SUNDAY

Back in the ’80s, Mötley Crüe represented everything I despised in music. The guys wore spandex and headbands, looked like deranged poodles, and were dumb as stumps. They were so dumb they even made taking lots of drugs look dumb—and for that, I swore I’d never forgive them. But over the years, I stopped taking rock ’n’ roll so seriously and began to look upon the Crüe with a certain level of affection. If nothing else, the band embodied a great truth: You can be too smart to rock, but it’s impossible to be too stupid to. Now, with ‘em back on the road to support their greatest-hits-plus-a-coupla-lame-new-tracks CD, Red, White & Crüe, it seems as good a time as any to re-evaluate the band that brought us Too Fast for Love and Dr. Feelgood. So I picked up a copy of the scabrous tell-all The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band. And you know what? Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, and Vince Neil are 20 times stupider than even I ever gave them credit for. In fact, theirs is the kind of fathomless, almost preternatural stupidity that transcends dimwittedness to become almost—and I stress almost—a kind of genius. It’s a miracle they are still even alive. (Some of their friends didn’t get off so easy.) I find myself rereading, with slack-jawed amazement, the bit in which Nikki Sixx describes his plans to build a “pussy-shaped swimming pool.” And don’t even get me started on Mick Mars’ theory on what killed off the dinosaurs. For what these guys do, nobody does it better. Shout at the devil at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 6, at the MCI Center, 601 F St. NW. $48–$78. (202) 432-7328. (Michael Little)