Criticism, in its best and worst form lives on. The late, great Dorothy Parker wrote some of the finest, including:
“This not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force” (The Algonquin Wits, 1968)
“Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B” (Review of Katherine Hepburn in “The Lake,” 1941)
“Not Much Fun. (Parker’s response to bartender’s question, “What are you having?”)
Then I read this review of a recent Motley Crue concert. It appears criticism is alive and well. Enjoy…
Motley Crue Set Marked By Gross Factor and Filler
(Marc Hirsh/Boston Globe, 8/25)There is, as almost everybody knows, an old borscht belt joke: Two women are at a resort complaining about the meals. The first woman says, “The food here is terrible.” The second woman responds, “I know. And such small portions!” The musical equivalent played out Friday at the Comcast Center, as Motley Crue not only dipped into its numbingly dreary collection of glam-metal hits but played far fewer of them than it could have in a 90-minute set crammed with filler.
Most of that wasted time was spent, as “Spinal Tap” so eloquently put it, treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality. The show opened with shadows of an angel performing a sex act on a devil, and there appeared to be actual porn intercut with the video footage of world leaders past and present accompanying “Same Old Situation (S.O.S.).” (Clearly, this was a statement, but it was unclear about what.) The low point came when drummer Tommy Lee aimed a video camera at the women of the audience for five whole minutes of “Show us your [acquiescence to peer pressure]!”
That sort of thing was obnoxious when Motley Crue was younger; these days, with the members all well over 40, it’s just pervy-old-man gross.
Guitarist Mick Mars mostly stayed out of it, but with his squat top hat pulled down to his eyes, long flowing coat and waxy, featureless pallor, he was creepy enough in his own right. Fittingly for a player so limited that he once admitted that he could only solo over one chord, his riffs sounded as though they were all built around the same three or four notes.
Then again, Vince Neil had his own four-note vocal range and Lee lost the beat right before the second chorus of “Girls, Girls, Girls,” so maybe that’s just Motley. The new “[Very Bad Word] of the Year” was aimless, but at least it was loud and dumb, in good company alongside “Wild Side” and “Kickstart My Heart,” which featured an explosion-punctuated bash-out coda lasting almost as long as the song itself. In other words, filler.
Openers Trapt had the misfortune of playing when many ticket holders were themselves still trapt in Friday rush-hour traffic. Crue bassist Nikki Sixx’s side project Sixx:A.M. followed with nondescript pop-metal.
If someone wanted to do a parody of a crazily enthusiastic man-of-the-people metal frontman, he would act and sound an awful lot like Papa Roach singer Jacoby Shaddix, but the band kept things moving by eschewing riffery for pure power chordage.
Buckcherry’s full-tilt hedonistic hard rock led to frontman Josh Todd’s amazing discovery that a microphone is shaped much like male genitalia, breaking news that, through his actions, he shared with the audience.
