Originally Posted by
Terry
Good comparison to the Tattoo You-style revamping of old recordings re: ADKOT.
About the only thing left that Van Halen COULD do to really get me psyched would be Anthony returning to the fold and a proper, full-length CVH album of new material. It's really what the band SHOULD do at this point.
That being the case, naturally it won't happen. Much like with Roth back in the fold, what the band SHOULD have done was release a CVH live audio/video box set. What we got for our troubles was (shudder) Live At The Tokyo Dome...
It would have been so easy for the band to have gotten it right at any point in the last 21 years, because the solution was THAT simple:
CVH lineup, new album, tour
Van Halen being what it became post-1985, naturally the group took the long way around the barn, found itself short on definitive members, wasted more time futzing around and eventually came up with a 75% solution that couldn't deliver the goods:
It's 2007. Mike is gone, Wolf looks out of place, Ed's fucked up, Dave is on point
It's 2012. New album of reworked demos, Wolf is fitting in better, Ed's sober and playing well, Dave's off point.
It's 2015. Here's a live album nobody asked for, all three Van Halens are playing well, Dave is trending downhill.
It's like, can you guys just unfuck yourselves, get Mike back, record a new album and give us one final CVH tour? Sooner rather than later? Like, say, in 2018? A 40th Anniversary tour. Take the next 6 months, write and record a new record, then take the following 4 months and rehearse while the venues are being booked. Then do a 3 month summer tour. Then, call it a day. Bring it all back home and go out how you started.