Motley Crue Review Chicago

Last night was the third show of Cruefest. I'll cut the band a little slack for that, but not very much. I've seen Motley Crue 136 times now and this was in the bottom five. Oddly enough, all of those were from the Feelgood tour. Since this was the 20th Anniversary of Feelgood, I shouldn't have been surprised.

The setlist was, as is becoming a habit on Cruefest, bad. They did the entire Feelgood album and since they were aware of this, they might have rehearsed a bit. There was also a last ditch attempt at saving the show by adding other hits on at the end. They were:
Wild Side
Saints Of Los Angeles
Shout At The Devil
Looks That Kill
Home Sweet Home
Girls Girls Girls

A lot of funny things happened at this show. Every single member of the band screwed up a song at least twice. The best of those being Looks That Kill. This is a song that they should know pretty well by now. In the course of 3:53, Vince forgot the words, various members sang when there was no one else singing, an "ummm" was clearly heard and there was the proper bass line playing while another, clearly off key bass line was completely audible. Although this may account for Nikki's amazing talent of continuously having both hands in the air while the bass is clearly heard. He does this a lot, but never as much as last night.

Nikki also spent a lot of time wandering around the stage, which is also nice. It was also nice to see him in an awesome pair of boots. It was the best though, to hear his little (less manipulative than last year, thank you so much) speech where he announced that they were rotating five songs throughout the tour, so far those have been Live Wire, Primal Scream and Looks That Kill. That's three. Since Nikki was talking about it last night, it was only technically 2 songs he had to remember, what they played the night before in Cleveland (Primal Scream) and what they were playing then (Looks That Kill). He forgot Primal Scream and had to ask the band what they had played the night before. There was a few seconds of mumbling until the band remembered what they had played, and then Nikki seemed to randomly pull Looks That Kill out of his ass. Nikki also had a weird part in Home Sweet Home, at the end where the band is oh so touchingly gathered around the piano, Nikki is completely at the other end of the stage, he started to walk over, waved at the band, stopped, threw something at them and turned and wandered back to his side of the stage. It was really odd.

Tommy was still passing around that damn bottle of Jager. No, I still don't want it. He was also stuck behind the smallest drum kit I've ever seen him play. It was really sad, like they were stripping him of his power or something. The once mighty Tommy Lee looked very small and defeated. I guess he heard the show. He had a few moments in the sun, but not many, and he also screwed up as many songs as he got right.

In a sentence that I thought would never ever come out of my brain, the best member of the night was Vince. He tore up Shout At The Devil. Best version I've heard since the Theater Of Pain tour. He wasn't perfect by a long shot though. He forgot more words than ever before and only rarely bothered to use the audience to cover that up. We know the words, let us take it, we can do it. His stage patter was predictable and dated, as always. But he still won, for the first time ever, best Crue member of the night.

Mick was moving around slightly less than last year, but still seemed in pretty good health. His screw ups were audible and frequent, according to my guitar guy show mate. I didn't notice, mostly because of Nikki's screw ups. What I did notice was a pattern of starting songs early and then stopping and shortening solos in the songs. Maybe that's what screwed Vince up so bad.

The stage set was cool, I think. They didn't bother to have the video screens on for much of the show. When they were on they showed reasonably cheap and crappy clip art type stuff. There was no Tit E. Cam either. We originally had lawn seats and traded up when we got there. That was a beautiful thing because we wouldn't have been able to see anything from the lawn. Isn't that why they have those huge screens up there?

To sum it up, the band was bad. They should have never have attempted to do the entire Feelgood album, that album was hugely filler stuffed. The set might have been great if people in the back could have seen it. They needed the video screens on and showing the band. The entire band needs to relearn Looks That Kill and Home Sweet Home. HSH wins for worst song of the night. At one point they were all playing different versions of it at the same time. This time around they needed to actually practice and remember the people who paid to see them. I was amazingly disappointed. I now understand why Nikki has been so adamant about not wanting show infomation put out on the internet. He's starting to become a bit rusty as my hero.

Will I see them again? Yeah. I've seen worse shows from them. But I'll wait until this Feelgood silliness is done. Should you see them? I'd read reviews from later in the tour, maybe they'll improve.