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hell...what the fuck is kiddo doing at the end of HTF...who piped that shit in???
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Roth Army Icon
First official owner of ADKOT (Deluxe Version) -
douche bag from rolling stone....
Van Halen Tour Hits Madison Square Garden
The group mixed mega hits with new songs and deep cuts
By Andy Greene
February 29, 2012 3:05 PM ET
Just eight weeks after playing the minuscule Greenwich Village club the Cafe Wha?, Van Halen returned last night to their natural habitat: Madison Square Garden. The arena is roughly 80 times larger than that basement club – and they filled it with confetti cannons, ludicrously oversized flags, one of the biggest video screens since U2's Popmart and an actual dance floor in the front of the stage where David Lee Roth was able to perform his signature dance moves, baton twirls and high leg kicks. Had he attempted any of those at the Cafe Wha? last month, he probably would have given concussions to half of the front row.
Van Halen has been off the road since their reunion tour with Roth ended four years ago, and the band's hardcore fans were clearly pumped up for the show. Scores of drunken, middle-aged fans were belting out the lyrics to "Somebody Get Me A Doctor" and "Everybody Wants Some!!" in the entranceway to the Garden before even getting their tickets scanned. The show began shortly before 9:00 p.m. with Alex Van Halen bashing out a quick drum beat before his brother ran out and played the familiar intro to "You Really Got Me." Seconds later David Lee Roth emerged, twirling a giant silver baton. He was wearing a Neil Diamond-style sequined jacket, a manic ear-to-ear grin and looked not unlike The Joker posing as some sort of demented parade marshal.
Diamond Dave was also sporting a wireless microphone on his head, which made it easier for him to bust out all of his dance moves. The sight of Roth in a Madonna-mic took some getting used to, but his voice sounded stronger than it has in years. The singer spent his two post-Van Halen decades playing smaller and smaller venues, and it's clear he's still relishing his return to the big time. It was also immediately apparent that Eddie was in top form. The drunken, samurai-haired disaster of the 2004 Van Hagar reunion tour has been replaced by the sober Eddie of the old days. Thank god. The video screen was enormous, but largely a complete waste. Most everything but Eddie's guitar solo was shown in black and white, and they kept putting up recent still photographs of the band during key moments. (I guess any old photographs are taboo because they'd show a certain fired bass player.) Like so many things in the Van Halen world, it was baffling.
The setlist teetered between familiar hits ("Runnin' With The Devil," "Hot For Teacher"), fan favorites ("Romeo Delight," "Women In Love") songs from their new LP ("Tattoo," "China Town") and genuine deep cuts ("Girl Gone Bad," "Hear About It Later.") They made sure to never go too long without busting out a giant radio hit, and the fact that tracks from 1984 outnumbered cuts from the new album is telling. Roth even flubbed the lyrics to "China Town." "I forgot the fucking words," he said midway through. "Go to the chorus." Lead-off single "Tattoo," however, sounded shockingly great.
Wolfgang Van Halen – now 20 years old and slimmed down since his debut as the new bassist five years ago – seemed significantly more confident than he did last time out. His background vocals sounded suspiciously flawless though, possibly lending credence to the fan theory that the group uses piped-in background vocals. It's very hard to say for certain – though the background vocals during "Woman In Love" and "Somebody Get Me A Doctor" sounded like Wolfie and Eddie were channeling Michael Anthony.
Halfway through the show Roth shed his Madonna-mic in favor of a traditional hand-held one. He also played an acoustic guitar for his spotlight moment in "Ice Cream Man" – which was preceded by one of his trademark non-sequitur rants. "Thank god for dogs or we'd never get that new smell off our jeans," he said as the screens showed video of a dog chasing a flock of sheep. "I'm probably the only rock star who owns livestock for non-recreative purposes…Who likes ice cream?" Shortly afterwards Eddie took center stage for his guitar solo, which eventually went into "Eruption." It was absolutely jaw-dropping, and proof that even after all the crazy, dark, lost years, he's still one of the best guitarists in the game.
During the solo, Roth, Alex and Wolfgang stood behind the drum riser and had what looked like a pleasant conversation. Roth and Alex were laughing, and even putting their arms around each other. We'll never know how the band functions offstage, but it was nice to see some band camaraderie when they were at least out of the spotlight onstage. The night ended with a one-two punch of "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and the inevitable "Jump." There was no encore, and the band all raised their hands together before everyone with the last name Van Halen walked offstage in unison. Roth stayed behind just a few more moments, soaking up every bit of the thunderous applause.
Now, this was definitely not Van Halen at their peak. It was hard not to miss Michael Anthony, and it's difficult to shake the feeling that Dave and Ed despise each other, but have realized they can't have much of a career unless they work together. At times it felt like they were going through the motions, and the fact that they just did four of the 13 new tracks (and barely did anything to promote the new album these past few weeks) shows that this is a band well aware that their best days are behind them. Still, this is the only Van Halen we have, and this is the best show they've put together in quite some time.Comment
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He goes on and on how great it was and then in the last paragraph he says it sucked. I would say the writer is confused to say the least.No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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Rolling Stone as usual is clueless.....Where the fuck are they coming up with the piped in vocals again? MA is gone let it go already. Sheesh.Comment
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Reunited Van Halen displays old chemistry at the Garden
Published: Thursday, March 01, 2012, 7:22 AM
NEW YORK — A grinning David Lee Roth stood at center stage at Madison Square Garden, his red handkerchief aflutter. He was the matador and guitarist Eddie Van Halen was the raging bull. Moments later, he was peering over Eddie’s shoulder as if he were a schoolroom cheat and the answers to the science test were printed on Van Halen’s fretboard. Then he spun away, hands in the air, as proud as a parent with a prize-winning son.
Roth perfected this dance in the early ’80s. For almost a quarter-century, he didn’t get to do it: He left Van Halen for a solo career in 1985 and the group carried on without him. But he is now back, and the latest Van Halen tour, timed to support “A Different Kind of Truth” — the band’s first album with Roth in decades — is suffused with the joy of a thing put right. Diamond Dave is back where he belongs, and when he asked the capacity crowd to exercise some selective amnesia, they were happy to comply.
In the years following Roth’s departure, the band continued churning out hits. None were in Tuesday’s set. Instead, the band charged gleefully through nearly two hours of selections from its first six albums, with a sprinkling of material from “Truth.” The new songs, built from demos left over from early sessions, fit in fine alongside hard rock evergreens like “Running With the Devil,” “Unchained” and “Beautiful Girls.” Even “Tattoo,” the rote new single, sprang to life. The pulverizing “China Town,” another platform for Eddie Van Halen’s fantasia, was a concert highlight marred only by Roth’s silly pantomime of a servile Asian stereotype.
Roth, 56, is a bit like grenadine: sticky and syrupy, and certainly not something you’d want to consume straight. But he can make an intoxicating mixture brighter and sweeter. The prancing, hyperactive lead singer was born for the stage — had he not become a hard rock frontman, he would have made an outstanding circus clown. His greatest talent, however, is coaxing the best out of musicians with the Van Halen surname. At the Garden, there were three of them: the sorcerous Eddie, 57; his brother Alex, 58, a drummer of tremendous power and precision; and Eddie’s capable son Wolfgang, 20, who has taken over for Michael Anthony as the group’s bassist. Like many long-running firms, Van Halen has become a family business, with Roth as the hired CEO giving the concern with its public face and pushing the team to choose risk over complacency.
Eddie Van Halen remains one of the miraculous musicians of the past 40 years. Much of what he can accomplish with a six-string defies explanation. Not only can he switch between rhythm and lead parts so deftly that it seems like he’s playing both simultaneously, he can simulate the sound of a classical string section, a forest full of insects and tree frogs, or a helicopter crash. His instrument sounds like it was strung with live wires — if it started smoking or shooting off sparks as he played, no one would be surprised. His style has been imitated by so many hard rockers, it’s amazing he still has the capacity to astonish. But astonish he does and he does it effortlessly, with an imaginative faculty that never takes a measure off.
The exercise in fretboard-tapping that has become a metal cliché rehashed by a thousand guitar-store clerks was a revelation in the hands of its originator on Tuesday. Most hard rock guitar solos are indulgent. Eddie’s could have gone on for twice as long and nobody would have minded.
With his black clothing and slightly disaffected stance, Wolfgang looks like an alt-rocker, but he discharged Anthony’s parts — and the high backing vocals that are an underappreciated component of the Van Halen sound — with confidence and a few pleasing embellishments of his own.
Alex is nearly as imitated as his famous brother. As inspiring as the frenetic double-bass part on “Hot for Teacher” or the menacing rolls on “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” are on record, watching Alex hammer out those beats in concert is a deeper pleasure.
As for Roth, his voice is not the supple instrument it once was. His performance of “Jump” was mostly an enthusiastic guess. But even in his prime, Roth was never the most accurate or mellifluous singer.
He made up for his deficiencies with his sense of humor, his theatrical style and his perpetual delight. Those were always crucial parts of Van Halen’s personality and kept the band from falling into the self-serious trap that ensnared many of its peers.
Time has not dented Roth’s showmanship, although the years have softened his stance. In the ’80s, he was a font of sexuality and danger; these days, he’s more goofy than salacious. It didn’t matter much: Van Halen was Van Halen again, and that was a gift that only Roth could give.
It wasn’t his only gift. Roth enlisted Kool and the Gang to open the show. On paper, this was a head-scratcher: What did the Jersey City funk-pop stalwarts have to do with Van Halen?
More than a bit, as it turned out. Roth, frontman of a great party band, recognizes another great party band when he sees it. In a 50-minute opening set, the 11-piece combo swept through 30 years of music history, encompassing hard-grooving disco-soul (“Ladies Night”), raw funk (“Jungle Boogie”), cheesy but wonderful ’80s dance classics (“Celebration”), guitar rock (“Misled”) and even a little hip-hop. Some Van Halen fans were skeptical at first, but by the time Robert “Kool” Bell locked into the bass strut on “Hollywood Shuffle,” they were swaying in their seats. By “Get Down on It,” many were dancing.
Van Halen
Where and when: Madison Square Garden, 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue, New York, tonight; Boardwalk Hall, 2301 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, March 24. Both shows are at 7:30 p.m., with Kool and the Gang opening
How much: $49 to $149 for Madison Square Garden, $29 to $149 for Atlantic City; call (800) 745-3000 or visit ticketmaster.com.Comment
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New Yorkers are getting a brief break from Lin-sanity this week as Van Halen came to Manhattan to perform two shows at Madison Square Garden, where the storyline shifted from the Knicks to guitar licks.
It’s been more than four years since the band’s last appearance at the venue, although it’s been only two months since Van Halen’s surprise warmup show at Greenwich Village’s tiny Café Wha?, a venue smaller than Van Halen’s current arena stage.
A lot has gone down since the last MSG gig — the band released A Different Kind of Truth, Ed had reconstructive surgery on his hand, and Wolfgang transformed from teenager to adult — but these developments all led to huge improvements in the band’s performance.
While the 22-song set list (plus a drum solo by Alex and guitar solo by Ed) that the band performed Tuesday night, February 28, was similar to the one they played on their 2007-08 tour, songs from the new album (“She’s the Woman,” “Tattoo,” “Chinatown” and “The Trouble With Never”) replaced tracks from Van Halen’s first album, and deep cuts like “Hear About It Later,” “Women In Love” and “Girl Gone Bad” took the place of “And the Cradle Will Rock,” “So This Is Love?” and “Mean Street.”
The band has altered the set list slightly each night on the tour, usually substituting one song for another instead of making wholesale changes like the Grateful Dead or Radiohead.
Besides the opportunity to hear new material and a handful of classic Van Halen songs that the band hasn’t performed for almost 30 years, the main reason even the most casual Van Halen fan shouldn’t miss this tour is Ed’s phenomenal guitar playing, which is as good — if not better — than it’s ever been.
His solo section near the end of the show, which blends “Eruption,” “Spanish Fly” and “Cathedral” is still mind-blowing as Ed unleashes a flurry of tremolo picked and classical-inspired tapped lines with incredible speed and precision. Ed’s solos on “Girl Gone Bad” were also standouts, flowing like astral-projecting Coltrane as notes flew furiously and effortlessly from his fretboard.
Old diehards may still bitch about the absence of Michael Anthony, but Wolfgang has proven to be less of a replacement and more of an enhancement with his growling, percussive bass tone and melodic fills that add a new aggressive vitality to the band’s sound.
Locking in with Alex’s precise drumming (at least it sounded like Alex, although with his dark sunglasses he looked like Link Wray behind the kit), Wolfgang gave the band’s rhythm section a muscular punch that shook the arena like an earthquake.
The fiery unison bass and guitar tapping on “Chinatown” proves that Wolfgang can keep up with his dad, as Ed and Wolfgang’s licks rivaled the intensity of Billy Sheehan and Steve Vai’s performance on David Lee Roth’s “Shy Boy.” Wolfgang’s background harmony vocals (which are not piped-in tapes of Anthony’s vocals, despite persisting Internet troll claims) were consistently solid, especially on “Dance the Night Away” when David Lee Roth apparently chose to sing the melody to an entirely different song.
With this being only the fifth show of the tour, there were a few glitches and most of them involved David Lee Roth, who at times was the weak link in the chain, even if that chain is made of titanium. Roth struggled with the lyrics to most of the new songs, blurting out the infamous “I forgot the fuckin’ words” line during “Chinatown.” The other problem was of a technical nature when Roth’s headset crapped out during “The Trouble With Never” (which should be renamed “The Trouble With Headsets”).
Unlike the previous gig in Chicago where Roth was visibly perturbed with the technical difficulties, Roth kept his cool and performed like a pro, keeping the between-song banter concise and refreshingly humorous and allowing the music to flow almost non-stop.
Despite Roth’s occasional missteps, it’s still great to see him on stage fronting the band again and giving the Van Halen brothers the opportunity to perform several of their greatest classic songs from their first six albums. After all, who wouldn’t prefer hearing “Ice Cream Man” over “Where Eagles Fly”? With Ed playing in peak form, the show is this year’s must-see for any guitarist who has ever wanted to witness his majesty and mystique in the flesh.Comment
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This is Beyond absurd...
"His background vocals sounded suspiciously flawless though, possibly lending credence to the fan theory that the group uses piped-in background vocals. It's very hard to say for certain – though the background vocals during "Woman In Love" and "Somebody Get Me A Doctor" sounded like Wolfie and Eddie were channeling Michael Anthony."
As Dr. Ian Malcolm said in the first Jurassic Park while gazing upon a mountain of Triceratops poo, "That is one big pile of shit."Comment
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So if Wolfgang sings the songs well it's a tape and if he doesn't then they are missing Mike Anthony.
Music journalists are fucking retards.Comment
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I am so fucking sick of people pining for Michael Anthony. Fucking music writers...whatever. People write because they want other people to pay attention to what they write. It has nothing to do with the music. I think the Michael Anthony thing has become a lazy way to appear to be in the know.
Seriously, I have nothing against Michael Anthony but when I listen to the new record or watch these clips he's the furthest thing from my mind.
Watching those first MSG youtubes was like watching your favorite team when the super bowl for me. They are killing it. Wolfgang is killing it and to suggest that this isn't as mind-blowingly fucking awesome as it is because Michael Anthony is involved is as ridiculous to me as comparing Chickenfoot with Led Zeppelin.Comment
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...and fuck Eddie Trunk!Comment
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Most music journalists have no musical talent themselves but yet they are an expert. Or the flip to that, weren't talented enough to get anywhere so now they critique others. That piped in vocal thing is getting old.Comment
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If you are in the NYC area, and you didn't attend BOTH of these MSG shows, you suck! Shred your DLR Army membership card, and delete your profile!
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