Official 2/28 New York City Meetup/Review Thread

[Panamark]

The headset is losing ground, what is it now 3-2 ?

Fuck Eddie Trunk !

Did he not even listen to them all perform "Women in Love"
prior to tonight. Maybe he is trying to become the new Sammy
butt plug ?

Its sad but true, the backing vocals still have the Van Halen sound,
without MA, better bass too. Shit, maybe these cats knew what they were doing
all along !

[DLR'sCock]

I would rather talk about how good they sound in these clips, but facts are facts.....Eddie asked Billy Sheehan FIVE times to be the bassist for VH. Ed is one half of the backing vocals of VH, and he is sounding great in these clips......it's more than obvious that he and wolf are both really singing the back ups. I would love to see Mike there, but Wolf is the reason we have what we have and the kid can play.

Trunk is annoying and I have listened to his show on local NYC radio on the weekends for years, but yeah he is a Hagarita. WHO CARES though?

[Panamark]

You have to wonder why he would be backing one of the replacement singers at the moment ? WTF ?
With only 3 albums under his belt ?? Fuck that Temp.......

[DLR'sCock]

I just don't give a fuck and I know Don who is one of the guys on That Metal Show with him.

The guy has always had a hard on for Spammy and that's the way that is with him....good for him.

Anyway, I can't wait until Thursday night!!!!!

[chi-town324]

sounds like it was a killer show!!

[fryingdutchman]

I could not be happier to see this!!!

Great job, Momshell! After some of the doom and gloom that followed Chicago, it's awesome to see them kick ass in NYC. Dave sounds great as does the rest of the band.

I'm stoked for A.C. on 3/24!!

[fryingdutchman]

And it appears that the runway into the audience has gone the way of the headset....

[Halen High]

Thanks DLR's Cock for the videos. Spectacular!!! The band is on top of its game and Dave's vocals sound great to me. As for Eddie Trunk...he's OBVIOUSLY a personal friend of Hagar and he has an agenda. So who cares what he thinks?

[atomicpnk47]

Hey it's NewYork's MSG did anyone expect anything less than Van Halen's "A" game?

[Halen High]

I dont understand why they cannot just do both and drop Pretty Women, nobody would miss that one....

They should drop Pretty Woman and play either Outta Space, Big River, You and Your Blues or HBSD. The new album is begging to be played live and they should be promoting it. Still, after suffering a decade of Bland Halen with the screaming idiot, this setlist will do just fine thanks.

[DLR'sCock]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/arts/music/van-halen-at-madison-square-garden.html

Of the small handful of new songs that Van Halen played at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night, one managed to sum up the spirit of the band’s current reunion tour. It was “The Trouble with Never,” a typically full-throttle contraption: grinding riffs, bashing drums, deviously catchy chorus. And as David Lee Roth spat out the lyrics, it was easy to apply them obliquely to his situation in the band: years of estrangement and acrimony with the brothers Van Halen, followed


“Every Einstein’s assigned / A Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber,” he sang. Which was meant to be funny, and probably a little pointed. The bigger message of “The Trouble with Never,” telegraphed by its title, took aim at a certain kind of declarative vow — like those made by Eddie Van Halen over the years, when people speculated about Mr. Roth’s return. Maybe that’s reading too much into the song, but at one point, after an especially ferocious guitar solo, there was also a spoken interlude over a slowed-down groove, culminating in the aside “Selective amnesia is only a heartbeat away.”

Van Halen — with Alex Van Halen on drums and Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, now filling Michael Anthony’s spot on bass — has been through this sort of thing before. After parting ways with Mr. Roth in 1985, the band installed Sammy Hagar as lead singer and scored four consecutive No. 1 albums, followed by a less charmed affiliation with Gary Cherone. The first reunion tour with Mr. Roth, about five years ago, was a commercial smash, and an effective reminder that the most committed fans still see him as the enduring face of the Van Halen franchise: its Connery, its Shatner.

What’s different this time around is the existence of a new studio release, “A Different Kind of Truth” (Interscope). The album has a respectable spark, and yet the show included only four of its tracks; on one of them, “China Town,”Mr. Roth momentarily forgot the lyrics. The rest of the set list consisted of well-honed nostalgia, without any trace of material from the Hagar era: selective amnesia, as the man said.

From a crowd-satiation standpoint, this was fine. The band’s center has always been Eddie Van Halen, who still deserves his exalted stature among rock guitarists; even his heavier riffs came threaded with filigree, and his solos were bold in their extravagance. The one solo that didn’t come fastened to a song, late in the show, featured not only his signature tapping technique but also a drift of cascading arpeggios, rendered beautifully strange by his finessing of a volume knob. There could have been more of this.

But then the band had a lot of songs to get through, from “Runnin’ With the Devil” to “Ain’t Talkin’ About Love” to signature covers of “You Really Got Me” (The Kinks) and “Oh, Pretty Woman” (Ray Orbison). “Panama” was churning but precise, and “Hot for Teacher,” with its double bass drum cadence like a jackrabbit’s pulse, was urgent and galvanizing. “How ‘bout a little candy from a stranger, hot stuff?” Mr. Roth ad-libbed, adding a weirdly predatory layer to the song.

Since we’re back on the subject of Mr. Roth: at 56, he continues to convey both a busy work ethic and an insistent effortlessness. Looking trim in sequins and shiny fabrics, he covered the breadth of the stage with fluid footwork, though his trademark high kick was scarce. His voice suggested a similar constriction, coming across strongest in his barking, regular-guy mid-range. In a band so heavy on virtuosity, he’s touchingly mortal.

But he’s still selling a fantasy. Halfway through “Jump,” the inevitable finale, some confetti cannons fired at the foot of the stage, and he dashed off, returning with a giant checkered flag. He waved it to and fro, signaling a crossing of the finish line. Who the winner was he didn’t say, but he looked like he’d been waiting for that moment all night.

[Momshell]

Hey everyone. All my vids are on my computer. Wanna post them. Do I need to upload to YouTube first or can I do directly? Theyre from an iPhone and they're in .mov format. Can't do anything til kids are off to school at 8:30! Thanks!

[Zing!]

Not surprised =VH= would bring it for MSG. Thanks for the great show reviews everybody.

Oh yeah. And Trunk is a tool.

[ELVIS]

Chinatown 3D

[ELVIS]

Here's an awesome sounding recording...