Disco de Mötley Crüe: “Red White & Crue (Explicit)”

THE BAND: Vince Neil (vocals), Mick Mars (guitar), Nikki Sixx (bass), Tommy Lee (drums). Home town: Los Angeles, CA.

THE DISCS: 37 songs on 2 discs. Digitally remastered sound. A nice tri-fold CD case with a 14-page booklet. The booklet includes a brief band retro by 'Rolling Stone' writer David Wild, band pictures, and song listings - including the year written and from which album the song came from). Disc 1 contains 20 songs ranging from 1982-89 ("Too Fast For Love" through "Dr. Feelgood"). Disc 2 contains 17 songs - covering all kinds of goodies - from bonus songs from previous "Greatest Hits" releases, as well as late era Crue albums from the 90's, as well as the ultra heavy "Motley Crue" album featuring Vince Neil's replacement for a year, John Corabi. If you dig deep, you'll see this collection is really an ode to Nikki Sixx - who is on 33 of the 37 song writing credits (Mick Mars is on 16, and perhaps appropriately Vince Neal on only 7 songs). There are 4 cover tunes ("Helter Skelter", "Smokin' In The Boys Room", "Anarchy In The UK", and "Street Fighting Man"), all but the latter were fairly successful. While most of the 90's era songs can't touch the tracks from the 80's, I feel the best songs from the late era Crue are well represented here. Footnote - Mick Mars is a severely underrated guitar wizard.

ALBUM REPRESENTATION: Too Fast For Love (4 songs), Shout At The Devil (4), Theater Of Pain (2), Girls, Girls, Girls (4), Dr. Feelgood (6), Decade of Decadence (2), Motley Crue w/John Corabi (2), Quaternary (2), Generation Swine (3), Greatest Hits (2), New Tattoo (2), Unreleased/New (4).

COMMENTS: The Crue represented 80'S "glam rock" at it's ultimate best. The Hollywood bad-boys ripped it up on stage as well as behind the scenes. Always seemingly in trouble - anywhere in the world. They rocked the house down - show after show. They had SO many great tunes and the standards are all here ("Live Wire", "Looks That Kill", "Too Young To Fall In Love", "Smokin' In The Boys Room", "Home Sweet Home", "Girls, Girls, Girls", "Kickstart My Heart", "Dr. Feelgood", "Primal Scream", "Hooligan's Holiday", etc). Fond memories of Mars shredding his guitar; Sixx on steady bass, Tommy Lee pounding the skins upside down, and Vince Neil leading the way with his high pitched wail. "Red, White & Crue" (2005) is easily the best 2-disc Crue compilation of the band to date. Any other Crue compilation ("Decade Of Decadence", "Greatest Hits", "Millenium Collection", etc) are now considered mute. All the studio albums are represented here on "Red, White & Crue". It's a great recollection and history of the band. If you are fairly new to the Crue - "Red, White & Crue" is THE place to start. Sure, Motley Crue has several 'Best Of' packages and for those fans that have much/all their material - this release may or may not be considered essential. I say - trade in your old Crue compilations for this one. It would have been great to see a few obscure favorites of mine like "Red Hot", "Dancing On Glass", "City Boy Blues" or "Ten Seconds To Love"... but I won't look this gift-horse in the mouth. Thank you Hip-O Records for making all but 3 of these tracks the 'studio' version (only 3 re-mixes and NO live recordings). The selection of Crue tunes here are first rate (5 stars).

Whether you're a new fan of Motley Crue or a lifelong diehard fan, you must get this album. It's a steal; you're getting 2 CDs for the price of 1! You get all the greatest songs and 3 new ones in one collection. This album takes a good portion from every studio and compilation album. This is the band's 4th "greatest hits" album, and it's by far better than all the previous ones. Here's how "Red White & Crue" stacks up against those others.

DECADE OF DECADENCE (1991): Contains the best 2 songs from the band's first five albums and some new songs. This album is excellent except I would have preferred the album version of "Kickstart My Heart" over the album's live version.

GREATEST HITS (1998): This album leaves out "Live Wire," and leaves out the classic 1983 "Shout At The Devil" track in favor of an inferior 1997 version of the song.

20th CENTURY MASTERS-THE MILLENIUM COLLECTION: THE BEST OF MOTLEY CRUE (2003): This album leaves out important songs like "Smokin' In The Boys Room", "Live Wire", and "Dr. Feelgood", the band's biggest hit ever.

RED WHITE & CRUE (2005): All the best songs from all the albums. This is the complete anthology of Motley Crue--Case Closed.

The new Motley Crue greatest hits album, "Red, White, and Crue" is an EXCELLENT greatest hits package. I have this album playing in the background on my Ipod as I type this. When it comes to a greatest hits album, it can't get much better than this. This album covers all of Motley Crue's material from 1981 up until now, and all of the material on here is great. You will get to hear Crue material on here that was previously unreleased until now, stuff from there most recent studio album, "New Tatoo" is to be found on here, and you really won't have too much (or nothing) to complain about, because several Motley Crue classics, such as "Dr. Feelgood", "Looks That Kill", "Girls, Girls, Girls", "Shout At The Devil", among other Crue classics, are here. And now that Motley Crue has finally returned, there are three new songs on here: "If I Die Tommorow", "Sick Love Song", and a pretty good cover of The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man". Another bonus for this album is that there are liner notes written by Rolling Stone editor David Wild about the whole career of Motley Crue, and four songs from the Motley Crue era with John Corabi are here. That is a good thing, since Corabi was not well liked by several Motley Crue fans, mostly because several Crue fans were angry that Vince Neil was gone and also because Motley Crue expirimented with grunge rock when they had Corabi, and several fans didn't like the idea of Motley Crue doing grunge. Van Halen didn't bother putting any songs with Gary Cherone on their new two disc greatest hits album "The Best of Both Worlds", so I'm glad to see that the Crue is giving recognition to John Corabi. Go out and buy this album. Besides the two volumes of the Motley Crue box set "Music To Crash Your Car To", this is an excellent deal for all Crue fans. I hope they make a new full-length album. Since Amazon won't anybody recommend something in the box unless they bought it off of this site, in addition to this I recommend Slaughter's first home video, "From The Beginning"- Vince Neil and Tommy Lee appear very briefly in the beginning. Motley Crue rocks!

I doubt if any but the most sycophantic Crue fans will deny that their 90s work failed to match up to that of the previous decade by a long shot, and that's the one thing keeping this from being a five-star collection.

By the time disc two starts you can already hear the band going through the motions. Their cover of "Anarchy in the UK" should no more have ever been recorded than Megadeth's bastardized "Anarchy in the USA". Furthermore, I've actually heard a few people claim the self-titled Crue album as their all-time favorite, but don't be fooled: "Motley Crue" was issued at the height of the grunge takeover, and although it isn't by any means a grunge album, it does suffer from that obvious need to strip the band's sound down to a more bottom-heavy rock and roll, a move not at all unusual in the erstwhile hair metal scene as band after band tried to go the grunge route while tangentially staying true to their glam roots at the same time. "Motley Crue" was far less of a disgrace than other such efforts as Warrant's "Belly to Belly" and - God forbid - LA Gun's "American Hardcore", but that doesn't necessarily make it a hidden treasure either.

Vince rejoining for "Generation Swine" was a great move, but there were really only a couple of good songs surrounded by a lot of well-meaning filler. "Afraid" is here in an alternate mix (I hate it when they do that), which was probably the highlight of the record, and the only video I remember seeing get any rotation on MTV. They did manage to come up with another great single in "Bitter Pill" for their late-90s "Greatest Hits" album, but the less said about "New Tattoo" the better.

But that's the bad news. There's a reason that despite all that criticism this collection still deserves a solid four stars. The Crue's run of singles in the 80s was phenomenal, not only from a sales point of view but from a pop songwriting perspective as well. In fact, the immense popularity of "Home Sweet Home" single handedly ushered in the era of the heavy metal power ballad. Prior to this, bands like Def Leppard had recorded power ballads such as "Bringing on the Heartbreak", but these had always been secondary in popularity to the harder titles like "Rock of Ages" and "Photograph". No more. For another 3-4 years the hair metal scene would vacillate in popularity between the heavier numbers and the power ballads, but the ballads kept gaining ground, and by 1990 they'd taken over to such an extent that the teenage males who had made the music popular in the first place had started degrading it as "chick rock". Grunge would be given credit for killing off hair metal, but it had already been mortally wounded long before Nirvana came along.

Which is not to say that Nikki Sixx - the Crue's primary songwriter - should be blamed or held responsible for later fan-driven turns of events. We can only judge him on the songs, and from the early punk inspired frenzy of "Live Wire" to the sleaze anthem "Girls Girls Girls" to the band's final masterpiece, "Dr. Feelgood", it's all here. Honestly you could make a great two disc collection that ended at Dr. Feelgood, but if you want that much early Crue you might as well go for the "Music to Crash Cars To" sets. As it is, disc one of "Red White & Crue" is untouchable, while disc two has it's share of winners, including - surprisingly - their comeback singles "If I Did Tomorrow" and "Sick Love Song". I'd heard in advance that "If I Die Tomorrow" was a Simple Plan outtake, so I was prepared to hate it (I think bands like Simple Plan and their ilk are the punk rock versions of boy bands), but this is a much heavier - yet still melodic - take on the song than I can imagine Simple Plan doing. Ultimately, the Crue can still play good songs in a heavier mode than their 80s heyday, but they do best when they remember that it's the melody that's their bread and butter. Despite it's rough, nasal quality, Vince Neil's voice has always worked it's way around a melody in a way no one else can, and as long as Sixx and crew keep that in mind they may be well on their way to a comeback

What a good way to get reaquinted with old fans and introduce yourselves to new fans. By releasing a 2 disc greatest hits package with 3 brand new songs which are all amazing. Plus I saw motley on tour for this at 2 of the shows and they put on a show that was so far the best show I have seen. Do youself a favor if you like rock music and buy this now!