The Return of the Carnival of Sins: Mötley Crüe with Tesla & Extreme

Nobody believed the farewell tour. Everybody was right not to. The Carnival of Sins was never really about the songs anyway; it was about pyrotechnics and chaos and a volume that reached your chest from the lawn before it ever reached your ears. Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and the rest of the Crüe bring that entire apparatus back to the amphitheatre in Chula Vista, and this is not a greatest-hits obligation set from a band coasting on a name. It is a band leaning all the way back into the excess that made them the blueprint for arena rock in the first place. Tesla and Extreme open, two acts that could each headline a theater tour alone and together turn the night into a three-part lesson in what rock and roll sounded like when it still had a dress code. If you ever air-guitared to More Than Words in a bedroom with the door shut, this is the night that memory finally gets a body.