[kj] was GEORDIE'S Tracks - VH & Police gigs

[T.B.]

"Alex Smith" wrote:



>I love Roth-era Van Halen...... and so does Geordie. Listen to "Unchained" 

>on FAIR WARNING. If you can't hear the majesty in that track, you've got 

>cement in your veins.


I've been away this weekend to see family so I didn't have a chance top 
comment on the Los Angeles Van Halen show I saw last Tuesday night.

I've no doubt mentioned a few times here that Van Halen was the band that 
broke my rock n' roll cherry.  They were the first live band I saw way back 
in '77 a full year before they released their first album.  Even though I've 
mostly despised the Sammy Hagar era, I still have caught every tour they've 
done since '78, often multiple shows on one tour for the Roth era between 
'78 - '84, thus I can pretty authoritivly state how good or crappy they are 
these days.

Frankly, with some reservations, the show I saw Tuesday blew me away.  I 
will admit having a 5th row seat on the floor right in front of Eddie's side 
of the stage with the ego ramp next to my seat made a great show even 
better.

Basically, they played an almost non-stop barrage 25 song, 2+ hour  set of 
all the obvious hits, some deep cuts as well as every song but 2 from the 
first album while rarely stopping to take a breather.

Surprisingly, David Lee Roth has turned out to be the strongest link in this 
new lineup which includes Eddie Van Halen's 17 year old son Wolfgang on bass 
and backing vox.  Eddie is still a monster on guitar and is playing far 
better and more focused than he was in '04 when he was probably months away 
from OD'ing on booze and drugs but he still isn't the sharp player he was up 
through the mid 90's. His brother, drummer Alex Van halen is starting to 
look really old, almost in a Keith Richards/David Carradine kinda way but 
when they played an absolutely jaw-dropping, storming version of "Hot For 
Teacher," he was untouchable.  Wolfgang is a decent bass player, but he's 
still a kid and often looks like a deer in headlights on stage and it's 
clear there's some sort of "help" on the backing vox, either pre-recorded or 
someone off stage. But the biggest asset is that Roth is finally *singing* 
the lyrics, not drunkenly slopping his way through songs like the last few 
tours in the 80's with Van Halen.  He spends less time running around the 
stage but the huge improvement in his singing more than makes up for it.  He 
clearly worked his ass off to get his voice in shape for this tour.

There are some downsides.  It's definitely not Van Halen live circa the 70's 
or early 80's despite the setlist from that era.  It's different in both 
good and not-so-good ways.  The set is kind of oddly paced and at times 
comes off *too* well rehearsed right down to Roth's scripted story he tells 
before "Ice Cream Man."  Because Eddie uses a cord instead of a wireless for 
his guitar setup, he's stuck to staying within about 20 feet of his peddle 
rack on his part of the stage, thus he never goes out on the ramp into the 
audience. Some people will have a problem with Roth's more, eh... flamboyant 
personality these days, especially the goofy outfits he's wearing that just 
don't jive with the long-haired party guy he was in his prime.

Although I had no problems with the sound from my seat, I heard a lot of 
complaints about the sound (way too loud!) from others in various parts of 
the arena on other message boards. And of course being a "classic rock" 
band, they now attract a lot of aging, stodgy upper middle class old farts 
who look like they thought they'd be seeing The Eagles or something.

Still, the best all out "Rawk" concert I've seen in several years, easily 
better than the Springsteen, Jesus and Mary Chain or Cult shows I've caught 
in the past couple months.

T.B.