Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!
Back in the early 1980s, me and three of my classmates all took up guitar at about the same time. Within a couple of years, all four of us had progressed pretty quickly to the point where our other classmates who couldn't play thought we were great. We weren't great, but just average to good in a garage band type of situation, and probably seemed better than we were because comparatively few of our other classmates had taken up the instrument. Like, if you could play the tapping parts of Eruption for your junior high friends in 1982 - which I could - everybody thought you were bitchin'!!
And I thought the lot of us were the shit until I got a little older, went up to The Big City, started going into clubs and seeing kids our age onstage in these clubs just blazing with ability. This was, like, 1987, 1988 and 1989. Some of these club bands were so fucking good, writing great original material, and I was still young enough and gullible enough to think that talent was all it took to "make it, man!" There was this one Big City band...man, I can't remember the name now, but I have clear memories of their lead singer...like, he could out-Tate the real Geoff Tate in terms of his range. Their guitar player came up with great riffs and these flawless solos. Good rhythm section. Memorable original tunes. If you heard them play and saw them play, you'd think there was no way they weren't going to "like, make it BIG, man!" Like every other great Big City Band I saw back then, this band went on to do...nothing.
Wolfgang's level of ability is basically commensurate somewhere between that of my and my buds at the peak of our garage band days and those Big City bands. As you say, he can obviously play the instrument. He has zero stage presence. It's not even an insult to say that he's there because of who his father is: everybody knows it. Ed has said it. He enjoys playing with his kid.
Should Wolfgang form a band of his own and put out his own music (has he already done this? not being sarcastic, just seriously have no idea if there's anything he has done not Van Halen related outside of the Tremonti stuff which wasn't exactly overwhelming), I suppose I'll be interested enough to give it a listen. That type of post-grunge/contemporary hard rock metal style Wolfgang seems to gravitate toward doesn't have much appeal to me even coming from bands who are already doing it, so the idea that Wolfgang will come up with tunes in that mold and be massively successful as a result...are any of the bands that have been doing that stuff for the last several years experiencing massive success?
I mean, even just in terms of his bass playing, nothing I've seen him do would even wow a limited demographic such as other musicians a la a G3 type tour. The kid isn't pushing any boundaries of technical ability on the instrument the way that Billy Sheehan did.
To be fair, there aren't exactly a deluge of new bands formed in the last ten years where one could term them massively successful in commercial terms that I'm aware of, so Wolfgang has an uphill battle in that respect from the get-go considering the genre. In general terms, nobody gives much of a shit about what new rock bands have been doing. Sure, some of these newer rock bands have sizable fanbases, but none of them have broken through to wider audiences the way a Led Zeppelin or Van Halen did. Wolfgang can afford to diddle with side projects like Tremonti or release a solo album that doesn't sell precisely because he has Van Halen money and the Van Halen name: he has a safety net. If his name was Wally Von Hiney and he was forming a new rock band, he'd be starving right alongside the rest of them given the amount of talent and ability he has.
Seems like a nice enough kid considering his upbringing, and people accepted him being added to the lineup at least enough to the point where it doesn't inhibit Van Halen from selling tickets. None of that should be confused with an overabundance of musical talent, though.
Last edited by Terry; 06-23-2018 at 10:54 PM.
Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!
So this is love (06-25-2018)
I can't wait to swill this new blend at Sammy's Fabulous Red Rocker Cabo Birthday Wabo Bash.
I enjoy going to it every year, furiously jacking myself off raw as I gaze into Sammy's eyes while he sings Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy.
I do so because I know that Sammy is singing that song just for me.
Nitro Express (06-24-2018),VAiN (07-25-2018)
I agree with not enjoying the record from a sonic perspective... the only mix I enjoy is the vinyl version. It's only helped by the limitations of the vinyl itself. But my ears prefer those limitations because the sonic range breathes much more.
Here's a good article on the mixing of ADKOT... the 3rd to last entry details the technical aspects of what they aimed for in the final mix targeting CD's, MP3's and fucking ear buds. SMH... fucking ear buds!! Translating it down to those mediums fucked up the end result immensely... This is where the great Van Halen sound went to die in my professional assessment...
http://www.vhnd.com/2012/07/15/ross-...kind-of-truth/
Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!
Terry (06-25-2018)
Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!
So this is love (06-25-2018)
So this is love (06-25-2018)
Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck regardless of what income level they are at. Most Americans have little savings. So if mom and dad are spending the money, that leaves little for the children in a trust. There's not the transferable wealth people think there is but people look rich because they have wasted all their money on the stuff that makes them look good. I used to work in the finance industry and saw lot's of examples of it. There is little owner's equity and most the assets are liabilities.
Wolfang is about as interesting as the people who pick up your trash. In fact. Those people might be even more interesting.
That article actually makes the way the product was mixed make more sense to me, as the only time I could really get it to sound halfway decent at a loud volume was to put the CD into my boom box and listen to it with headphones or put the cd into my hard drive and listen to it with headphones: my attempts at playing it loud without headphones always resulted in a mid-range mush just the louder I turned it up.
When the album first came out and I was listening to it frequently, I was always wondering why it was mixed the way it was...as in, why the hell was it mixed that way.
Because fucking everything nowadays is mixed that way. If it's music or movies. If you watch "old" music on proTools it looks like mountains and a forrest. Now it looks like a fucking sausage. Normalized crap for iPhones and shitty headphones.
Gesendet von meinem SM-G955F mit Tapatalk
Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!
A CVH tour with Wolf opening won't happen for the same reason nothing happens with these guys: it makes too much fucking sense. Vh rides off in to the sunset with the original lineup and Ed gets to hang out with his kid while touring. Works for me. New album with Mike? Yeah, the odds of that are even less than a tour with Mike, imo.
If the tour was to happen, I'd hope Dave would see it for what it is and step up his game like he did in 07-08. He coasted through the last couple of tours, with obvious results.
Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!
It's ironic to me that band "breaks" were flash points in the departure of both Roth and Hagar. After reading Monk's account (among others) of Roth's departure and Sam interviews about his split, it sure seems like the VH brothers had a different interpretation of what a break was- either literally doing nothing, or something they approved of. In Roth's case, that became him being an asshole who ditched VH at their peak to become a movie star. In Sam's case, he was an asshole who wasn't a team player because he didn't want to leave his pregnant wife to work on the Twister soundtrack, then got manipulated in to doing exactly that.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)