Lakes means we're either on tour and jockeying for position at the Port-O-Potty with the likes of Billy Corgan on the festival circuit or we're sitting at home catching up on all the mail that's piled up.

Jace [Lasek] and Olga [Goreas], who clearly have no time for anything as banal as the postal service, have gone on vacation. With our frontpeople safely ensconced in the environs of Besnard Lake (the body of water), Nicky and I decided to bust out and head down the 401. Throwing off the shackles of our psychedelic rock and Brian Wilson-obsessed overlords, it was time to revel in another musical muse. We were going to see Ratt.

In my youth, I logged a few headphone hours with Ratt's Out Of The Cellar and Invasion Of Your Privacy. Something about the production of those records shone above the rest of the metal albums that I slavishly pored over night after pre-pubescent night. I'm still a fan. Nicky is another case altogether. She was a female metal fan in those formative years and, as such, spent her time pining not just (as in my case) to be Ratt, but to be with Ratt. She loved lead guitarist Warren DeMartini in particular. So, off to Toronto to we went.

A traffic jam en route was just enough to ensure that we missed Ratt's opening number (likely "Sweet Cheater" from their self-titled first EP) and half of "I'm Insane." Nicky wasn't pleased. In the crowd, we made our way through numerous dudes with mullets and at least two guys wearing Def Leppard Union Jack muscle tees. One guy had an amazing satin jacket with the Ratt logo emblazoned on the back. Nicky said it felt like we were at the Regina Exhibition in 1986.

As we settled into our seats, Ratt launched into "Wanted Man" and Nicky started to calm down. The calm didn't last. When she realized that she was actually in the presence of DeMartini, her excitement became clear. She screamed his name and raised her vinyl copy of Ratt's EP in the air. As a guitarist, I spent the show wishing I had DeMartini's long, dexterous fingers, and even a modicum of his modal metal mojo. Nicky passed the time alternately fixated on DeMartini's lanky frame and frontman Stephen Pearcy's ribald banter. Pearcy mused at one point on the likelihood that some of his illegitimate children might be in the audience. Nobody seemed to doubt the probability.

I took solace in the fact that DeMartini is married and we hadn't been given backstage passes. I kept my eye on Pearcy, though. I wasn't about to leave Toronto minus my lady.

The band coasted confidently through their catalogue of hits and, by the time they got to "Lay It Down," I was thinking, "Why in the world would Poison want to follow an act like this?"

Pearcy was in fine form and sounded spot-on. He was absent prior to this tour, and lead vocal duties had been the domain of former Motley Crue frontman John Corabi (who was also covering for Vince Neil). Still on board, Corabi is a fine rhythm guitarist who now finds himself filling the shoes of the late Robbin Crosby, who died in 2002. The band sounded amazing apart from a couple of missed drum cues from Bobby Blotzer.

DeMartini's outro solo on "You're In Love" was inspired and inspiring as he ripped run after run of speedy arpeggios and techno blues licks and milked his toneful vibrato. The opening riff to "Lack Of Communication" was a thunderous bit of Drop D insanity that sent the growing crowd into a frenzy. By the time they played the classic "Round And Round," the audience had grown and was hungry for more. Unfortunately, it was their closing number. I raised the Ratt EP in the air and Pearcy squinted to see what it was. A look of recognition appeared on his face as he laughed and gave me a big thumbs-up. What a show!

The headliners for the evening were inexplicably, to me at least, Poison. When the first pyrotechnics went off, heralding the arrival of Bret Michaels and company, I turned around to witness what must have been 10,000 people cheering the dulcet tones of "Look What The Cat Dragged In." The crowds don't lie, I suppose. While I had a hard time coming down from the high of Ratt's exhilarating show, we were now standing in our assigned seats and smelling the vomitous leavings of three underaged girls who were surreptitiously swigging Mike's Hard Lemonade. I'll forever associate this aroma with C.C. Deville's butchered rendition of "Georgia On My Mind," a song he attributed to Ray Charles.

To Poison's credit, it was a visually spectacular show. There was constant pyro and a large video screen that reminded everyone of what things were like in their heyday. Unfortunately, the music (and Deville's truly awful guitar tone) wasn't even in the same ball-park as Ratt. Deville sang one called "I Hate Every Bone In Your Body But Mine" and I couldn't help but think that it was about as close as I'd ever get to going to a Toby Keith concert. I was proven right when Michaels dedicated the ballad "Something To Believe In" to both American and Canadian troops abroad. I'm all for supporting our troops, but it rang a little hollow when Michaels started shilling for his new MTV reality show and Rikki Rockett interrupted his drum solo to shoot a promotional photo for Sabian Cymbals.

The crowd ate it up. After the mega-hit "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" (truer words were never spoken) and the accompanying lighter brigade that illuminated the sweaty brows of the hair army, Poison closed it out with "Unskinny Bop," "Talk Dirty To Me" and "Nothin But A Good Time." The massive pyro finale and a giant confetti bomb were admittedly pretty awesome and left me a little less miffed that Ratt weren't headlining. The giant grin on Nicky's face was worth the price of admission, too.