New York Dolls, Poison, and Motley Crue in Las Vegas

We saw the legendary New York Dolls, Poison, and Motley Crue in Las Vegas on June 18 at the Red Rock Amphitheatre.

The New York Dolls came on at 7:00 just as people were just starting to enter the Amphitheatre.  David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain were as energetic as ever!  We have seen them before; but it was spectacular to see them in this sort of setting with a large crowd.  It seemed strange that they are the band that started glam, and they were opening up for bands that (influenced by the New York Dolls), continued and perfected it a decade later.

They performed all of our favorite songs, as well as some newer ones from 'Dancing Backwards in High Heels' and 'Cuz I Sez So'. 

New York Dolls set-list:

Personality Crisis
We're All In Love
'Cause I Sez So

Talk To Me, Baby
Fabulous Rant

I'm So Fabulous
Kids Like You

Dance Like a Monkey
Pills

Trash

Jet Boy

At first we were shocked to hear that Motley Crue and Poison would even be touring together given their tumultuous history, but we are elated they did!

The show started at 8:00 pm with Bret storming onto the 'Poison green' stage above the drum riser and in an instant, everyone was on their feet! The only difference was this time the stage was adorned with wording celebrating Poison's 25th Anniversary. Poison is always highly entertaining & energetic and love to dazzle the crowd with pyro and fireworks.

Poison set-list:

Look What The Cat Dragged In
Ride The Wind
We’re An American Band
Your Mama Don’t Dance

CC Guitar Solo

Fallen Angel
Unskinny Bop
Rikki Drum Solo

Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Talk Dirty To Me

Nothin’ But A Good Time

Motley Crue took the stage at 9:30, and the show started with a mass exposion of pyro!  It is always fun to see Vince Neil at a 'home show' playing to his friends in Vegas.  Crue entertained us with a set-list ranging from old to new hits and crowd favorites. We know we will never leave a Motley Crue show having heard all of the songs that we'd hoped to hear, only because there are far too many.

Vince's voice sounded awesome,  Mick was moving around the stage and (looked healthier than we'd seen him in years), Tommy played drums in 360 (rollercoaster-like loop) and played piano for 'Home Sweet Home', and Nikki, as always, was the spokesperson for the band - led the crowd in a prayer (praying that the band stays together many more years) and threw blood out on the crowd at the end of the show. 

Every year, every show, they never cease to amaze us by coming up with something new and totally different.  This is why they are one of our favorite bands of all time and we'll never get bored of seeing their shows! 

Motley Crue set-list:

Wildside
Saints Of Los Angeles
Live Wire
Shout At The Devil
Same Ol’ Situation
Primal Scream
Home Sweet Home
Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)
Drum Solo (where Tommy Lee drummed in his 360 degree roller-coaster).

Looks That Kill
Dr. Feelgood
Too Young To Fall In Love
Too Fast for Love
Girls Girls Girls
Smokin In The Boys Room
Kickstart My Heart

Motley Crue are the 4th Annual Sunset Strip Music Festival 2011 Honoree's August 18-20.
http://www.sunsetstripmusicfestival.com/

Vince Neil will also be honored August 21 at the Hilton for the Vegas Rocks! Magazine Lifetime Achievement in Rock 'N' Roll.

We also went to see our favorite Las Vegas based band the Sin City Sinners after the show at Chrome at Santa Fe Station.  Check them out if you are in Las Vegas!
http://www.thesincitysinners.com/index.html

   

U2 360 Tour

Top 5 moments at the show:

1. Bono singing “Walk On” and talking about Amnesty International and how there are 3000 people that are imprisoned in Burma.  http://3freedoms.amnesty.org/

2. Bono acknowledging his global awareness and asking everyone to light up their phones for the fire disasters in Slave Lake.

3. U2 performing “One” and Bono thanking the crowd for joining the One Campaign that he co-founded and ‘giving a shit’.  http://www.one.org/international/

4. Bono explaining the story of how he was hitchhiking in Vancouver the day before the Edmonton show; and how Gilbert Brule (Edmonton Oiler) rescued him. 

5. Seeing the largest stage ever built and old footage of U2 in 360 degrees.

New York City

We love New York City!  We didn't have alot of time in New York after the M3 festival; but we took in some important rock n' roll sites while we were there. 

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square.  They have one of the largest collections of music memorabilia we have ever seen.

We also went on a walking rock n' roll tour, that took us to sites in the East Village.  We were educated in the rock history of the neighbourhood and visited sites and venues.  Bobby Pinn took us to a great many sites including Joey Ramone's apartment, St. Mark's Hotel, and the Gem Spa that the New York Dolls made famous.  We highly suggest the tour, he has various walking rock n' roll tours around the New York City.  http://www.rockjunket.com/

After the tour we stopped off at our favorite place to shop, Trash and Vaudeville at 4 Saint Marks Place.  Jimmy is amazing!  Here is a picture of Marky Ramones Video Music Award in the store.  http://www.nycgoth.com/shops/trashnvaudeville/ 

We stopped by Manitoba's for some cocktails.  It is owned by Richard 'Handsome Dick' Manitoba from the Dictators.  http://manitobas.com/

We also went to our favorite New York City bar Motorcity.  The bar has an amazing atmosphere and has a lady dj that played our favorite songs all night!  They have great drink specials too!
http://motorcitybar.com/home.html

Visiting Joey Ramone's resting place was our final stop.  It is in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, approximately 15 minutes away from Newark airport.  The Hillside Cemetary has a Jewish section 'New York Social Club' and that is where he is laid to rest.  Gone too soon.

   

M3

In the past few years, we have been to Rocklahoma in Pryor, OK, and Rock N America in Oklahoma City, OK. This year we decided on M3 in Columbia, MD. The set up is perfect for the VIP section, the covered pavilion, and vendors.  They even had a National Pinball Museum with a Guns N Roses and a Kiss pinball machine.  There was also a book signing with Eddie Trunk for this new book 'Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal'.  It was great that there was only one side stage, but some of the bands over-lapped.  But otherwise, we will definately go back next year!

Friday, May 13 was the kick off party. First up was L.A Guns with Phil Lewis. We love Tracii Guns, but it was nice to see this version as it is the one with the voice. Who else could sing 'Sex Action' and 'Never Enough' like Phil Lewis?

Warrant was up next. It was strange to see them play without Jani Lane. Robert Mason (ex Lynch-Mob) has an amazing voice, but nothing is like the original vocalist. They were promoting their new album 'Rockaholic', but nothing will compare to 'Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich'.

KIX was the final band for Friday night and they were amazing! It was a hometown show for them "Long legged Rosie from Baltimore Took me farther than I've been before" - Girl Money... The crowd went wild.  Steve Whiteman is hilarious, and quite the frontman.  He has an insane amount of energy!  We got to meet them after in the VIP section.

Saturday, May 14 started with Danger Danger at 12 pm.  We made it on time, and were so happy to catch them live!  They are one of the few bands we haven't seen in the past few years.  Ted Poley sounded great, they did all of our favorite songs.  We got to meet them after the show in VIP.  They said they love the shows and then they just go on with their regular lives for the rest of the year, so it is pretty exciting for them.

Pretty Boy Floyd was next.  We love them and have been fortunate to see them the past couple of years.  They for some reason can never make it over the border to Canada, so we have to go to the US to see them.  They were throwing their cd "Kiss of Death - A Tribute to Kiss" to the audience.  It is always great to see Steve Summers and Kristy Majors on stage together. 

 
Firehouse was next.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see the entire set with the overlapping of bands.  We still heard our favorites songs.  C.J. Snare can still hit those incredibly high notes in "Don't Treat Me Bad".

Slaughter was next.  We have seen them a few times over the years and they are always great.  As usual, Mark Slaughter went deep into the crowd for all the audience to see and they finished with 'Up All Night'.

Next was Great White.  The last time we saw Great White was in Rock N America.  Jack Russell was not well, he has just had back surgery.  They had Jani Lane from Warrant covering for a short time, but now they have Terry Ilous from XYZ is filling in until Jack's return after another major surgery.  He was excellent, but it will be great once Jack returns, no one can replace him.

 
We ran over to the second stage to catch some of Black N' Blue just in time to hear Jaime St. James sing 'Miss Mystery'. 

And to see our Edmonton/Calgary friends 'Killinger' on the jumbo-tron.  http://killingerrocks.com/

Next up was Mr. Big.  We were pretty excited, we had never seen them play!  We never thought we would see Eric Martin, Paul Gilbert, Billy Sheehan and Pat Torpey on stage together for a reunion!  They performed all of our favorites and looked and sounded spectacular!

Faster Pussycat was next.  The only original member is Taime Downe.  He sang the songs as they sounded originally which was nice, he doesn't always do that.  It is unsettling to see him in his goth wear singing glam songs.

   
Big Noize, the all-star band event was next.  What a treat to see Carlos Cavasso from Quiet Riot, Joe Lynn Turner from Rainbow and Deep Purple, Phil Soussan from Ozzy and Jimmy Page and Vinnie Appice from Black Sabbath and Dio on stage together!

Sebastian Bach was next!  We had seen him a couple nights earlier on the way to M3 at the famous Crocodile Rock in Allentown, PA.  He was very entertaining as usual, he has such an incredible voice.  He told the story of how he hit his bassist in the head with his microphone swinging and scarred him.  We met him at the after party at Clyde's.

Tesla was next!  They always put on such a good powerful show.  I remember when they used to open up for almost any show that came to Canada.  They still hold that energy and musicianship that they did 20 years ago.

The finale of the night was Whitesnake!  They were spectacular.  They played all of the old songs and also played alot off the new album 'Forevermore'.  The new songs sound alot like Coverdale/Page, sexy and bluesy.  David Coverdale is still an astounding frontman, one of the best!

Can't wait for next year!

Slave Lake Fundraiser

Motorhead

We were very excited to see Motorhead shortly after seeing the Lemmy movie (which was just voted one of The Seven Best New Music Documentaries of the Year)! They played all of the songs that we wanted to hear. This tour was supporting their new album 'The World is Yours'. We were in awe of Lemmy and so was the audience! Lemmy is a Heavy Metal God! There is nothing like a crowd at a sold-out Motorhead show!

http://www.imotorhead.com/

Mosh Potatoes

Mosh Potatoes is a cookbook with recipes from some of our favorite musicians.

Some recipes of Mosh Potatoes include:

‘Opening Act’s’ (appetizers)

Rock ‘n’ Rolly Guacamole from Jeff Pilson (Dokken/Dio), and Party Potatoes from Tyler Connolly (Theory of a Deadman).

‘Headliners’ (entrees)

Rock ‘n’ Roll Sandwich from Bruce Kulick (Kiss/Union), and Lips’ Pizza Fries from Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow (Anvil). The most interesting recipe is from Lemmy with his Krakatoa Surprise, it has an editor note to prepare at your own risk because it involves eating while still on fire!

‘Encores’ (desserts)

Vancouver Lasagna from Burton C. Bell (Fear Factory) and Star Cookies and No-Bake Cookies from David Ellefson (Megadeth).

Along with recipes, the book has some entertaining stories and liner notes.

http://www.moshpotatoescookbook.com/