Crüe gets in final shout

The guitars were all mounted too high on the wall for anyone but an NBA center to grab, there were no chairs to rip out and make off with, and only one drunk gal was seen attempting to jump up and bang one of the gongs hung above the stairs.

And so when the curtain fell on The Joint on Saturday night, the fireworks were confined largely to the stage, where flash pots and bursts of fire turned the room into a hard-rock hibachi.

"We're goin' down in flames," Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil bellowed in his trademark cat-in-heat whinny, swishing his hips and punching the air during a sweaty "Saints of Los Angeles."

The last time the Crüe closed a venue in Vegas -- the former Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts, which was shuttered briefly for renovations in November 1997 -- chaos reigned as the crowd tried to storm the stage and thrash the place like the Crüe once did to hotel rooms.

This go-round, the mood was one of reverence rather than rancor.

"Can you believe it? The last show at The Joint," Neil beamed. "This place has so many great memories."

Bassist Nikki Sixx marveled at how bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Ramones had played the same stage he was standing on, as the Crüe took a break from its arena tour to play the final two concerts in the relatively small, 2,000-seat hall, which will be replaced with a 4,000-capacity venue opening in April on the other side of the Hard Rock Hotel.

"This is like a private party," a smiling Sixx said.

Only drummer/geyser of hormones Tommy Lee didn't seem all that taken by the significance of the night.

"I can't believe no one's gotten naked here," he bemoaned midway through the show. "It's scarin' me."

There was a time when this bunch didn't scare so easily.

The Crüe has always courted controversy. The band's 1983 sophomore album "Shout at the Devil" came with a warning in the liner notes that it contained backward masking, and the group's videos at the time were full of pentagrams and evil sneers, leather and lipstick, with the band covered in more cowhide than the average steer.

These days, the pentagrams are still there, illuminated in bright, flashing lights during "Looks That Kill," but the Crüe is a decidedly more restrained lot.

Gone are the coke binges and dirty syringes, the groupies and the groping, and in their place is a much more sturdy, professional band of heavy metal dads who don't quite scale the same heights that the Crüe did at its peak, but also don't succumb to such crushing lows either.

The fact that they made it out of the '80s alive is crazy enough; the band hardly has to up the ante any with their antics of yore.

And so at The Joint on Saturday, the Crüe turned in an efficient, workmanlike set that testified to the greatness of both their early '80s emergence, when they filtered the hook-laden glam stomp of the New York Dolls through the equally seedy and flashy pop metal of the Sunset Strip, and the somewhat anticlimactic excess of the years that followed.

Vintage Crüe rippers like "Shout at the Devil" and "Live Wire" retained their zest for either fighting or humping anything that moves, even if they did seem to be played a half-step behind their original pace, while newer tunes such as "Mutherf!@#$er of the Year" tried a bit too hard to recapture the youthful impudence that once defined the Crüe.

Still, the band has aged well, outlasting most of their peers, among many other things.

"This is it for The Joint," Neil announced at show's end. "Stay tuned for part No. 2."

And trust the man when he speaks, as this is one band that knows a thing or two about second acts.

Contact Jason Bracelin at 383-0476 or e-mail him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com.