Rock legends honored

There Bam Margera was, punching himself in the face, and the crowd in front of him could relate to the feeling.

"I'm going to give myself a black eye," Margera bellowed, apropos of nothing, as he hosted the second installment of the "VH1 Rock Honors," a show that came on like a fist to the teeth.

There were scantily clad ladies in bras and hot pants shaking their hair in cages suspended from the rafters, sparks shooting up from the stage in bright geysers of light and all the smoke, fire and pyrotechnics of a grand battle sequence in some epic war flick.

There were dudes biting heads off mice -- heavy metal magician Criss Angel chewing into his rodent pal, Zeke -- guys decked out in face paint, multicolored mohawks and towering platform boots and, perhaps most improbably of all, Nickelback actually rockin' the house.

That band kicked off the night with a muscular reading of ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man," decked out in shades and suits, replacing that song's Southern swing with a hard-hitting, torque-heavy guitar crunch.

Nickelback actually came off better than the band they were paying tribute to, as ZZ Top seemed a little stiff-limbed and winded during their four-song suite, with such rock radio staples as "La Grange," "Tush" and "Cheap Sunglasses" sounding terse and a bit hoarse.

Still, the band seemed to be in good spirits, with guitarist Billy Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill swinging their instruments in unison during a loose, freewheeling night that replaced any of the formalness of a traditional awards/tribute show with gyrating babes and lots of stuff blowing up.

The four honorees -- ZZ Top, Heart, Genesis and Ozzy Osbourne -- each played a brief set, as did a younger band who covered one of their songs.

Returning to the Mandalay Bay Events Center, the show was streamlined a bit from its inaugural run of a year ago.

The bands who saluted the honorees played but a song apiece, down from two to three last time out, and the headlining acts also performed a bit less, with one song to be left out of today's 9 p.m. broadcast to be made available online at www.vh1.com.

Each act was introduced by a celebrity presenter -- from Billy Bob Thornton (ZZ Top) to Cameron Diaz (Heart) -- who were then followed by a brief video montage documenting the origins of the band in question.

"We just wanted to be one of the guys," Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson said during her band's video interview.

"We were writing about love and sex more than being women," singer Ann Wilson added.

Heart was saluted by a wild-eyed Gretchen Wilson, who was backed by members of Alice in Chains, as well as Nancy Wilson.

With three guitarists onstage, Wilson knuckled through "Barracuda" forcefully, singing from the back of her heels, rolling her shoulders menacingly, sounding like a classic rock banshee on this near-metal take on the tune.

For their part, Heart seemed just as invigorated, with singer Ann Wilson's woolly mammoth of a voice sounding as if it had been preserved in amber since the band's mid-1970s emergence. Knocking the stuffing out of vintage hits "Straight On" and "Crazy On You," as well as acoustic fired newer song "Lost Angel," the band turned in one of the most forceful performances of the night.

The same can't be said of a reunited Genesis, who seemed a little out of step at first.

Preceded by Brit trio Keane, who delivered a lively, high-steeping rendition of "That's All," it took a few tunes for the band to find its groove, with frontman Phil Collins' voice perilously high in the mix and oddly thin sounding.

But Genesis found its footing by the time of their climactic, set-ending jam on instrumental odyssey "Los Endos."

A welcome throwback cut from a band that "has more hits than Willie Nelson on a good weekend," as Robin Williams quipped while introducing the group, the song featured a concussive, two drummer attack, with Collins climbing behind his kit to add a dense percussive thrush on the winding, labyrinthine epic.

The Queens of the Stone Age followed with an equally breathless take on Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," which, with a trio of guitarists, was heavier than a sack of hammers.

And then it was time for Ozzy Osbourne, whom the crowd most vocally pined for throughout the evening, with lots of loud, drunken chants for the man of the night.

With guitarist Zakk Wylde shacking his long dirty mane like a heavy metal Captain Caveman, Ozzy warbled his way through a trio of tunes, decked out in rounded black shades, looking like John Lennon's hippie uncle.

On a night that was all about saluting these seminal acts' staying power, Ozzy testified to his own on new track "I Don't Want to Stop."

"I'm gonna go until I drop," he howled, smile as big as the arena itself, with a punch-drunk, shell-shocked audience looking like they'd be the ones to give out first.