Motley eFFin' Crue, Baby!

My beautiful wife and I attended the Motley Crue concert last night here in Honolulu. She's much more of a fan than I am. I'm more of a Led Zeppelin kinda guy but I enjoy the raw nature of the Crue's music.

The crowd wasn't very big which isn't suprising given the community. Reggea and rap has a much larger following here in Hawaii than rock. The age make up of the crowd was decidely older with most in the 30-40 range even though there were some twentysomethings in the crowd.

There was no warmup band. The Crue came out and played for 2 hours including encores. They did LOTS of old stuff and only a few of the new songs from their latest album. They were, of course, very LOUD. My ears are still ringing. There were lots of pyrotechnics which suprised me due to the smallish size of the arena they played. They had some what looked like "use-to-be-strippers" bouncing around the stage from time to time with one even coming out topless at one point. They also had a midget that they seemed to enjoy abusing for the amusement of themselves and the crowd.

The band themselves were pretty awesome. These guys can still rock and rock hard. You can still see why they earned the title of rock and roll's consumate bad boys. The side we were sitting on was closest to Nikki Six. He appeared to take great pleasure in spitting into the front few rows and flipping the bird at his fans. He also disappeared just off stage after (and during) nearly every song into a small tent on the left side. I'm not sure what he was doing in there. Maybe lighting a cig or doing a shot? It's hard to say. I can't help it but every time I look at Mick Mars he looks like he just came off the set of "The Adams Family". He wasn't very animated during the show but he can certainly make his guitar scream! Vince Neal is chubby. He definitely needs to lose about 20 lbs. Suprisingly his voice sounds the same as it always has. It cracked a few times but it isn't much different than it sounded 20 years ago (wow, has it been that long?). Tommy Lee is an overgrown teenager. He looks the same and still displays his mastery of the drums.

I think the sound of the show would have been better if they would have lowered the volume a little. I don't think the arena has very good accustics and the sounds where we were sitting (left side risers, about 200' from the stage) came through as garbled and hard to distinguish. A more centralized seat may have resulted in a better overall sound experience.

Of course, the freaks came out of the woodwork to attend this event. At some points the crowd was better entertainment than the band! Its funny to see all these middle aged rockers trying to relive the 80's! lol.

All in all a good time was had by all. Me and the wife had a blast. We both enjoyed the show and bought T shirts. The band pledged to be back next year and my wife being the fan she is I'm sure we'll also be in attendance upon their next showing.

Rock On!