Nothin' But A Good Time

On my birthday I received an Amazon eGift Card which is one of the best gifts you can get. It's almost overwhelming to visit Amazon with free money. Books, movies, music, clothing, monkeys, just about everything a consumer can consume is available, all with free shipping (even to Hawaii!). Feeling a year older, I overdosed on nostalgia and ordered two Greatest Video Hits DVD's, by Motley Crue and Poison.

The back cover of the Poison DVD talks about the band's "infamous reputation for sex, drugs, and - of course - rock 'n roll" as they "raised hell not only off screen but on." Huh? Poison? Such unadulterated revisionism might stand up against, say, a White Lion DVD showdown but the Motley Crue DVD was bouncing up and down on my desk, begging for a shot at Bret, C.C., Bobby, and Rikki. Ladies and Gentleman, let's get ready to rumble....

I narrowed down the bout to seven subjective categories that have no quantitative value (sort of like Bret Michael's reality show).

• Game One - Welcome To the Jungle
  
• "Talk To Dirty To Me" vs. "Looks That Kill"
• The "Talk Dirty To Me" video opens with an older couple watching television when Bret Michaels calls for their daughter. What makes this so ridiculous is that the parents are watching the band's "Cry Tough" video on the television. If a groupie's parents like your video, something is not working artistically. On the other hand, Motley Crue's "Looks That Kill" depicts the band using fire to herd tattered women into a pen. A princess warrior arrives to free the women and the remainder of the video is a power struggle between the band and the woman. She fakes impalement on a wall of silver phallic symbols and escapes the band's grasp until they surround her and she disappears in a plume of smoke. EDGE: Motley Crue
  

• Game Two - Life On the Road
  
• "I Won't Forget You" vs. "Home Sweet Home"
• A nail biter of a showdown destined to go into double overtime. Both videos (and songs) are excellent. Poison's captures more of a young band experiencing success for the first time as they opened for Ratt. The Crue were headlining by this time and "Home Sweet Home" showed the additional resources the band had when staging a show. The Crue DVD features a "remix" video which drains the life out of the song and ultimately tips the round to the boys from Pennsylvania. EDGE: Poison

• Game Three - The 70's Covers
  
• "Your Mama Don't Dance" vs. "Smoking In the Boys Room"
• Poison's choice of covers has always been suspect and the recent cover of "Sexyback" may be the worst one to date. The Motley Crue video opens with a Doberman wearing a pentagram running away with a teenagers homework. This metaphor for choosing rock and roll over education remains a thread throughout the video. The opening verse has the band watching a futuristic classroom through jail bars. It looks a lot like a clip from Duran Duran's "Wild Boys" video which is probably not what the band was shooting for. Still, the video routs the Poison offering which they left off their DVD. EDGE: Motley Crue
  

• Game Four - 4 - 1 + 1 = 0
  
• "Stand" vs. "Hooligan's Holiday"
• Poison and C.C. Deville parted ways and the band brought in Richie Kotzen to replace him. The Crue lost Vince Neil shortly after and brought in John Corabi to replace him. Both bands sucked with the replacements. Kotzen is surely a better guitar player than C.C. Deville and Corabi might be a better vocalist than Vince Neil (though he sounds like the chick in 4 Non Blondes at times). "Holligan's Holiday" dresses the band like the droogs in Kubrick's film version of A Clockwork Orange while Poison goes "roots" and adds a choir and mandolin to "Stand". Well, somebody has to win, I guess. The Poison song sucks less. EDGE: Poison

• Game Five - Sex
• "Unskinny Bop" vs. "Girls, Girls, Girls"
• I've always wanted to be in a rock and roll band. I'm a terrible guitar player, an average drummer, and a rookie bass player. If I could master any of them and join a band, I'd be down for meeting strippers. The Crue DVD comes with an unrated version of the video that shows some toplessness (is that a word?). I penalized the band earlier for the "Home Sweet Home" remix but I'll give them extra points here for delivering the video we all imagined in our heads when we watched the original. I've always assumed "Unskinny Bop" was Poison's sex anthem but I didn't really notice C.C. Deville's drastic weight problem until re-watching these videos. Maybe he was the unskinny bopper. EDGE: Motley Crue

• Game Six - We're Getting The Band Back Together
  
• "Power To the People" vs. "Hell On High Heels"
• I lost track of both bands after key members started disappearing and missed the return of each. Vince Neil was back behind the mic (though Tommy Lee was missing briefly) for "Hell On High Heels". The video is a cartoon the band presents as their "History Of Mankind" and opens with a gorilla eating a dead eel. He then tosses it to the sky in a shot transition stolen from Stanley Kubrick's version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (the second Kubrick heist by the Crue in this battle). The video presents different scenarios of men (caveman, Greek philosopher, Vietnam soldier, Washington D.C. politician) who have sex with a woman and are then killed. The clip feels misogynistic and bitter which may or may not have been intended. It certainly isn't fun. "Power To the People" is a low budget home movie from what I can tell. C.C. Deville is back and no longer unskinny bopping. The song bites (ironically, I think it would sound great if the Crue played it) but it's a lot more fun that a cartoon devil woman killing off everyone. EDGE: Poison

• Game Seven - Live One For the Fans
  
• "Ride The Wind" vs. "Same Ol' Situation"
  
• Autographing breasts, girls waiting in bed, an over sized drum kit, green laser lights, trashed hotel rooms, arrests and cool hats. "Ride The Wind" is everything you want from a rock and roll band. If anything, Poison is trying a little too hard in the video to capture every cliche in three minutes so Motley Crue should easily win this deciding Game Seven. The video for "Wild Side" blew my fucking mind as a teen. Tommy Lee's drumset spinning over the crowd, back-up singers clad in leather stripper outfits, explosions everywhere, and a band clearly living the lifestyle. In my adolescent mind, it defined the decade in terms of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Then they pulled a Chris Webber with the video for "Same Ol' Situation" which opens with scrolling text that dedicates it "to the fans." Well, ok, I guess that usurps "Wild Side" and puts it on the charity stripe with the game on the line. I love the song, it reminds me of Poison's "Nothin But A Good Time" (I imagine die hard Crue fans hate it with a passion) and the video is everything "Wild Side" is not. It looks well thought out and the band seems to be fairly healthy. It is Motley Crue the franchise not Motley Crue the careless rock and roll caravan. Good business makes for bad music more times than not. EDGE: Poison

The series goes seven games and Poison wins it when Motley Crue blows it. Where does that leave us? Nowhere, I guess. Poison is on the road with Dokken this summer and I'm missing them in Vegas by one week. It breaks my heart but sometimes you gotta cry tough.