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Bring On the Reviews And YouTubes.
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First Roth Army Kiwi To See Van Halen Live 6/16/2012 Phoenix Arizona. -
Sounds goodfuck your fucking framingComment
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A Round Of And Tarts And Darts From The Sheep Pen Crew.
First Roth Army Kiwi To See Van Halen Live 6/16/2012 Phoenix Arizona.Comment
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Just walked in the door folks. Totally exhausted. Gonna keep it short for now.
Kool and the Gang - Don't stand in the concourse and drink beer like some tool. Check'em out. They're good!
Van Halen-
Al is Al. Spot on. Steady as a rock.
Wolfie - I hope this kids starts a VH-like band when this is all done. He has the chops, bass and vocals. Barely miss Mike, just in name only.
Dave - To be honest, the first 2/3 of the show I thought he was great. Voice seemed to get a little tired as the show went on. Worked the crowd great. 2/3 of Dave is better than anyone anyway.
Eddie - Amazing. Thing I noticed most about him was he seemed very happy to be there. Hugging everyone. Hollering "Thank you" in the mic after his solo. During the "Cathedral" part, dead silence, except for the occasional "Whoo"ing drunk dude.
Set list- I got to hear GGB, HAIL which were to 2 rotating songs I wanted to hear bad! Happy about that.
Gotta hit the bed. 15 year old me had to go back, 42 year old dad has to be up early tomorrow.
Roth on!"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust." - Bill NcNealComment
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Ok, just got home. What an INCREDIBLE fucking night that I shared with my 10 yr old!! Let me start by saying I have seen every line-up: Classic VH, Hargar, Cherone, DLR Solo and now VH '12 and this was BY FAR the best show I have seen them do. Ed was flawless. Dave was SPOT ON and the true showman without any goofy shit. THE true Rock Front Man!! Wolf was awesome on both bass and vocals. Alex was as usual...superb!! I am telling everyone now, the YouTube vids do NO justice to Dave's vocals. Where we were sitting...his voice sounded Incredible ALL night and he was definitely on his game tonight. He had countless classic DLR Flying Back Kicks. The whole night was just the best. I have seen a lot of rock shows and the rest pale in comparison. I found myself getting emotional when towards the end of the show my 10 yr old was fist pumping "Hey, Hey,Hey" during Ain't Talking Bout Love. Thank you VH...It was worth the wait...The Mighty Fucking VAN HALEN."Hey man, that suit is you!!"Comment
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Nice guys! Sounds like another great show!Originally posted by wiseguyComment
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Ok peeps.
1. The return of the Mighty Van Halen to Gnashville was fantastic, though I have a few things to go over about the experience.
2. Got to the venue about 6:30. Had a neighbor lost in some bar down on lower Broad....called him from a new cell phone I just got this afternoon...no reply.
So what I did was to go to the venue and hang out under the Bridgestone Arena sign in front, on the corner. It was lightly sprinkling, so hanging under the sign was a good thing.
3. It is not a real rock concert unless you have some fucking God-Botherers out in front. This was no exception. One idiot guy with a sandwich board on with some bullshit about Jesus washing away your sins, and a miniature squawking speaker box hanging from his neck with a headpiece microphone (maybe he stole it from Uncle Dave this afternoon, lol) was going on and on....he began hassling me about "Do you know where you are going when you die?" I said "What's it to you? I am not concerned with it". So then he starts going on through the shitty PA box, trying to tell the people passing by "This guy over here does not care that he is going to Hell when he dies". I walked over to him and told him the reason I am not concerned about where I go after I die is that I KNOW where I am going to go, and he should be talking to people who need to hear his message, instead of trying to start crap with me about it. I said "A physician needs to heal the sick, not those who are well". Then he noticed the front of my Roth Army t-shirt, and said "Let me ask you something about that shirt, I'm not trying to start an argument about it.....".
I said "YES YOU ARE, OR YOU WOULD NOT BE WANTING TO COMMENT ON IT. GO TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE!
So he walked away. I took some photos of him with my cell phone, though it is going to be a few days at least before I can post them. This new cell phone I have of course takes pictures, but it is not a smart phone, it is a stupid phone. The only way I can transfer photos is wirelessly to a bluetooth device for my PC, which I do not have.
So WHEN I get some USB bluetooth device and can transfer my photos, I will post them here.
4. Enough about the fucking moron. So I hung out under the sign, figuring that any of my friends going to the show, including friends from here, would eventually show up. Sure enough, a guy steps out of the crowd and introduces himself to me. It is Private Parts, from Knoxville! He was there with his wife and son to see the show. We had some pleasant conversation for a moment and they went on inside. I gotta tell ya....I saw a lot of parents bringing their kids to see Van Halen, and it thrilled me to no end.......I was happy to see Private Parts was educating his son in the ways of the Mighty Van Halen, lol.
5. So.....the show was supposed to start at 7:30. I waited until 7:15 to go in. As I got close to the door, I noticed another God-botherer right beside the area where people were going in the door....he had an actual megaphone, and was yelling at everyone that they needed to go home as they were going to burn in hell for attending this "evil rock concert".
I took issue with this, and yelled at him that he was actually doing the work of Satan. It startled him, but he kept right on with his ranting. As I wanted to go inside (though I really wanted to fuck with this idiot), I decided to keep it short and yelled at him a few times "HAIL SATAN! HAIL SATAN! HAIL SATAN!" just to chap his worthless ignorant ass.
6. Got inside, got a Pepsi (bad for me I know, but they had no Dr. Pepper, lol). Found my seat. 5 minutes later the house lights went out. My friends I was attending with (all 8 of us had seats next to each other in the same row) had not arrived....so I was pretty much alone in Seat Number 1. I was in Section 105, Row J......halfway back on the lower level on the right side about 10 feet elevation above the stage. Kool & The Gang came out. 11 guys, really tight band. Their harmonies were all spot on, true professionals. They played half their set before the lead singer said "Ok we goin' back to the 70s now". Hollywood (is that the title of the song?), and Jungle Boogie followed immediately thereafter.
Truth be told, the stuff they played before they dug back into Hitsville bored me to death. Yes they are a great band, with a well and storied career, but I sat and listened, watching....and they did not kick my ass. They were not bad AT ALL. Just did not kick my ass. Personal preference. Jaded? Perhaps. After Jungle Boogie was over (man that riff is one of THE CLASSIC R & B riffs of all time), I wandered out into the mezzanine to hang out and wait for my friends. They showed up, when K & TG had about one song left, and we waited until about 20 minutes into the set change before wandering in to our seats. I don't think this show sold out, as I saw some areas where there were a few short blocks of seats empty, but then again, those empty seats were few enough they may have belonged to ticket brokers....the venue was 99.99% sold out if not completely.
7. GODDAM MUTHAFUKKING VAN HALEN! We saw the band walk up the steps at the back of the stage. Alex suddenly appeared at his drum kit and began blasting out....the lights did not go out until he did....so it was rather sudden.....then Ed and Wolfy came out, followed by Uncle Dave. Don't recall the setlist exactly...opened with Unchained, other songs played were Women In Love, HAIL, Chinatown, Trouble With Never, Tattoo, Hot For Teacher, etc.
Dave sounded fine. Yes, as mentioned in recent shows, he sang some stuff in higher registers, but to me he did not really sound rough or bad at all. I will say he was better then when I saw them from 1978 to 1983 on four occasions. Thing missing from Uncle Dave these days is that youthful macho posturing swagger. He is more like Uncle Dave, the Toastmaster General.
His choice of stuff to rant about mystifies me.....early in the tour it was Blower Rant. This time, there were a couple of small beach balls being tossed around....he told the crowd to send them his way....one fell into the pit, the other one got to the stage where Uncle Dave punted it backstage. He then went into a short explanation that there was some incident the other night where a beachball hit someone in the face who was wearing glasses and it injured their eyes......perhaps seeking to ward of potential liability problems.....
Ok so midway through the set....he suddenly demands someone come out and mop up the stage.....WTF? No roadie appeared...so Dave himself took some scarf that had been around his neck and actually began to wipe the floor! Took about 3 minutes more but suddenly a roadie showed up on the stage, and while the band were playing this guy is pushing a mop around the plywood Dave had on the stage to slide around on......then after 5 more minutes the guy comes out again to push the mop around.....I dunno what was on the stage that required mopup.....but then, right toward the end of the set, Ed was sitting on the steps in front of the drums doing his solo, and that same roadie comes out AGAIN and is shoving the mop around on the stage RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF ED'S SOLO!
Ed just kept on playing.....and playing amazingly (as expected by yours truly).
Van Halen took the stage at 8:58, and were done with Jump by about 10:50.
The crowd reacted fairly well with much applause, but there were a couple of things.
Remember I predicted it would be a tough crowd? Well, it was. The crowd was sort of dead. Sure, they did give up a lot of applause, and they were not TOTALLY dead....but I just expected them to be more excited than they were.
I mean, HEY, it is not every day that the MIGHTY VAN HALEN comes to town.
Not only that, but my expectations were based in part of my memories at seeing them headline from 1979 to 1983. When arenas were packed FULL of crazed individuals who were going so apeshit that they were on the verge of destroying the building!
Not like that anymore. Van Halen has been around in 3 incarnations for almost 40 years. And in that time, peeps have become jaded. So unless you gots plenty of fire, monkeys flying out of the singer's butt, etc., people are not going to go absolutely apeshit like that anymore. Culture has grown beyond that in the US. South America is a different story, lol. They will still go absolutely berzerko crazy, lol.
Now, everyone knows what the production looks like. No vanity ramp. But there was one thing that I was not impressed by, though I can understand what the deal is. The barrier was like 15-16 feet in front of the stage! Yes, they had their video cameras down there which needed some room to operate, and the usual security guards, but to me, that is too much space between artist and crowd. I can see 10 feet perhaps. But this show the distance was like what you would see at some outdoor stadium show. Though last year's U2 show here in Gnashville, there was less than 10 feet of space between crowd, stage and walkabout ramps. Getting that crowd close helps ramp up the energy level. But as I said, I can understand why it is like it is.
With current Line Array technology, there is no need for PA on the stage. There was what appeared to be a small wedge over on Ed's end of the stage, but that was all. Everyone is using IEMs I guess. So the stage was absolutely clean as far as lines of sight. But something we also commented on when we saw vid and pix from the LA Forum Tour rehearsals.....we thought it was the size of the Forum which made the stage look small.....well, I figured out what the deal is. It is not a very deep stage. Back in the 80s, their stage would have been half again as deep.
But what they have done is to shove the stage all the way back as far as they can into the end of the arena! Back in the day you would have this stage.....and a fairly large amount of room behind it....but not this tour. And one reason for this is that it maximizes the floor capacity for ticket sales. Every inch of space you have behind the stage is space that could be given to adding more seats on the floor.
So it gave me the effect of the stage not being that big....though it was as wide as any normal stage, it was not quite as deep and there was no real space behind it.
Now....the screen behind the stage was pretty cool. U2 were pioneers in using new video screen technology back in the early 90s on such a grand scale. Christ, you could not fit 1/10th of this screen into your living room, lol.
Overall, the impression I got was that they have a highly efficient production, minimizing expenses while still having the tools to deliver a great show.
So....on the way home, 2 of my friends and I stopped at a greasy spoon diner, where we discovered another friend had posted a review on his facebook page similar to the scathing review posted in Main. He felt he got cheated out of his money, that the 3 Van Halens were great, but Roth was lame. I think he was somehow expecting the Second Coming Of a Christ who could sing like Halford, or something, lol. Some people just don't get it. Uncle Dave is what now...60? And he is fronting Van Halen? And Ed and Al are approaching 60......my friends and I got exactly what we expected...a KICKASS performance by The Mighty Van Fucking Halen! One thing we discussed also was the fact that we feel SO FORTUNATE to have been able to see them again. For all we know, it could be their last tour. Hope not, but we have no complaints at all. ZERO complaints.
Van Halen delivered.
And I am thankful they came here, and that I got to see them.
Thus endeth the review.
Private Parts? Hope you made it home ok, and hope you had a great time.
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The Spinal Tap-like incident of the roadie mopping during Ed's solo is fucking classic! Someone post some video!!
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i'm fucking so glad you got to the show, Hardrock. thanks for the great read, when i get stateside i'm gonna bother the god botherers aussie style! lol
i can't help thinking of the imagery of dave actually wiping the stage DURING a performance. that's fucking deep.Comment
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Can you believe there's not a single youtube up yet? Come on Nashville!!Stay Frosty!
THE DAY IS DONZO LET'S HAVE SOME FUNZO!!Comment
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Let's make sure @DavidLeeRoth sees this RT @imBrianCrawford I wouldn't be upset if a sniper got David Lee Roth right now. #vanhalen— Roth Army (@Roth_Army) April 28, 2012
Eat Us And Smile - The Originals
"I have a very belligerent enthusiasm or an enthusiastic belligerence. I’m an intellectual slut." - David Lee Roth
"We are part of the, not just the culture, but the geography. Van Halen music goes along with like fries with the burger." - David Lee RothComment
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