Van Halen

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Matz
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Re: Van Halen

#126 Post by Matz » Mon May 21, 2012 4:12 am

that's a great photo. Very good looking guitar also

Tyler Durden

Re: Van Halen

#127 Post by Tyler Durden » Mon May 21, 2012 8:11 am

I wonder if Perry knows that Diamond Dave has been raiding his wardrobe.

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Re: Van Halen

#128 Post by LJF » Wed May 23, 2012 2:28 pm

Gave the new VH cd a listen and I think it's good. Saw them a few hrs ago and really enjoyed it. I never got to see them back in the 80s and didn't give a fuck about them with Sammy.

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Re: Van Halen

#129 Post by Pandemonium » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:35 am

Due to personal circumstances, I came close to not making last night's 1st LA show and it took a while to get into it and enjoy it for what it was.

That said, it was a very solid show. I picked up a 3rd row section 3 inside isle seat during last weekend's small ticket drop on TM and I had people all around me who bought their tickets from agencies or were VIP buyers who were floored I "only" paid the comparatively minor $170 face value for my seat. Hung out with a friend and BS'd for a bit before the show and later discovered that my business contact whom I gave my extra 6th row seat didn't make it in until the 4th song and had trouble with some punk who was in his seat.

Anyway the band, especially Dave seemed really focused on nailing the songs. Eddie was pretty much spot on all night. Ditto for Wolfgang. I don't miss original bass player Michael Anthony anymore. From my vantage point only about 10 feet from the rail, it was pretty tough to see Alex behind his massive kit but the guy was rock solid the entire night. The sound was really good up front and since I was on Eddie's side, I got a lot of his wall of amps sound over the vox.

Roth had some ups and downs from song to song though. For whatever reasons, he keeps trying to sing some songs way beyond his range and at times it's just painful to hear. Fortunately, this show was probably one of his better nights and he did have a lot of energy the entire set. I thought Dave was pretty rough on Somebody Get Me A Doctor and it seemed like he was completely off-key between playing guitar and singing on the first half of Ice Cream Man up to when the band kicks in. It was interesting to watch Dave go behind the drum riser a few times in-between songs and stick large orange, lemon or lime wedges in his mouth which must be something for his throat - I dunno. All said though, while Dave was a much better singer the '07 show I saw, he was much more "Diamond Dave" this show for better (some really funny improvs during several songs) or worse (the long, rambling dog training rap before Ice Cream Man put everyone on their asses).

We got what has quickly become the "A" set, which is Romeo Delight and Cradle Will Rock as the songs that are rotated in and out of the set with The Full Bug and up until recently Girl Gone Bad or Outta Love Again on alternating shows.

I will say the one disappointment was the crowd. It may be because Staples Arena is such a big and tall arena, it just swallows sound like nothing else, but there really wasn't too many instances where the crowd really made itself heard. Dance The Night Away got one of the biggest roar of approval when the band launched into it.

The strangest thing was people would come right up to the front from the back of the floor and take pictures (or bug anyone around them to do it for them) of themselves standing in the isle mugging to their camera with the band playing right behind them onstage. Security up front was non-existent. A couple times some goof would tap me as I'm focused watching the show asking me to take a photo of him and his girlfriend or buddy with the band as a backdrop. By mid show, one of the ushers was taking pictures like that for anyone who'd come up to the front!

I filmed 4 songs through the set, Unchained, Hear About It Later, You Really Got Me and Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love and shot a few photos, many of which look like crap due to the lighting. I'll post links to the YouTube vids in the morning once they've uploaded. Here's one of the better photos and a couple of the vids I filmed:

Image




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Re: Van Halen

#130 Post by Tyler Durden » Sat Jun 02, 2012 11:51 am

I blame Van Halen for all of the cock rock the world had to endure in the 80s. I seriously don't get this band.

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Re: Van Halen

#131 Post by Pandemonium » Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:56 pm

Tyler Durden wrote:I blame Van Halen for all of the cock rock the world had to endure in the 80s. I seriously don't get this band.
They influenced Janes as well, don't forget.

Tyler Durden

Re: Van Halen

#132 Post by Tyler Durden » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:30 pm

Pandemonium wrote:
Tyler Durden wrote:I blame Van Halen for all of the cock rock the world had to endure in the 80s. I seriously don't get this band.
They influenced Janes as well, don't forget.
Dave and Stephen may have liked VH...but I don't hear it in the music...at all.

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Re: Van Halen

#133 Post by Pandemonium » Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:12 am

So I caught last night's 2nd night at Staples Arena in almost the same seat as I saw last week's show, 6th row floor, section 3 center isle. Spent some time before the show with some friends watching the NHL and NBA games at the bar. Gene Simmons and his wife and Valery Bertinelli (not together) sat just a few rows next to one of my friends near the soundboard just before the show started which got a big rise out of the crowd.

Crowd was much more into the show then last weeks', especially the opening number. If the Kings had won the cup tonight, it would have been insane. Kind of disappointed that tonight's set was identical to last Fridays set (they've usually been swapping out 2 songs every other show) but the first 2/3rds of the show was significantly stronger on all counts than last week's show. Dave especially was excellent up through the first 2/3rds of the set, probably sang as good most of the show as the one 2007 show I saw. He was also more "on" with the bits/raps except for the doggy story preface to Ice Cream Man which was even more rambling than last week's bit and he didn't start to crap out vocally until about Hot For Teacher onwards. Then Dave started running out of gas and was fairly rough on several of the remaining songs. Sometimes the guy would just be so out of key or try to hit notes so far out of his range it was painful to hear. Funny moment with Eddie around Ice Cream Man, he's motioning and mouthing something about how strong the pot smell is from onstage from up front and before his solo he said something about it was so potent, he was fucked up from it.

I'm on the fence about seeing the show almost in my neighborhood in Anaheim Tuesday. If I can land a great seat like I did for the LA shows in the next few days, I'll probably go as I really want to hear The Full Bug and maybe Bottom's Up. But the money and effort for maybe 2 different songs makes it kinda iffy at best.

I viddy'd about 1/2 of the songs throughout the set that I'm uploading to YouTube through the day. Basically shot from the exact same position in the same quality as the bunch I filmed from last week's show. For some reason, my camera's autofocus when shooting video has a real hard time with the lighting onstage.

Photo:
Image

Unchained


Romeo Delight


And The Cradle Will Rock & Hot For Teacher


Eddie's solo

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Deconstruction
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Re: Van Halen

#134 Post by Deconstruction » Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:25 pm

I saw them in Anaheim the other night. Fun show, Wolfgang is great his vocals are solid now. Eddie and Alex were great as well. Dave was hit and miss, especially on new songs. Nailed The Trouble With Never but butchered China Town. He nailed most of the big hits.

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Re: Van Halen

#135 Post by Pandemonium » Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:42 am

Deconstruction wrote:I saw them in Anaheim the other night. Fun show, Wolfgang is great his vocals are solid now. Eddie and Alex were great as well. Dave was hit and miss, especially on new songs. Nailed The Trouble With Never but butchered China Town. He nailed most of the big hits.
I was on the fence about going to the Anaheim show, it's only about a 15 minute drive for me and I could have again picked up excellent seats on the floor within the first 10 rows in the last few day's TM dump. But after seeing the same set 2 shows in a row in LA and my gut feeling that they've stopped rotating several songs in and out of consecutive sets every other show, I passed.

The big rumor now is they will be the Superbowl halftime show in January. If that happens, Dave's head will probably explode the moment the lights go up on stage. But he better really be on his game vocally or the media will crucify him.

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Re: Van Halen

#136 Post by chaos » Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:03 pm

http://www.ocregister.com/entertainment ... every.html
Published: June 13, 2012 Updated: June 14, 2012 10:13 p.m.
Van Halen saves the best for Anaheim
By BEN WENER / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The Monday morning after Van Halen’s June 1 opener at Staples Center I tuned into KLOS, the only genuine classic-rock radio station left in this market, just to see if Mark & Brian might be chattering about the show.

Sure enough, the moment I punched up 95.5 in my car, the longtime morning jocks were already deep into fielding phone-in reviews from conflicted listeners, warning future Honda Center ticket-holders of a potential letdown a week and a half later.

Every call was nearly identical, the consensus virtually unanimous: Eddie Van Halen rarely played better, David Lee Roth never sang worse.

The former, seemingly happier and healthier than he was during the other VH reunions –with Roth in 2007 and his more exact but less interesting replacement Sammy Hagar in 2004 – was still a jaw-dropping marvel, as lightning-fast yet fluid as he was in his younger heyday, overflowing with effortlessly tossed-off six-string wizardry only the likes of Jeff Beck or Steve Vai can match.

Roth, on the other hand, reportedly clipped off phrases, flat-out forgot verses, bungled big notes and didn’t seem fully engaged in the performance until it was half-over.

Neither opinion surprised me. I was among the 300 or so industry types invited to Henson Recording Studios to check out one of Van Halen’s final rehearsals for this tour, bolstered by their first album in nearly 30 years, a hodgepodge of finished-off leftovers dubbed A Different Kind of Truth. Much the same thing was evident there.

Once the initial thrill of seeing them together again, with Eddie’s 21-year-old son Wolfgang adroitly handling bass, you could easily spot cracks that needed a bit of sonic putty: drummer Alex Van Halen was often too slack for the pace brother Ed desired, Roth had too much between-song shtick and not enough on-the-money vocal heroics.

I suspected plenty of people would come away mildly disappointed at every stop on this run, which replays tonight at San Diego’s Viejas Arena and wraps up sooner than originally planned five cities later in New Orleans. Rumors have swirled as to why the band has cut short such a lucrative and well-attended tour; most people figure it’s old tensions creeping in again, or perhaps Roth simply can’t cut it at 57 the way he could when he was 25 (but who can?).

The reality, Eddie revealed this week to USA Today, is that “we bit off more than we could chew. This record took a lot out of us. And we went on tour earlier than we wanted to so we could play Madison Square Garden (in March, before a renovation), and that threw the schedule out of whack.” There are also concerns about EVH's ongoing treatment for cancerous growths in his throat that keep reappearing, but he insists they will tour the Far East later this year and possibly be back stateside with something more for 2013.

By then, I bet they’re as great as they ever were – for Tuesday night at Honda, they were virtually spot-on. I know people who went to both this show and at least one of the Staples gigs, and they agree: O.C. was not only the best crowd of the bunch, but for their response they received the strongest performance of the run.


Roth sensed that fairly early during the Anaheim set: “You’re getting a good show tonight!” he declared.
It wasn’t an empty boast: Roth was very much on his game here, minimizing the corny/porny banter (hard to discern much of it anyway) and making a more concerted effort to put across classics from all five of the quintessential early VH albums with greater oomph and care.

Yes, he’ll fiddle with the meter of a line or switch up a lyric here and there, but he takes no more liberties than Mick Jagger does with Stones staples or Steven Tyler would with Aerosmith’s finest. He’s entitled to mix it up, and seeing as he proved again and again in Anaheim how easily he can nail high notes (he superbly scatted several times in his upper register), it would seem that only fatigue or laziness could explain his less-stellar L.A. performances. At Honda Center he was occasionally imprecise but not because he couldn’t execute the songs; it was a conscious choice.

Why’d he turn his booster jets on for this show, with even wilder roundhouse kicks and better-timed asides to the cameras capturing every moment for a (mostly) black-and-white video backdrop? Beats me.

But Tuesday night he was the same Diamond Dave I idolized as a teenager: fleet-footed like a hard-rock Fred Astaire, shimmying and sliding across the stage, pouring his permanent-playboy persona into every song without letting that gum up the sheer force of raucous chants like “Everybody Wants Some!!” and “Hot for Teacher” and more boot-stomping bits like “And the Cradle Will Rock …” and “Runnin’ with the Devil.”

Besides, whenever he’d get too caught up in his own reinterpretation, Van Halen’s three namesakes just blasted ahead, rhythmically rubber-band-tight and greatly bolstering every hollered yet harmonized chorus (although I still wonder if some off-stage vocal sweetening isn’t involved).

They seized attention with “Unchained.” They thundered away on “Somebody Get Me a Doctor” and a remarkable blitz through “Hot for Teacher.” They kept their solos either powerfully brief (in Alex's case) and filled with phenomenal virtuosity (Ed's spotlight, incorporating "Eruption" and "Little Guitars" and more, was utterly dazzling, a master at play). They included nearly every song they should have -- "Jamie's Crying" and "So This Is Love?" were noticeably absent -- but they made that Women and Children First gem “Romeo Delight” feel like a new song while playing Truth tracks like “Tattoo” and “China Town” as if they’d be in the catalog all along ... which, seeing as some date back to the '70s, they had.

Frankly, there are few happier sights these days on a concert stage than seeing the Van Halen family rockin’ away with one of the most memorable frontmen any group has ever had. He’s still got it, they’re as solid as ever – and here’s hoping they get some much-needed rest so that this no-longer-tentative return can carry on.

Kool and the Gang, meanwhile, were an inspired choice for warm-up act. By set’s end, people who back in the day wouldn’t have been caught dead humming along to “Celebration” were shouting “woo-hoo!” as if their best friends had just been married. Indeed, the crowd was up and grooving well before then, dancing enthusiastically to certifiable funk classics like “Hollywood Swinging” and “Jungle Boogie” and heartily responding when “Get Down on It” added in guitar flavors à la Ernie Isley.

Kudos to Roth for insisting the Gang tag along: What seemed like a misstep on paper has turned out to be one of the smartest arena-level pairings in years.

Setlist: Van Halen at Honda Center, June 12, 2012 Unchained / Runnin’ with the Devil / She’s the Woman / Romeo Delight / Tattoo / Everybody Wants Some!! > Somebody Get Me a Doctor / China Town / Hear About It Later > (Oh) Pretty Woman / Alex’s drum solo / You Really Got Me / The Trouble with Never / Dance the Night Away / I’ll Wait / And the Cradle Will Rock … (with a bit of Smoke on the Water tossed in) / Hot for Teacher / Women in Love … > Beautiful Girls / Ice Cream Man / Panama / Eddie’s guitar solo (including Eruption and Little Guitars) / Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love / Jump

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Re: Van Halen

#137 Post by Tyler Durden » Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:24 pm

I'm not trying to be a dick here...this is honest curiosity. What makes Van Halen any different than the NUMEROUS cock rock bands that cropped up after them in the 80s? Outside of Eddie Van Halen being a guitar aficionado*, I don't hear much of a difference. :noclue: To me, they have more in common with the likes of Poison than rock gods like Led Zeppelin.

*Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and the lot can fuck off.

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Re: Van Halen

#138 Post by Essence_Smith » Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:30 pm

Eddie as a player is just an iconic dude...not a huge fan of him or his playing but people love that dude...otherwise a tough question to answer...what made GnR any different? Aside from Appetite being one of my all time fave rock albums those cats were just undefinable cool when I was a junior high kid...

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Re: Van Halen

#139 Post by Matz » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:44 pm

Tyler Durden wrote:I'm not trying to be a dick here...this is honest curiosity. What makes Van Halen any different than the NUMEROUS cock rock bands that cropped up after them in the 80s? Outside of Eddie Van Halen being a guitar aficionado*, I don't hear much of a difference. :noclue: To me, they have more in common with the likes of Poison than rock gods like Led Zeppelin.

*Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and the lot can fuck off.
to me they're somewhere inbetween Zeppelin and the typical hair bands, although closer to the Zeppelin classic rock scene than the other.

a track like this has very little to do with cock rock imo


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Re: Van Halen

#140 Post by Essence_Smith » Fri Jun 15, 2012 7:59 pm

Matz wrote:to me they're somewhere inbetween Zeppelin and the typical hair bands, although closer to the Zeppelin classic rock scene than the other.

a track like this has very little to do with cock rock imo

I dunno bout Zeppelin...but Eddie killed on this... :rockon:
I'm telling ya, the guy is an icon...if there were a different vibe on the vocal it prolly wouldn't be something people called cock rock...

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Re: Van Halen

#141 Post by Deconstruction » Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:08 pm

Tyler Durden wrote:I'm not trying to be a dick here...this is honest curiosity. What makes Van Halen any different than the NUMEROUS cock rock bands that cropped up after them in the 80s? Outside of Eddie Van Halen being a guitar aficionado*, I don't hear much of a difference. :noclue: To me, they have more in common with the likes of Poison than rock gods like Led Zeppelin.

*Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and the lot can fuck off.
I hate hair metal, but VH just wrote great memorable songs. Great musicianship and out of the greatest guitarists ever, and while Dave is corny and not the usual type of frontman I'd like, he's got a swagger and is a great showman. When I feel like taking a break from the depressing/introspective music I listen to I'll listen to Van Halen. I do think they had a major sense of rebelliousness that helped make up for their lack of maturity. Not a fan of the Hagar years though or Roth solo, at that point I think both bought into the hair metal fad.

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Re: Van Halen

#142 Post by Pandemonium » Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:25 pm

Tyler Durden wrote:I'm not trying to be a dick here...this is honest curiosity. What makes Van Halen any different than the NUMEROUS cock rock bands that cropped up after them in the 80s? Outside of Eddie Van Halen being a guitar aficionado*, I don't hear much of a difference. :noclue: To me, they have more in common with the likes of Poison than rock gods like Led Zeppelin.

*Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and the lot can fuck off.
There's no doubt Van Halen especially with David Lee Roth was a huge influence on a lot of the mostly nauseating hair metal bands that came out in the early 80's..I'm talking bands like Dokken, Ratt etc. However, especially going into the mid 80's more and more upcoming Hollywood hair metal bands took their cues more from Aerosmith, KISS, The New York Dolls and Hanoi Rocks (Poison, Guns n' Roses, Warrant, etc).

When Van Halen broke big, they essentially filled the vacancy left by Led Zeppelin when Bonham died. Other major established hard rock bands of the time like Aerosmith and Black Sabbath were already on the creative and commercial decline and up and coming hard rock bands like Cheap Trick and AC/DC still had several years before they hit their stride. I'm not saying that Van Halen was artistically on the same level as LZ, but no other band came even close to filling the void left by LZ's breakup.

One other thing, Eddie was more than just one of those widdly-widdly solo playing guitarists like say, Malmsteen. He was also a very unique rhythm player who often did his guitar part including solo off-the-cuff in one take as heard in this track sans vocals:


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Re: Van Halen

#143 Post by Pandemonium » Thu Aug 30, 2012 7:07 pm

Apparently Eddie had emergency surgery early this week for severe Diverticulitis which from all accounts is a pretty horrible ordeal to go through. He's being given a 4 - 6+ month window to recover which seems to indicate he was in pretty bad shape. At least that's the official word. However, there was a rumor earlier this month that he was starting some sort of treatment for colon cancer which may have been the real reason for the Summer leg of their North America tour being postponed and than later canceled. As it stands, the November Japan dates are now postponed and will likely be canceled.

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Re: Van Halen

#144 Post by Essence_Smith » Thu Oct 04, 2012 9:58 am

I might have posted this before, but I think its pretty cool... :hehe:


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Re: Van Halen

#145 Post by Pandemonium » Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:46 am

Er.....


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Matz
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Re: Van Halen

#146 Post by Matz » Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:18 pm

:lol: I hung in there for a full two minutes of that rant, beat that...

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Re: Van Halen

#147 Post by creep » Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:43 pm

Matz wrote::lol: I hung in there for a full two minutes of that rant, beat that...
shit i got to 1:12. i tried but couldn't beat you.

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Re: Van Halen

#148 Post by Artemis » Mon Oct 15, 2012 4:44 pm

DLR is a kook.I just watched him blather on for 8 minutes about nothing.

I could host a show about deoderant that would be 10X more exciting than his show. :lol:

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Re: Van Halen

#149 Post by Pandemonium » Mon Oct 15, 2012 4:58 pm

It's hard enough watching him talk about nonsense, but imagine him doing that as a radio show.... small wonder he flopped.

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Re: Van Halen

#150 Post by Matz » Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:31 pm

yeah, it's really funny he was hired at all. Probably the most moronic decision made by radio executives in the last 20 years, wtf were they thinkin...

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