Black Sand

[Terry]

Yeah, like the out-of-print CD bin.

I'll admit that was a good one.

[Terry]

It's one of the best tracks on the album.

It does resonate a little better these days than many of the others.

Overall, it wasn't a bad effort. Felt like it was done fairly quickly, was a bit rough in terms of the sonics and, yeah, more than a few of the tunes were banged out through a CVH-by-the-numbers template. However, at least Dave was smart enough (smarter than the Van Halens, at any rate) to realize from all the shit the whole 1996 debacle stirred up what the fans wanted to hear. The DLR Band album, despite anything one can fault it for, at least gave off some of the essence and spirit CVH had in spades.

[Terry]

Bit of a shame the effort went virtually nowhere in terms of sales. I remember stumbling across the selection in a Strawberry's record shop in 1998, and had no idea prior to seeing it there that Roth had even put the album out. It got very little promotion, and went on to sell...what...100k copies or so?

[DONNIEP]

Dave did some radio spots and that was pretty much it. It seems like he only played one of the songs live too, if memory serves.

About a week or so before the record went on sale Dave did a pretty long interview with a local DJ in Charlotte. Can't remember the guy's name now, but he was someone that knew Dave from back in the day and Dave knew who the guy was so they had a pretty good back and forth. Anyway, they said when the record was coming out and I was calling all the local record stores the day the thing came out (Yes kids, there really were these things called record stores back then). Only one had it in stock so I hauled ass down there and snatched it up. I loved everything on it. Still love the record. And it kicked VH III slap in the nuts. Twice.

[Terry]

Dave did some radio spots and that was pretty much it. It seems like he only played one of the songs live too, if memory serves.

About a week or so before the record went on sale Dave did a pretty long interview with a local DJ in Charlotte. Can't remember the guy's name now, but he was someone that knew Dave from back in the day and Dave knew who the guy was so they had a pretty good back and forth. Anyway, they said when the record was coming out and I was calling all the local record stores the day the thing came out (Yes kids, there really were these things called record stores back then). Only one had it in stock so I hauled ass down there and snatched it up. I loved everything on it. Still love the record. And it kicked VH III slap in the nuts. Twice.

Yeah, he only ever played Slam Dunk! live if memory serves, and I think he only played it on the tour he undertook...what...maybe 1/2 a year after the album came out...in 1999. He was primarily opening for Bad Company on that tour. I think there's some live footage of him playing that song at a rock music festival in Sweden that same year kicking around on 'the internets' somewhere.

I remember seeing him open for Bad Company at the Tweeter Center in 1999 - went to the concert specifically to see Dave play - and was a bit bummed that he only played that one tune off the album. Then again, how many people were even aware that he had even released that album? Dave basically served up a set heavy on the CVH with a few of his better-known solo tunes thrown in.

[FORD]

That live clip from the festival in Finland (or Sweden or whatever it was) got scrubbed from YouTube. I did find this one though (quality ain't that great, but at least it serves as evidence that he did play the song at least once in the US. Washington DC, in this case)

[Terry]

That live clip from the festival in Finland (or Sweden or whatever it was) got scrubbed from YouTube. I did find this one though (quality ain't that great, but at least it serves as evidence that he did play the song at least once in the US. Washington DC, in this case)

I think you're right, it was Finland (I have a physical dvd dub of it from a vhs tape copy I got in an old boot trade somewhere around here). And Bart Walsh was playing at the Finnish gig...I'm pretty sure he was playing at the Tweeter Center gig I saw, too. Walsh played well, but he just sort of stood there onstage frozen...like he was shitting his pants in fear or something (hey, I'd doubtless choke too if I had to paly a bunch of Van Halen songs in front of 10,000 people).

[DONNIEP]

Von was just asking me about the Finland show last week. It's one of the few shows I don't have a boot of. It's out there as Shine On You Crazy Diamond and includes the EEAS demos, and those I do have.

[Terry]

Yeah, I got to see Dave...what...4 times in concert during 1999 to 2006. He never failed to entertain, although as early as the Sam and Dave tour you could tell his abilities were slowly starting to wane. Bit of a shame the Van Halens waited so long to remove their heads from their asses and get Dave back. By the time that rolled around, Roth had one good tour worth of ability left, and he fucking carried the band in 2007-2008. Like I say, I dug the shows I saw Dave play during the lean years between the 1996 debacle and 2007, but I could still to this day give the Van Halens a smack upside the collective head with a 2x4 for pissing away several really great years they could have had with Roth...and wasting it on Cherone. And then to see Dave focused and making an effort in 2007/2008 and see Ed being a drunken stumblebum unable to play his parts well...fucking cunt.

[Roth] was still in very good form in 1999 live.

[vandeleur]

I seen DLR in 94 for the filthy little mouth tour and the difference in his enthusiasm from the previous tour was painful. I know this means I might have to take the long walk but I dont think Dave fancied it, the venue was changed last min to a smaller one and it was like what a Dave cover band would sound like.Forced fun sums it up.
It was a little glimpse of what we have now.

[DONNIEP]

I've told this story a million times so I'll be as brief as I can. When I saw Dave on the '94 tour his show was moved from one venue in Charlotte to Rocky's which was this little club that had been a disco club back in the 70s. Still had the Saturday Night Fever light up dance floor in it. And it was actually two clubs in one - one half of the building was the rock/night club, the other half was male strippers. I was disheartened to see that Dave was gonna be playing there but I went anyway. And Dave put on a great show. There's an audio boot of it floating around - if anybody has it I will BUY a copy from you. Anyway, at one point between songs you could hear the music from the fags stripping in the other half of the building and Dave commented on it. And I always wondered if he was thinking "What in the fuck am I doing here??" lol

The show was more reserved than his previous tours, and that was by design. Dave was trying to be Mature Dave and it didn't work. He still put on a great show though.

[Terry]

Yeah, the few boots I have seen of the YFLM tour were all taken from what appeared to be fairly small venues. Certainly smaller than what Dave had been used to, since he had been playing sizable arenas throughout all his solo tours through the ALAE album.

Then again, there were a few tracks on ALAE that sounded sort of calculated to broaden Dave's appeal beyond the standard hard rock audience, and YFLM...I could never (and still really can't) figure out if the experimental nature of that record was a genuine desire to try different things from an artistic point of view or if it was a reaction to the grunge explosion and Dave just moving away from his hard rock roots because that whole genre had been deemed commercially irrelevant by the time 1993 had rolled around (when YFLM was being put together). Like, if he recognized that serving up another album full of slam-bam 'big rock' in 1994 just wasn't going to sell millions of records, so YFLM was more of a conscious attempt to throw anything and everything at the wall and see if something stuck. His whole Vegas stint kind of reeked of a real studied attempt to reinvent himself to a degree at times.

Suffice to say that YFLM and the Vegas period were interesting tangents, but not necessarily directions I had much appreciation for...then or now.

[BumBahDeeDah]

Bit of a shame the effort went virtually nowhere in terms of sales. I remember stumbling across the selection in a Strawberry's record shop in 1998, and had no idea prior to seeing it there that Roth had even put the album out. It got very little promotion, and went on to sell...what...100k copies or so?

At least he made $4 per copy. He said that his buddy Nile Rodgers told him to do the whole thing himself, and he made way more than he did on the first Van Halen record.

[FORD]

I'll admit that was a good one.

Except for the fact that if it's out of print, there probably won't be any left in the bins.

[Terry]

At least he made $4 per copy. He said that his buddy Nile Rodgers told him to do the whole thing himself, and he made way more than he did on the first Van Halen record.

Yeah, I seem to recall Roth claiming a few years ago on a radio talk show that his current royalty rate for the first two Van Halen albums was $.06 for every $10.00 sold (he was saying he gets roughly 6 cents for every 10 dollar cd sold), and that for the other 4 Van Halen albums he gets $.08 for every $10.00 sold (or roughly eight cents for every 10 dollar cd sold). Roth claimed that for the first two Van Halen albums, "the producer" (am assuming he is referring to Templeman) currently has a higher royalty rate than [Roth] does.

So Roth going the indie route with The DLR Band album kind of reflects the story of MC Hammer in the last couple of years before he was signed to a major label, where MC Hammer prior to being signed was producing and physically manufacturing his own records and selling them out of the back of the trunk of his car, and even though there were several record labels interested in signing MC Hammer he kept turning the record companies down because MC Hammer would make more money selling 100,000 copies out of the trunk of his car in the greater Oakland area than signing with a record company even if the record company was able to sell 10x the amount of albums because they had a broader nationwide distribution system.

The Ramones eventually approached making their albums in a similar way, in that if they got $150k from their record company to produce a record, The Ramones eventually noticed that their records basically sold the same amount of copies regardless of how much money they spent making them. Thus, The Ramones began to spend only $60k to make their albums and keep the $90k for themselves.