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SXSW review: Motorhead, more metal at Austin Music Hall
Played bass like it was a guitar, did an acoustic blues (kinda!?!), did “I Got Mine” and saved “Ace of Spades” for right near the end…yeah, that was Motorhead at the Austin Music Hall Wednesday night. Strange to say, but it almost made you glad for Blitz during World War II. How else would Lemmy have come up with that sound? It sounds like more than bombs falling, more than the end of the world — more like both of those things, and dinner’s ready and you like it.
For all the talk about what a meathead the guy is (and I haven’t seen the film about him), bassist Lemmy really seems like a disciplined guy in his own way. And, if I may be comically reductive, he basically invented speed metal. (Hold your e-mails, folks, before you say, and yeah, jerk, Bob Marley invented reggae and Buddy Holly rock ‘n’ roll.)
The undercard included Melissa Auf der Maur, late of Hole, doing some pretty melodic crunchy stuff, Voivod, doing, uh, their best to demonstrate, simultaneously, the strengths and limitations of the metal genre and Michael Monroe, bleached, preening, acting like he was shot out of a cannon and making a strong case for the argument that the New York Dolls AND Hanoi Rocks were a couple of the best things that ever happened. If only we could have avoided Poison.
It was a weird place to find out Alex Chilton died. But life and rock go on.
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