Page 6 DTH Omnibus
Thursday February 1, 1990
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11 V2: (Expletive deleted)
t wasn't about Vince Neil's feathered hair.
And it wasn't about Tommy Lee's bro
ken drumsticks or even his flying drum
set. Not Nikki Sixx's infantile posing nor
Mick Mars' play-it-fast-and-hope-nobody-
notices-it's-bad guitar solos.
What it was was Heavy
Metal. What it wasn't was
music.
Now, don't take that the
wrong way. There was a good
heavy beat and there were
guitar licks and bass lines,
and for the most part the
three played together. And
there was a blond with big 3
hair who yelled along. But Saturday night's
Motley Crue concert wasn't about music so
much as it was about skinny white high-school
kids waving their arms in the air out of time to
the beat.
light. Bassist Nikki Sixx greeted the crowd
with a patented SECRET DEVIL SIGN HAND
SIGNAL, and the Dean Dome, 18,000 of
Tommy Lee's "best friends," responded in kind.
Raleigh and Fayetteville were well-represented,
if you know what we mean.
The Crue has been on the
1 IDPf! SI PAOFfQropesasoflate.Theyhaven't
2 Martin
J Concert
put out quality vinyl since
Theater of Pain, (Alisa's note:
Even Girls, Girb, Girls was
better than Theater of Pain.)
and the boys are looking to
cash in on Dr. Feelgood, their
first number-one album. Neil
plugged the album almost as
often as he said, "Chapel Hill! Chapel (exple
tive deleted) Hill!" (A bit of trivia for you
movie buffs: Vince Neil was considered and
rejected for the lead role in the classic early
'80s rock-umentary, This is Spinal Tap. Well,
A heavy metal concert is performance art not really, but it would have made sense.)
writ large.
From the preachers and scalpers without to
the groupies and posers within, every member
of the cast had a role and a copy of the script.
And they played their parts to perfection:
Vince Neil exhorting the crowd to shout ob
scenities in unison, the tautly-worded confron
tations between metal worshippers and would
be evangelists ("Motley Crue has nothing to
offer you." "Yeah, well Jesus loves Motley Crue")
in the ticket line, opening band Warrant's
obligatory Bic-lit ballad and the cliched dis
plays of pyrotechnics and laser-beams.
It was just soooo high school!
And that's the whole point. Alisa says a
heavy metal concert is no place for uptight
schmucks (which is interesting, if you think
about it literally, which you shouldn't).
Warrant opened up with a quick set that
wasn't as flashy as Motley Crue's, but then
they didn't have the Crue's fireworks. The Los
Angeles-based quintet made up for their lack
of hardware with more heart than Motley Crue
had even before Nikki Sixx died the first time.
Warrant fanned the fires of fans' hot, youth
ful passions with their power ballad "Some
times She Cries" and then rocked the house
with their Empty-V hit, "Where the Down
Boys Go (whoa-whoa)," both off Dirty Rotten
Filthy Stinking Rich, the band's debut album.
Warrant does need to work on their foot
wear, though. (Special note to Warrant: Lose
the Adidas shoe contract, boys. And if you
can't get out of it, at least wear different color
Adidas shirts. Alisa's Note: What! Break the
: Slammin', dudes
f anyone tells you anything different, they equal parts music and spectacle. (Tom's Note:
The real reason anyone wants to be in Music? There s more music in one 30-second break'
heavy metal band is so they can make as fast cereal jingle than in any Motley Crud concert
mucfi noise as possible. So they can be loud I've ever seen)
and obnoxious. (This from someone too ignorant to Dunc-
It s about noise, and it s about spectacle. tuate his sentences?)
n fai
lie
ab
mt
J an
The WarrantMotley
Crue concert Saturday night
was a testimonial to the fact
that the Crue dudes are the
original masters of flash and
trash. From the opening
(class-c) fireworks to the
closing (class-c) fireworks
(has the fear of another law
suit got the boys down?) and
AUSA DeEVlAQ
Yes, there were the pyro-
tecnics and the lasers and
the "hyper-reflective" guitar
and even the scantily-clad
Nasty Habits. But that was
just the icing on the cake.
There was also the two
hours of pure, unadulterated,
head-slammin' rock'n'roll:
the sleazy, driving beat of
0
'hi! )
I &r S
Mick Mars nearly explodes from his boundless enthusiasm
Mick Mars, one of the few heavy metal
guitarists who is too old to be on thirtysom'
black uniforms? What do you want 'em to wear? ething, should be put out to pasture. He wan
Pastels? Yes, break the black uniform. Perhaps dered the stage for 120 minutes looking bored
you should even consider pastels. And thanks and, at times, lost. Mars' phrasing during solos
guys, you kicked our ass, too. Special note to left something to be desired, and while it's real
Jani Lane: Stop Touching Yourselfl It's illegal cool that he can still play 32nd notes up and
in this state, and besides you'll go blind.) down the neck of his axe, it would be nice if he
Motley Crue leapt on stage like the devil- didn't have to stop and think between licks.
worshipping Sons of Satan that they are, a But the group's back-up singers, the Nasty
mere 45 minutes after Warrant left the spot-
I a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury, sonifying nothing
II the opening bsnd W2S better
III every rose has Its thorn
IIII spsndex f rem hsll
Hill I banged ray head twice snd
enjoyed it both times
(expletive deleted) Habits, Donna and Emi
(We don't know, maybe it's a West Coast name)
were decked out in the coolest biker babe leather
and lace.
Laser fu, gratuitous "Chapel (expletive de
leted) Hill" 's, gratuitous hyper-reflective elec
tric guitar, pyrotechnics fu, gratuitous power
chords, pentagram fu, headbanging fu, four
letter word fu, gratuitous exploding speakers,
gratuitous MIDI, gratuitous nurse costumes.
Two-and-a-half martinis. You should have
been there.
all the fireworks in between, the Crue strutted Nikki Sixx's bass and Tommy Lee's drums,
and posed their way through the flashiest, punctuated by Mick Mars' guitar and high-
slammin'est, noisiest music to bulldoze through lighted by Vince Neil's smoldering voice. And
Chapel Hill in, well, an eternity. if the stage show was tamer than days of yore,
Warrant, plugging their debut release Dirty the Crue pulled out all the stops on the music,
Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich, played an obscenely playing songs from each of their albums, in
cluding a particularly driving rendition of "Dr.
Feelgood," a manic "Too Young to Fall in Love"
and the Bic-lighted "Home Sweet Home."
The one disappointment of the evening was
the guitar solo by Mick Mars. In the diction
ary, somewhere under heavy metal concert it
says something about "an obligatory axe-fest,
characterized by lean, mean, killer chops, dur
ing which the groupies, who are only there to
drool over the lead sinner (oops, that's singer),
can go get something to drink without fear of
missing anything." The guitar solo is the epit
ome of heavy metal. It's the last ancient relic of
days past when men were men, women were
women, metal was metal and 1 1 -year-olds run
ning around in their mothers' high heels weren't
the predominant metal audience. Supposedly.
Not even the hard-core Crue fans were still
on their feet at the end of this one. The most
exciting part of the guitar solo was the drunk
guy one row over who was flailing around in
some kind of dance (to his own inner guitar
solo) that he obviously improvised on the spot.
It was not a highlight. 'Nuff said.
Tommy Lee's drum solo had the potential
to be the same kind of long, drawn-out affair.
A music sampler? Is that like a Whitman's
Sampler? You can never find anything you
quite like in those either. But somehow it turned
into the highlight of the show. Carried by Lee's
boyish exuberance and repeated exhortations
to "Check this shit out!", the episode of the
flying drumkit was, like the best of Motley
gratifying show, with the largest opening act Crue, something that had to be experienced,
attendance in the history of mankind. Sprinkled (Special note to Tommy Lee: Sorry, Tommy,
with singles like "Down Boys," "Big Talkin'" but it still doesn't quite match the rotating
and "Heaven," the set was solid music that drumcage and playing upside-down. You'll never
primed the audience for the headliners per- be able to to beat that.)
fectly. (Special note to Jani Lane: How do you He was having (gasp) fun. He was having so
keep your hat on your head when you're thrash- much fun it oughta be illegal. (As a matter of
ing around that way? And will you teach me?) fact, it probably was illegal.) So, of course the
Warrant's stage show (including chicken- audience had fun too, because it's impossible
fighting guitarists) and slick choreography, to not have fun when there's someone above
carried over from their club days in El Lay, you having that much fun.
translated surprisingly well into an arena. Vo
calist Jani Lane even braved the crowd, wad
ing through the headbangers in the front rows
of the audience, making one-on-one contact
with the throng of (by-then) adoring fans.
But it was Motley Crue the fans were there
for, evidenced by the wall of sound that greeted
the dudes as they (literally) exploded onto the
stage in a shower of pyrotechnics and launched
into their latest release, "Kick Start my Heart."
The show, in the best metal tradition, was
Four iron crosses. I'm speechless.
kill 'email
lussdto love her,
but I had to kill her
what's not to like?
'check this shit out!'
I lost my underwear