Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

You caught me, guilty pleasure, what can I say. The last few weeks have been like a walk down Crue memory lane to me. It probably all started almost a year ago when my sister turned me on to the new The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack CD and connected book The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star. I read the book and absorbed the CD. Both are spectacular and I highly recommend them by the way.

More recently I heard the Saints of Los Angeles single and was curious so I started exploring the Crue I missed when I left them along with the rest of the world (After Dr. Feelgood).

It turns out that I missed quite a bit of Motley, some good, some bad. Along with a small review of The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band book I read, I’ll spell out some of the past Motley Crue music you might have missed and why you should check it out.

Discography

Please see Mötley Crüe discography, for a complete discography

Studio albums

I’ve crossed out the ones you know, so let’s go through what’s left..and thanks to Wikipedia for the snazzy table.

Motley Crue (The album John Corabi instead of Vince Neil)

I have been listening to the hell out of this album lately. As a matter of fact I am trying to adopt some of it’s sounds into my new work. I want to go on record saying that we are all to blame for not giving this album a shot. I honestly think that this version of Motley Crue would have followed in the footsteps of the post-Roth Van Halen to go on and have a great career kicking out some awesome music.

This album came out in 1994, 14 years ago and it’s as fresh as if it has come out yesterday. It has the current detuned guitar sound everyone loves, a scream-singer with a current sounding voice and some awesome hooks and riffs. If you skipped this one, go back and pick it up, it’s fantastic.

Generation Swine

Ok, so Vince is back, but I am not so sure that it’s a good thing. The music was written for Corabi, and honestly the sound is just, well, odd. I don’t really like it that much. There are a few tracks, and it’s got it’s novelty hearing Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee sing a bit, but it just totally misses the mark and is not only un-memorable, but down right bad in places. I hate to speak bad of the Crue, but this is a definite miss.

New Tattoo

Once you hear what I have to say about the new album, you’ll see why I call this album a warm-up to Saints of Los Angeles. It was 8 years ago, Vince was back and sounded like himself again, but it seemed like they just couldn’t quite shake the dated parts of their old sound and the oldness of the feel was showing it’s wear. There are some memorable hooks and if this was released in 1991 we would have probably loved it.

Saints of Los Angeles

This is probably going to sound bad, and I don’t mean it to be, but I would say this is as good as they can hope to sound with Vince Neil. I like Vince, he is a cool guy, fun to watch and all, but after hearing John Corabi, then James Michael on the Sixx AM disc, and even Tommy Lee on his solo stuff, Vince just kinda belongs in the 80s. Motley is definitely quipped and capable of making sellable records in 2008, but I don’t think Vince can sing them. That being said, this is a good fun album, it’s definitely a throwback, but that’s not all bad, I mean you still rock out when you hear Girls, Girls Girls, right?

On Tour

So with that, I think all of them, except Generation Swine, are worth the purchase, and with the new Motley Crue tour this summer, I can say that I’ll be going to see them rock out for the first time since I saw them on the Dr. Feelgood tour. Check out the links below to purchase some of these from Amazon if you are interested.