Motley Crue - Music To Crash Your Car To, Vol. 1 (4CD BoxSet) (2003)

If you need a serious shot of the Crüe, drink up. Music to Crash Your Car To, Vol. 1 is the first four-disc installment of yet another re-releasing of the band's material, though this time the entire catalog is getting the treatment in three separate boxes. This initial set covers the band's halcyon/hell-raising early days of 1981-1987 (i.e., Too Fast for Love, Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain, and Girls, Girls, Girls). That alone recommends this as the best box to buy if only grabbing one. Serious Crüesers will no doubt be disappointed that there's not much new going on here apart from the fact that the first disc brings together both the original Leathür Records versions and Elektra Records remixes from MC's debut album, Too Fast for Love (though to many diehards that's a pretty big chunk of bait). One would have thought that there'd have been more genuine bonus material (as opposed to reissued bonus material) -- a much fairer deal for the faithful. But new fans and those extremos who want the Leathür album on CD probably won't mind shelling out for this big fix of hair metal history. And apart from "Tommy's Drum Piece from Cherokee Studios" (which is kinda like scraping underneath the bottom of the barrel for material), there aren't many flat spots here. OK, the Crüe were never Aerosmith or Van Halen, but when it came to good-time anthems and candied-up metal, these were the guys to turn to. And all the proof you need is in this release.