No posts so far this year because life goes on and other blogs and interests get more attention. I have more 1980s collectibles to share and articles to write but until then . . . some gabbing . . .
I've been listening to Motley's first demos and the Leathur Too Fast For Love a lot this year. "Nobody Knows What It's Like To Be Lonely" at the correct speed and the Raspberries cover, "Tonight", along with the "Stick To Your Guns"/"Toast Of The Town" single show Crue coming together quickly and making engaging power Pop Metal. It's classic stuff, with elements of Sweet and T. Rex. They also demoed "Public Enemy #1" and "Take Me To The Top". This was all by about May, 1981. In around September they started working on the Too Fast For Love record which they would release in November under their own "Leathur" label. They'd rerecord some tracks, edit and even remove one altogether when they re-released it through Elektra Records in the summer of 1982. The April 1981 debut at the Starwood bootleg that has circulated since the 1980s has an incomplete version of another early Nikki song with the refrain "Why You Killin' Yourself?". It has the same wistful vibe as much of the other 1981 Motley music. A more complete version of this show is in a collector's possession. Perhaps, someday, we'll hear this tune in full.
I woulda first heard Motley in the summer of 1984. I wanted my own copy of Shout At The Devil more than anything and I asked for it for Christmas and birthdays but I believe my ma fought me off for a while. I might have gotten a copy by 1985 and then Theatre Of Pain soon after. I didn't get Too Fast until about 1987, after Girls, Girls, Girls came out.
I was always a huge fan of Shout and enjoyed the other albums but I probably liked Metallica's first four albums as much or more than Motley's music in those years. I think part of my Motley identity was due to forging a personality in school and in my group. One guy was a Metallica freak, another, KISS. I was the Crue head. When Dr. Feelgood came out in the Fall of 1989, I was 13 years old and I remember being disappointed in the album. I think I was one of those Crue fans that was hoping we'd hear SOMETHING like Shout again, but it never happened. I love all Motley's 1980s albums but I wouldn't say that post-Shout we got another album as powerful. Take the best from Theatre (1985), Girls (1987), Dr. F (1989) and even the singles from Decade Of Decadence (1991) and you could make one monster album or maybe even two stronger ones.
But Motley truly were more than their music. They had legit vibe and character and it invests their whole aura with a kind of depth and meaning that many of their contemporaries just don't have. Behind Motley's songs is a content that isn't reducible to "Shop Talk": we've gotten almost nothing from them as to the making of their classic albums. What we do get is what the songs were written about. What happened in life to create all theses texts and tunes. The albums are collections of experiences in song-form, not necessarily "recording projects".
There are many Motley audio bootlegs from the classic Decade. I am currently making my way through all the known video boots of Crue concerts in the 1980s-1991 (right now on the Theatre tour) and I've come to realize so much more is represented on those audio boots, and often with better sound, that I'm gonna need to start listening to these. Even just the amount of Shout audio boots is impressive and we're lucky to have so much.
