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Monday, March 25, 2019

The Dirt - Netflix - Motley Crue

Like an after show party on Clark St. that ends the day after, Crue week on Sirius XM is over. The Dirt has arrived.

As a kid growing up with Motley being my favorite band (1st concert I ever went to was them opening up for Kiss on the Creatures tour), the objective for me was to watch this movie at face
value without trying to scrutinize every detail of the stories and history of my own tattooed beliefs
of this band. If you're able to do that, you're in for a fun ride. The Dirt is highly entertaining and enjoyable. The film makers did a great job recreating all the periods of their career. Looks That Kill particularly looks bad ass. Sure some things are out of sequence in the timeline, such as Doc McGhee managing Kiss after Crue, not before. Or the band playing to a huge crowd for the first time was not The Forum, it was the US Festival. But so what. For the sake of movie making/story telling, it's forgivable.

Applause for giving a nod to Nikki's early band with Lizzie Grey, London. You'll find their poster on Tommy's bedroom wall, and in the narrative as well.

Sure it would've been cool to see Nikki with Blackie Lawless, as it's so colorfully depicted in the book, and give a wink to where the use of the pentagram came from. But this is something only a Cruehead would think about.

First thought of seeing Vince portrayed by Daniel Webber was this guy is playing Jeff Spicoli. As the film progresses, the actor does a good job capturing his stage antics and persona.

Music wise, love the version of Livewire sung by Meghan Kabir. Why this wasn't included on the soundtrack release is a real shame.

The Dirt movie leaves me reminiscing about growing up in the 80's and my days on the Sunset Strip as a young teen. Helluva time. It's a different playground now, and a different business model. The days of building a scene pre-internet no longer exists. I'm not talking about being a band in your hometown and having a fair draw show up when you play out. I'm talking about a community of hundreds of bands in the same city, on the same mission, on the same streets, trying to stay alive and get attention and make it. There were a slew of bands from the same era/same scene that achieved success, Motley however were the leaders. There won't be another like them who lived and breathed the way these guys did. Each member had their own personality. Collectively they were a gang. Something bands today simply lack. Most people today don't even know the names of all the band members in their favorite bands, no matter what the genre. If there was a gun to your head and the shooter was going to pull the trigger if you couldn't name all the guys in Coldplay, ten out of ten would have a bullet in the head because you probably could only name Chris Martin. Forget about The Struts, you don't even know the name of the singer. You're dead kid. But you do know Vince, Nikki, Mick and Tommy.

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