Last night was spent having my ears assaulted by Motley Crue (yes I know there are umlauts, no I’m not going to bother looking up how to use them). I was sort of looking forward to seeing them, as I really enjoyed them in junior high, but I wasn’t expecting much.
It was awful. The sound, like most rock shows these days was just insanely loud, and even sitting in the back and high up it was just too much. On top of this the quality of the sound was horrible. For the older songs which are not very aurally distinct to begin with, I had no idea what song they were playing until Vince started singing. And even then, for many of them I just couldn’t make out a word or a melody. It was that bad.
Vince seemed to be running out of gas about 2/3rd through the show and full on murdered Dr. Feelgood. Seemed like he just couldn’t sustain the volume of his singing.
There were lots of big explosions which were pretty cool, but also sort of frightening given how close the Crue was to them. I felt many of the explosions from around 80 yards away.
The best part of the show was the first song, “Shout at the Devil”. Vince got through about 2 lines of the song before someone winged something at his head. He managed to dodge it and then threw his mic at the guy and dove into the crowd after him. This led to a 3 minute scuffle in which the band continued playing, including singing the backing vocals while Vince played macho. I’m not sure who Vince thinks he’s kidding, but isn’t that a job for the linebacker bodyguards you’ve hired? He ended up back on stage and talked some smack and all was well.
I think the show would have been a lot better had it been at a better venue. The lighting and stage guys seemed to be screwing up a lot, and production just seemed really sloppy.
While reading JWZ today I realized another reason I hate going to concerts these days. TicketBastard. Their insane cuts on ticket prices are very discouraging. They took a hefty cut of dead can dance’s ticket price, and I opted to have them mail me the tickets, as it was the only free option of them delivering the tickets. Of course, they didn’t mail them and I had to follow up and get them sent to will-call instead. I’m with JWZ, screw TicketBastard.