Official 2/20 Auburn Hills Meetup/Review Thread
Collapse
X
-
-
Comment
-
Holy Crap !
Girl Gone Bad ???
Chinatown.....
I havent seen a better live version of GGB than this, ever.
Eddie is on Fire. Mojo restoration complete and more importantly
totally filtered of Hagar cheese. Welcome back to Rock and Roll !
Fuck ! If this doesnt get you pumped to see them live, nothing will.BABY PANA 2 IS Coming !! All across the land, let the love and beer flow !
Love ya Mary Frances!Comment
-
Stay frosty now.
Nostalgia is a form of denial. I love denial. I like selective amnesia, too. Mix the two and you've got a hell of a weekend-DLRComment
-
There was actually a line at the t-shirt stand - something I haven't seen in a while - cool t-shirts with a big red classic VH logo across the font - saw many classic VH shirts with the logo from the first album also - almost like back in the 80's. Of course there was some dude in the parking lot trying to sell knock-offs .....just like in the 80's - what a fun time!Comment
-
Review: Van Halen still in start-of-tour mode
Published: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
By Gary Graff
For Journal Register Newspapers
ggonmusic@gmail.com; Twitter: @graffonmusic
AUBURN HILLS -- When Robert "Kool" Bell of opening act Kool & the Gang asked a sold-out Palace crowd if it was ready for Van Halen on Monday night, it certainly seemed superfluous.
Turns out the real question was whether Van Halen was ready for us.
The answer: almost.
On the second night of its first road trip in nearly four years, supporting its new album "A Different Kind of Truth," the iconic hard rock quartet was clearly in start-of-tour mode. Van Halen was tightly rehearsed but also a bit tight on stage, focused on the task at hand and not yet in that smooth, instinctual zone bands aspire to reach. The musicians were still warming to being back on stage and to playing music -- including their first new songs with frontman David Lee Roth since 1984 -- in front of a crowd. Even the massive video screen behind the stage took several songs to get into working order.
The result was an hour and 50 minutes that flashed episodic brilliance -- including particularly strong performances of "Mean Street," "Dance the Night Away," "Unchained," "Beautiful Girls," a granite-hard "I'll Wait" and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" -- but the overarching sense of a work in progress.
Fortunately, Van Halen had a 22-song set list filled with favorites and its primary weapon -- guitarist Eddie Van Halen -- firing on all cylinders to help keep the Palace faithful on their feet from start to finish. Looking healthy and playing with the nimble precision of the group's albums (which has not always been the case on stage), Van Halen was better than any pyrotechnic special effect, attacking the familiar riffs and solos with a ferocious joy, even if he kept his trademark leaps, which necessitated hip replacement surgery in 1999, to a minimum.
Van Halen had plenty of support from his brother Alex Van Halen's typically thunderous drumming and from son Wolfgang Van Halen on bass and harmony vocals -- and noticeably more confident than he was during the 2007-08 jaunt.
Roth, however, was surprisingly less mobile and animated than usual, seemingly pre-occupied with production details — he shouted for a change in lighting cues during the group's cover of Roy Orbison's "Oh! Pretty Woman" — than performing. Sporting four different jackets and a variety of shirts and chapeaus during the show and using a headset microphone, Roth spent most of his time sliding and shimmying pantomime-style around a hardwood floor positioned at the center of the stage, executing only a few of his high kicks and barely venturing onto the ramp that jutted into the audience. He was amiable as always, tossing off bon mots and non-sequiturs — "The only thing I got on my SATs was tobacco stains," he quipped during "Hot For Teacher" — but he seemed curiously reserved and not the shimmering Diamond Dave that Van Halen fans know and love.
The songs compensated for some of that, however, with material from "A Different Kind of Truth" carefully woven into the set (the single "Tattoo" and the pop-flavored "The Trouble With Never" fared the best of the four new songs the group played). Van Halen also dug out deep cuts such as "Women in Love" and "Girl Gone Bad" — albeit too late in the show — but the established anthems were what the fans came for and got, in abundance, as the group roared through its version of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," "Runnin' With the Devil," "Everybody Wants Some!!," "Somebody Get Me a Doctor," "Panama" and the show-closing "Jump."
One unqualified success on Monday was the experiment of Kool & the Gang's opening set. If some — actually many — wondered how the R&B group would fare in front of Van Halen's hard rock crowd, doubts were dispelled quickly with the breezy lite funk of the 11-piece outfit's 50-minute set, which had the T-shirted, beer-drinking, fist-pumpers dancing exuberantly to the likes of hits such as "Jungle Boogie," "Ladies' Night," "Get Down On It" and, of course, "Celebration." A good party band, it seems, will get the party started regardless of genre.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
-
Originally posted by wiseguyThat shit will welcome you in the morning and pour the milk in your count chocula for ya.Comment
-
Not all serious like some of these freaks...
I'm totally ecstatic over the album and tour...
Comment
-
Originally posted by vandeleurE- Jesus . Playing both sides because he didnt understand the argument in the first placeComment
-
Comment
-
Comment
-
Comment
-
Yeah, it was a hit back in '84 but I'd rather them play something else.=V V=
ole No.1 The finest
EAT US AND SMILEComment
Comment