“Here’s some jazz for you!” Well, yeah, but they’re Motorhead, and they play rock ‘n’ roll. It just so happens that in 2007 they performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
It all begins with “Snaggletooth.” It’s immediately clear that the sound quality is better than the patchy album that recently came out with the “Bad Magic” album re-release earlier this year.
Indeed, in all my pilgrimages to see the band, I’m not sure I ever saw them do this.
“Stay Clean,” of course, is a different matter. And it doesn’t matter how many times you saw it, it was brilliant.
The fact is that no one did it like them, and they didn’t give two shits about trends. ‘Killers’ from the superb ‘Inferno’ album proves that.
As with all Motorhead sets around the turn of the decade, there’s a healthy mixture of old and new. “Metropolis,” “Over The Top” (“This one’s dedicated to you… and me,” reckons Lemmy), and the filthy “One Night Stand” were stalwarts in the gigs back then, and they sound ace here, frankly. On the brilliant, thunderous “I Got Mine,” your mind wanders to what it was like seeing them. They were the loudest, they were the best.
This is an interesting set. “In The Name Of Tragedy” sees Mickey Dee beat his kit like he’s just caught it in bed with his wife, and “Sword Of Glory” is one of those songs that sound better than you remember.
“Who likes Thin Lizzy?” asks Lemmy, and after declaring “he was one of my heroes,” they proceed to make a Motorhead track out of “Rosalie.”
After a monstrously heavy “Sacrifice” (“If you dance to this, you’ll not have children”) and “Just Cos You Got The Power,” they do that thing they always did. They embody rock ‘n’ roll. Its very essence is in “Going To Brazil,” and – I admit – one of my personal favourites, “Killed By Death” (top tip: don’t play it to your three-year-old niece like I did last year…).
The thing is, they aren’t finished. Not by a long shot. “Iron Fist” and the dirtiest blues this side of Robert Johnson with “Whorehouse Blues” (the acoustics come out, no joke).
Thankfully, they are back in for “Ace Of Spades” and “Overkill,” and we can argue all day long about whether we need another Motorhead live album, the second this year, and just be glad someone is raiding the archives like this.
We can also wonder why they all went down to Montreux by the Lake Geneva shoreline to play a jazz festival, but let’s revel in the fact that they did.
Rating: 8.5/10
REVIEW: MOTORHEAD- LIVE AT THE MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL 07 (2023)
Published:
