Metal-urgent mayhem

By Joe Brown

Friday, Aug. 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

You could pay up to $245 to see the living wreckage of Motley Crue tonight at Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Or ...

You could get in line by 11:30 p.m. at Ovation, way off the Las Vegas Strip in Henderson, and catch the Crue — and Guns N’ Roses, Poison, Warrant, L.A. Guns, Twisted Sister, Cinderella and Whitesnake.

Well, the essence of those bands. But it’s free. And it’s Friday. And it’s really fun.

Booked for an indefinite Friday night stand at Green Valley Ranch Station Casino, a four-man band called Steel Panther is what would happen if someone took every band from those VH1 “Most Metal Moments” reruns, stuffed them in a giant blender — added a big dollop of Spinal Tap — and hit liquefy. Served up with serial cocktails, their act is almost like being back in the late-’80s heyday of the Sunset Strip glam metal scene.

The cocktails are key to maintaining this illusion.

Formerly known as Metal Skool (and Metal Shop and Danger Kitty — in a Discover Card commercial — before that) the band is a dead-on parody of a travesty, sending up the golden age of the hair-metal bands. A Hollywood staple for more than five years, Steel Panther routinely sells out Monday nights at the Key Club on the Sunset Strip and has a standing gig in San Diego.

For the past few weeks it’s been drawing a beyond-capacity crowd of mostly locals. The night has a young, very testosterone-y frat party feel. Men and women alike are jacked and tatted up; many of the regulars look like they started partying right after work.

The metal hits are pounding and so is the booze, and by the time the band goes on, it’s usually after 12:30 a.m. and everyone’s in the mood to rawk.

A living iPod playing note-perfect takes on “Jump,” “Highway to Hell,” “Living on a Prayer,” “Here I Go Again,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and more, these guys have the period’s preposterous visuals down: Skintight animal print and polka-dot tights? Check. Teased and sprayed towers of hair spurting out of matching headbands? Got it. Guyliner, “Blue Steel” pouting stares, trailing scarves, smoke machines, laser lights and scissor kicks, splits and guitar choreography? Uh-huh.

This is the motliest of crews: You’ve got the debauched, paunchy lead singer Michael Starr, kicking over mike stands and sometimes flubbing his jumps and splits. Guitarist Satchel manages to be more lunkheaded than Starr.

Bass player Lexxi Foxxx (“the extra x is for extra sex”) manages to stand out as the dumb blond in this brain-dead bunch, enthralled by his own beauty, occasionally checking his look with a nearby hand mirror while playing his instrument with one hand. Foxxx has also mastered the essential skill of hair-flipping — he can reposition his elbow-length waterfall of hair without visible effort. And drummer Stix Zadinia pretty much stays behind his kit — maybe so no one will notice much if he spontaneously combusts and has to be replaced.

Yeah, Steel Panther is a one-joke act, but if you liked that music, you’ll probably love this.

Make that two jokes: The bulk of the 90-minute show is between-song banter between the band and the audience, and it’s all in shades of after-midnight blue. Steel Panther’s chick-baiting shtick is almost entirely unprintable (Ovation’s publicity people remind me several times to include the disclaimer with this story), but a theme quickly emerges. “Show us your boobies” flashes on the video projection screens, and an occasional “cougar” will be spotted in the audience and saluted. It’s boneheaded and cheerfully vulgar, and if you’re likely to be offended, well, don’t go.

They may be a joke band, but Steel Panther can really play, and Starr hits stratospheric notes that are long lost to David Lee Roth and Axl Rose.

And it takes real smarts to come off this dumb. It would be no surprise to find that these guys have trained as improv comics.

Starr — real name Ralph Saenz — is also lead singer for a Van Halen tribute band, the Atomic Punks, and was lead singer for L.A. Guns (not a tribute band) for a while. Satchel (Russ Parrish) also plays with a Rush tribute band called Moving Pictures. Foxxx (Travis Haley) and Stix (Darren Leader) are recording an album for the Universal/Republic label. Their first album, “Hole Patrol,” from 2003, is fetching up to $175 online, with original songs running the thematic gamut from “Asian Hooker” to “Fat Girl” and “Stripper Girl.”

“Yes, I will rock until I die,” promises Satchel on the band’s MySpace blog. “Or at least until I get a Viagra endorsement and make so much money I can quit the music biz and go into acting.”