POP MUSIC REVIEW : Motorhead Blurred by Noise

Motorhead lives by the sword, or, more precisely, by the sonic truncheon. Playing at UC Irvine on Wednesday night, the venerable British heavy-metal band, reputed to be the loudest on earth, died by the sword--or, more precisely, by its own faulty electric weaponry.

The show in Crawford Hall, a small gym with a stage built into one wall, turned into a loud blur punctuated regularly by screeching feedback from singer Lemmy Kilmister’s microphone. But give Motorhead credit: It was an impressive blur, and the band (call it the Heavy Brigade) kept charging half a league onward, confronting all obstacles head-on as it rode into the valley of aural death that the echoing gym became.

Like Tennyson’s Light Brigade, Motorhead found itself in a fight it couldn’t win. Frustrated by a rented sound system that made it difficult for the four musicians to hear themselves play (putting them in the same boat as the audience), the group retreated after 50 minutes. Lemmy, the ornery-looking bandleader, ended the show by slamming punches at his bass and taking a quick parting jab at his squawking mike.

Before he did, he confessed to the audience that the evening had been a crime, if not quite Crimean.

“I think we played very badly, and I’ll tell you why: We can’t hear what (expletive) we’re doing,” honest Lemmy told the few hundred fans in the house, adding that “If you ever get into the rock ‘n’ roll business, bring your own monitor system.”