REPORT: =vh = to headline australian festival april 20-21

[fraroc]

My problem with ELVIS' opinion is that he completley disregards the fact that Dave is much closer to his 2007-2008 level now. The gig in The Land of Oz was a MASSIVE improvement over the 2012 ADKOT tour, and I LIKED that tour.

In terms of setlist....Yeah, It was an average to lame setlist. Because it was the same exact setlist from the 2012 tour. VH should have taken advatage of Dave getting his swagger back and attempted some deep cuts like One Foot Out The Door, As Is, or In A Simple Rhyme, THAT would have been absolutley epic. In one respect, I am happy that they're playing their hits like your Jumps and Running with the Devils and playing them right, but I'm PRAYING that once they hit Japan they'll attempt some old/new material.

[ELVIS]

Yeah, you and the other douchebags...

[ELVIS]

My problem with ELVIS' opinion is that he completley disregards the fact that Dave is much closer to his 2007-2008 level now. The gig in The Land of Oz was a MASSIVE improvement over the 2012 ADKOT tour, and I LIKED that tour.

In terms of setlist....Yeah, It was an average to lame setlist. Because it was the same exact setlist from the 2012 tour. VH should have taken advatage of Dave getting his swagger back and attempted some deep cuts like One Foot Out The Door, As Is, or In A Simple Rhyme, THAT would have been absolutley epic. In one respect, I am happy that they're playing their hits like your Jumps and Running with the Devils and playing them right, but I'm PRAYING that once they hit Japan they'll attempt some old/new material.

Hits...

Real Van Halen fans LIKE ME from back in the day we're PROUD that their HEROES didn't have "hits"...

Us REAL fans HATED Jump from the get-go with a passion...

Jump is in my view, the beginning of the end of anything creative from Edwad Van Halen...


Anyway, they sucked last gig...

Next...

[Matt White]

Yeah.....give him his due on dat one peeps.....

I remember the genuine feeling of "Sell Out" after JUMP hit the airwaves..........

Luckily, 1984 had PANAMA, DROP DEAD LEGS, GIRL GONE BAD, HFT, HOP, etc etc.............

still....some of the OLD GUARD....the REAL Old School Kats (I'm looking at you Zah!) maintained that VAN HALEN had jumped the shark...they weren't DANGEROUS anymore........

happened to the best of 'em.........BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY.....BIG MONEY

We ain't in KANSAS anymore, Mofucky!!!

[Northern Girl]

In respect of this Australian gig, and the set list in particular, Van Halen don't have a fucking "greatest hit"' in Australia that a random, anonymous, festival-going audience of non-serious fans might expect to hear. So why play "the greatest hits"??

It's Australia, not some third world county. You think they don't know Van Halen? If they know Aerosmith and loved them so much, they sure as hell know Van Halen. But with only a couple shows on the docket at places they haven't been in forever (except for WI) do you really think they are going to plan a whole new set and learn new [old] songs?

Also there are only a small percentage of us "die-hards" left that would know the more obscure. Do you really think they are going to gear an entire show for us? That would just be stupid!

Look at how many regulars there are at this site and the others? Are we going to fill the stadiums? Of course not! You are going to get the corporate yahoos that know nothing about the band, the casual fans that think it would be cool to say they saw the legendary Van Halen even if they only know Jump and Panama, and those that loved them way back when, then went away as they got older with different priorities but just want to relive their youth for one night. That's who's filling the seats these days. The band knows that and that's who they are going to play for. Us "die-hards" aren't going to pay their bills.

[jhale667]

Yeah.....give him his due on dat one peeps.....

How 'bout NO. That's a statement of the obvious. It's a safe bet ANY real CVH fan's favorite tune isn't "Jump".

[Matt White]

How 'bout NO. That's a statement of the obvious. It's a safe bet ANY real CVH fan's favorite tune isn't "Jump".

well yeah...there's that too

[fraroc]

Yeah well, I actually love Jump so ELVIS, you can fucking bite me.

Running With The Devil and Unchained are my actual favorites though.

[jhale667]

Yeah well, I actually love Jump

Imma let you finish, but - Someone has to be the exception to the rule, right? :D Please proceed....

so ELVIS, you can fucking bite me.

Attaboy!

Running With The Devil and Unchained are my actual favorites though.

Unchained rules.

[Matt White]

Unchained rules.

A friend of mine summed it up for me best.....

"If you took every song Sammy Hagar has ever wrote and sang...and put 'em all together......it wouldn't measure up to UNCHAINED....UNCHAINED, by itself, is better than Sammy Hagar's entire career."

[vandeleur]

Jump is better than sammys career and we only know one person who likes jump
I keed

[Matt White]

Jump is better than sammys career and we only know one person who likes jump
I keed

That's a stretch......

and besides....JUMP is their only #1......so TOO many damn people like/d it!!!

[vandeleur]

I actually liked it , and thought the video was cool , it just got played to death for me .

[Matt White]

Never cared for it.....

KILLER solo....ICONIC EDDIE VAN HALEN......

and yeah...the video is cool

the added "WHOA-O-O!!!" makes it for me....I've never heard JUMP since & NOT added that myself....which I'm sure everybody else here does as well!!!

[loucap81]

Hey I didn't mean to address that to you as such it's just the thread itself was getting silly with it's negativity.

A couple of things to make my point.

YoTube reviews of Van Halen at their peak in the early 80s [snip]

Yes but don't you think they might have adjusted what they were doing if social media were around in the '80s? Now some bands like Rush just don't care, they're going to do the exact same setlist every night. VH didn't care about the setlist uniformity in 2007-08 but in a way I didn't either because of the emotional rush of the reunion. Social media totally strips the mystique and naive excitement away from the concert experience but good bands will adjust to that. The positive side is that it keeps a band honest and makes them up their game.

But even before social media times not all were pleased. I've listened to all the available bootlegs as you know, and you can hear hecklers on some of them. Off the top of my head:

1) There's an August 1981 Fair Warning show where before Ice Cream Man when Dave is talking, someone in the crowd goes, "Just play the fucking song!!"

2) There's a Feb. 1984 show where the band screw up Jump and someone goes, "God damn, that's a bad fuck up!"

3) My personal favorite, the April 5, 1984 Detroit show where Dave tells the crowd they're the "rock and roll capital of the world" during the Everybody Wants Some!! rap, and someone goes, "Fuck you, that's what you said in New York last night!" The same guy later goes, "When are you going to play some fucking music!"


Now to your point about the pitfalls of analyzing a recording of a live performance, I will say there were shows that I thought were really good live, only to hear all the warts on the recording later. And it sucks when an impartial, emotionless recording makes me recalculate my feelings about the show. So from that standpoint you're absolutely correct, you really can only judge the technical playing of the band and not whether the complete package was good or whether it sucked.

Judging just the technical playing of the band, however, I thought it was a fine musical performance and it's very clear that Dave is better now than he was last year. And that's the #1 thing that I was looking for since it's the one thing about this band that can't be fixed with more practice or effort. Last year Dave tried like hell to do what it took, he sucked on lemons, he had arenas turn off the A/C, but if his voice didn't want to go, it wasn't going. Let's all be thankful for his voice coming back.