Happy New Year Fartheads and welcome to another “Album by Album Challenge.” For those that are new here, the “Album by Album Challenge” is where I take a bands entire discography and listen to every album in order of release from front to back. As I do this, I write a review of the albums and offer my thoughts on each of them. In some cases, I have learned that I really enjoyed a lot of things that I overlooked by a certain band. In other cases, I learned just how much crap one band can release to the masses. This time around I took it upon myself to face the challenge of listening to the Motley Crue catalog and I must say, it was one of the most painful challenges I have done yet. I can’t even being to describe just how much crappy music this band has put out but I’ll digress for now. This was a long one of 11 albums (two versions of “Too Fast For Love”) so I have split it into two parts. Hope you enjoy this one and hey, at least YOU didn’t have to listen to all of these yourself. You’re welcome.
Motley Crue – Too Fast For Love (Leathur Records)
Release Date: 1981
The Good: Live Wire, Public Enemy #1, Take Me To The Top, Merry Go Round, Piece of Your Action, Too Fast For Love
The Bad: Toast of The Town
The Indifferent: Starry Eyes, On With The Show
What a fucking killer album. This is the version of their debut that self released on the bands own “Leathur Records” imprint and the difference between this version and the Elektra records version is like night and day. The songs are raw, gritty and so much fucking fun to listen to. Vince as a singer really kills on this one and I also love it that Nikki Sixx’s bass is more prominent in the mix. Hearing this album really showed me a few things. First off, Vince was a killer singer and Nikki is really not a bad bass player at all. The album is more glam ROCK as opposed to metal. “Live Wire” is pretty much the closest thing to metal on this album. This version of the album also has slightly different performances and arrangements than the Elektra version we all came to know. “Too Fast For Love” has a whole slow intro that we never heard before which in my opinion was really stupid and I’m glad that it got omitted later. Songs like “Public Enemy #1” and “Take Me To The Top” have so much more punch to them. “Live Wire” also has this REALLY annoying clapping in between the stops towards the end of the song which I have no fucking clue why they would do something so dumb. “Starry Eyes” and “On With The Show” are two extremely forgettable songs but the only real stinker on this album was “Stick To Your Guns” which eventually was also left off of the future Elektra version. Other than that stinker and other little things, this is a solid debut album and one I really enjoyed listening to.
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Motley Crue – Too Fast For Love (Elektra Records)
Release Date: December 15, 1982
The Good: Live Wire, Public Enemy #1, Take Me To The Top, Merry Go Round, Piece of Your Action, Too Fast For Love
The Bad:
The Indifferent: Starry Eyes, On With The Show
The big difference here from the Leathur Records version more polished production (still pretty raw sounding), a different sound order and some different performances. Motley Crue pretty much re-recorded the whole album. I’m glad they removed those annoying “claps” in “Live Wire” and removed the slow intro to “Too Fast For Love.” Those were very smart moves but aside from those changes, it was hard to hear a lot of differences there. Overall, I still like the track order and the performances on the Leathur Records version much better.
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Motley Crue – Shout At The Devil
Release Date: September 26 1983
The Good: In The Beginning, Shout At The Devil, Looks That Kill, Helter Skelter, Red Hot, Too Young To Fall In Love, Knock ‘Em Dead Kid, Danger
The Bad: Bastard, Ten Seconds To Love,
The Indifferent: God Bless The Children of the Beast
The difference between “Shout at the Devil” and “Too Fast For Love” is like night and day. This album is without a doubt the album that put Motley Crue on the Heavy Metal map. As much as I loved “Too Fast For Love”, I can see why they ignore that album as once they put out Shout at the Devil, they found a formula. Listening to this album in full was a cool experience. Crue really had some awesome moments on this album. Even as corny as the spoken intro “In The Beginning” is, it sets the tone and “Shout at the Devil” is a kick in the face. I actually like the songs on this album but the vibe is totally ruined by corny sex fueled lyrics of “Ten Seconds To Love” and the atrocious “Bastard.” What a horrible couple of songs. “Red Hot” is a killer track but it’s the album closer “Danger” that I found to be a really amazing tune. I never paid much attention to this one before but I’d have to say that it’s without a doubt one of their best songs.
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Motley Crue – Theater of Pain
Release Date: June 21, 1985
The Good: City Boy Blues, Smokin’ In The Boys Room, Louder Than Hell, Keep Your Eye On The Money, Home Sweet Home, Use It or Lose It, Save Our Souls, Raise Your Hands To Rock,
The Bad:
The Indifferent: Tonight (We Need A Lover),
This has to be one of the worst sounding albums ever. Coming off the heels of the bombastic and thumpy “Shout at the Devil” album, this album sounds weak and thin. Content wise, this album surprised me. At one time this was my least favorite but this one has a lot of good songs on it. It’s not as “metal” as “Shout…” but I’m starting to see that Crue in some ways was really struggling with their identity. In some ways, it’s a cool thing because as of this album, their sound seemed to change drastically on each album. “City Boy Blues” and “Louder Than Hell” are killer tunes that are really unique in their own right and “Save Our Souls” just well could be Crue’s own “doom metal” song. I could totally hear this one being covered by some doom metal band and not having to change it much. “Raise Your Hands To Rock” could be a Tesla and/or Cinderella song while “Fight For Your Right” is definitely anthem Glam Metal. “Theater of Pain” really surprised me in both it’s versatility and it’s just a really good album. It’s just too bad the production makes it painful to listen to. These songs are way better than they sound.
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Motley Crue – Girls, Girls, Girls
Release Date: May 15, 1987
The Good: Wild Side,
The Bad: Girls Girls Girls, Bad Boy Boogie, Nona, Sumthin’ For Nuthin’, You’re All I Need, Jailhouse Rock
The Indifferent: Dancing On Glass, All In The Name of…,
“Wild Side” isn’t just one of Crue’s best songs but one of my favorite hard rock/metal songs. It offers up so much promise for this album. The song is so dark, heavy and awesome but the rest of the album doesn’t come close to even following through. Instead it’s a lot of fluff, horrible sexual innuendos and just piss poor songs. Even the songs that were just “OK” were just barely “ok” missing the suck margin by just a smidgeon. They were trying to hard to play up their “bad boy” image that it just turned out ridiculous. Crappy ballads like “Nona” and “You’re All I Need” were just terrible but didn’t kill the album as bad as craptastic songs like “Sumthin’ For Nuthin'”, “Bad Boy Boogie” and their total raping of “Jailhouse Rock.” This album is a fine example of how as a kid, I was totally blinded by the larger than life image and juvenile lyrics. All those years later, the smoke has cleared and what’s left is a really shitty album with ONE great song on it. Ugggh. I’m dreading moving forward from here.
PART II Coming Soon
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