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Stone Deaf Forever! Box Set: New essential for Motörhead fiends.

Motörhead's new five-disc compilation provides 99 songs of instant heavy metal gratification.

By Mark Prindle
www.markprindle.com

Motörhead
Stone Deaf Forever! Box Set
(Sanctuary, 2003)

Can you imagine a human being not wanting to listen to 6 1/2 hours of Motörhead in a row? That very fiend currently occupies our nation's White House. "I can't sit here and listen to three or four tracks from every single studio album along with several BBC Sessions and rarities," he said to me on the phone last Tuesday. "And I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask that fifth disc of just live material to 'bring it off' at the moment. Otherwise, we'll help in any way we can."

Don't blame me! I didn't vote! But in today's ramshackle state of global unrest, at least there's one thing you can count on: Eggs being tasty.

But in addition, there's a second thing you can count on and that's the unapproachable steam train pummelling galloping death horse attack of "Meadowlark" Lemmy and his Motörhead band. One of the three greatest rock and roll bands of all time (the other two being AC/DC and the Ramones), Motorhead has come quite a ways from its earliest incarnation as a motorcycle gang of speed freaks that merged blues-metal and punk into a high-speed thrash attack years ahead of its time.

Indeed, 28 years, four guitarists and three drummers is quite a ways. Luckily, their musical progression has felt more like six months, one guitarist and the drummer buying a new cymbal. In F.A.Q., aside from improved production, their music hasn't changed much at all! Unspoiled by a few early '90s attempts at mainstream hair metal radio success and a slightly advanced sense of diversity over the years (at some point in the early 80s, one of the band members must have realized that three-fourths of their material sounded like "Ace Of Spades"), Motörhome can still be counted on to provide instantly gratifying kickass heavy mean rhythmic metallic hardcore rock and roll.

But do you need to be instantly gratified for 6 1/2 hours? As every woman who has ever made love to that fat guy on the "Time to make the donuts" commercial will tell you, the answer is yes. Sometimes it takes 99 extremely similar songs for one to fully appreciate the tiny differences that make each one special. I have reached that point with Motörhead, and once you reach it, it's very hard to write off any song they do, no matter how few chords it might use.

A line-ending blues guitar trill here, a grunted/ whispered chorus there, a perfectly timed octave jump everywhere -- add one of these singular identifiers to Lemmy's perpetually raspy shriek/sing and doomy distorted bass thumping, (whoever's) double-speed guitar accompaniment and (whoever's) reliable doop-chick-doodoo-chick drums, and whammo -- you've got 90+ amazing songs by a Power Trio with the "Power" to write better songs than "Trio" (of "Da Da Da" fame, that is).

Everybody is going to take issue with a few song choices here and there -- I personally would've thrown in a sewage treatment facility of my choosing for the sludgy, forgettable "Like A Nightmare" and "Dogs," the clichéd blues-rocker "You Better Run" and the '50s-rocker "Angel City." Plus, the I'd get rid of the near-parody bad metal riffer "Over Your Shoulder," entirely riffless one-noters "Nadine" and "Steal Your Face" and bland unworthy set-closer "Born To Raise Hell," but that's it. And that's only eight songs out of 99. NINETY-NINE.

Imagine each of those songs as a red balloon, floating in the summer sky. Now imagine the war machines springing to life, getting the message that something's out there. Oh no! Everyone's a superhero! Everyone's a Captain Kirk! Worry worry, superscurry! Take the disc out in a hurry!

Okay, I've taken 45 valia (plural of "valium") and can continue. There. I'm done.

No wait, there's more! There's a Twisted Sister cover on here, and three different versions of the greatest one-chord song of all time, "Orgasmatron." Otherwise, no song is repeated aside from "Motörhead," and that's only repeated because its first appearance is by Hawkwind (Lemmy's former band)! And how about this -- Motörhead doing a cover of Hawkwind (Lemmy's formal wear)'s "Silver Machine"?

One thing pisses my piss off though -- the great-as-shit book that's included in the package mentions a song they recorded with famous black thespian Ice-T. Why isn't the song on any of the discs???? Don't MENTION something to me and then not include it! (Except the cover of "God Save The Queen," of course, which was issued as a single but thankGODfully left off of this box set).

It's hard to think in a straight line when you're blowing your ears out with this relentless glob of energetic growly wheezy noise, but then I guess that's to be expected from a band called "Motörhead." It'd be one thing if they were called "Clearhead" or "Thinking Cap," but they're NOT. And I apologize for insisting at gunpoint that they were.

I'll just conclude by saying that nobody -- NOBODY -- is qualified to say "I own all the Motörhead I need" if they don't have this box set. This is the DEFINING Motörhead package. Five discs, 99 songs and one appearance by television actor Ozzy Osbourne. Without it, you might as well refuse to hand over important documents to an independent commission investigating the September 11th terrorist attacks. WAIT A MINUTE! I THINK I JUST PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER!

No, never mind -- the first one just looked like a 2. Do you have any idea how to stop this giant millipede from dropping turds all over my math paper?

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