It reads like a headline straight out of The Onion: “Audience at Mötley Crüe concert remain sober throughout entire show.” But reality was stranger than fiction last Thursday night as the throngs of sleaze-metal fans who trekked through the Ex to get to Crüe Fest’s stop at the Molson Amphitheatre were greeted with many photocopied notices explaining that the venue’s liquor license had been suspended for the night. Sucks, dudes.

But that didn’t keep the Crüe-loving masses from getting wild for the film crew documenting the band’s upcoming live DVD. Nor did it inhibit them from shouting along to every anthemic chorus from Mötley Crüe’s impressive set list of greatest hits. After all, what is a Mötley Crüe song if not an excuse to shout cool-sounding slogans like “Take a ride on the wild side,” “Shout! Shout! Shout at the devil” and “Kickstart my heart.” Which probably explains why the only song they played that was written between 1989’s career-peaking Dr. Feelgood and this year’s Saints of Los Angeles was the Decade of Decadence hits-package single “Primal Scream.” Nineteen years is a pretty long dry-spell for cool choruses.

Which is a strange realization, because I feel like Mötley Crüe has broken up and reunited enough during that time that they would have produced something notable. But then again, it was only four short years ago that I managed to see singer Vince Neil’s Mötley Crüe tribute night in a sketchy Peterborough venue called Club Vibe. Watching Vince struggle through his (at the time) former band’s hits with a bunch of L.A. rock stooges was slightly painful, if not thoroughly entertaining — even if he claimed that they didn’t know how to play his one solo hit, “You’re Invited (But Your Friend Can’t Come).” Oh give it up; you know you remember Encino Man.

But I digress. Saints of Los Angeles is a pretty decent testament to the power of Mötley Crüe. “Mutherfucker of the Year” and the album’s title track were well received by the un-drunk audience. And the L.A. theme made for a pretty cool stage set-up: playing in front of a Hollywood sign-inspired “Los Angeles” spelled out backwards as if they were camped out on the hills directly behind the famous billboard. With copious flame balls and other assorted pyrotechnics, the whole thing looked a bit like something Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken would be trying to escape from.

Musically the band is probably in better shape than ever. Well, healthier at least. Guitarist Mick Mars is ever the stoic shredder and bassist Nikki Sixx compensates for his rudimentary basslines by hurling his trademark Thunderbird around a great deal. But the real surprise was Vince Neil. The notoriously troubled singer has still got the high pitched pipes that cut through the bludgeoning riffs like a hot teacher’s nails on a chalkboard. The only downside is that he can’t quite get though all the lyrics, so “Cops on the corner / always ignore / somebody’s getting’ paid” from “Dr. Feelgood” is more like “….on the corner / ….. ignore / … gettin’ paid.”  But despite all reasonable logic, he actually got better as the night went on. Consequently, “Girl Don’t Go Away Mad” and the classic “Looks That Kill” were far tighter than set-opener “Kickstart my Heart.”

As for drummer/former-Canadian-by-marriage Tommy Lee, he forwent any levitating drum solos for a less artistic solo spot: getting girls to pose for his Tit E Cam. In the fine tradition of Girls Gone Wild, Lee encouraged the women of the audience to flash their breasts and be immortalized on the upcoming DVD. Maybe at 46 years old, Lee is only now realizing he missed his calling as a documentary filmmaker.

But Lee wasn’t the only one lowering the bar at Crüe Fest. Second-billed Buckcherry managed to eradicate all cleverness (however juvenile) from the sleaze-metal genre with songs like "Lit Up" (the “I love the cocaine” one) and an extended jam on their hit “Crazy Bitch.” Even their faux-leaked new track “Too Drunk…” more or less pilfers its sentiment from an already famous song/slogan by the Dead Kennedys and then reduces it to a funk-metal paean to inebriated impotence.

Compared to Buckcherry, Papa Roach’s set came across like The Beatles at Shea Stadium. OK, maybe not quite, but since ditching the spoken rhymes from their original rap-metal sound, they’ve managed to write some halfway decent pop-metal tunes that are, at the very least, hook-heavy, albeit still devoid of any lyrical depth. I was pretty sure I knew at least on Papa Roach song, but I had to wait until the end of their set before getting a taste of their first big hit “Last Resort.” And then I remembered why I never gave them a second chance.

Weak openers and no booze may make Jack a dull boy, but it sure doesn’t make Mötley Crüe any less exciting.