Van Halen’s ‘A Different Kind of Truth' At 10: A Track-by-Track Guide

[Terry]

I'm pretty sure you are wrong but I agree it's a great album.

The 2 criticisms that people make of this album are pretty dumb

1) It stole from previous demos.
This is fucking stupid because

a) You can't steal from yourself
b) They reworked them a lot
c) They did the exact same thing throughout the first 6 albums,
d) ADKOT is much longer than the usual VH album and so has more original material on it than maybe all of them apart from VH1? That may be shit but it's not miles off.

and

2) Michael Antony isn't on it.
Ok yes but there is no conceivable way the album could have happened without Wolfgang so it is what it is. It's also arguable that Wolf brought some stuff on a number of tracks that MA would never have especially judging by the mediocre dirge of Chickenfoot*



*PMSL literally just had to google to remind myself of the name of Chickenfoot...

With the amount of reworked tracks on ADKOT, the one thing I did think was that it didn't seem a potential follow-up album would be forthcoming any time soon, in that they had 3 years after the 2007-2008 tour to make the album yet less than half of what was on it was recent. The upside was that many of the tracks on the album I liked the best were the reworked ones.

Yeah, Mike Anthony wasn't on it. But I tend to think we only got what we got out of the band from 2007 to 2015 because Wolfgang WAS in the band, and Eddie enjoyed working/playing with his kid. I suppose had Anthony remained in the group they may have eventually gotten back together with Dave anyway, but for whatever reason(s) Ed didn't want to work with Anthony anymore. I don't necessarily think what the band did live or in the studio from 2007-2015 would have sounded overall much better with Anthony there. It was what it was.

[Terry]

That's interesting, Sesh and Zah, re: the mix being undertaken as related to how it would sound through computer speakers, or headphones, or tv speakers or a smartphone speaker.

[Nickdfresh]

It was about wearing a Panamanian hat. Smoking the big ganja and the whole lifestyle revolving around that. It’s a Roth song. It’s not supposed to make any sense.

You're lapping up Al's nonsense. Dave said it was either about his car or a stripper (probably both). The hat thing is just jerkoff nonsense...

[Seshmeister]

I'm not an audiophile by any stretch but people playing music near me through the speaker on a phone actually makes me feel angry even if it's music I like. In fact if I like the music that maybe makes me angrier.

[Seshmeister]

Ted Templeman chose the track order of Van Halen back in the day and was so good at it even the Van Hagar went back to him.

I would love to know his tracking for ADKOT. I would have gone for Blood and Fire as the opening single...

[FORD]

Wish Ted had produced the album. The mix definitely would have been better. As well as the tracking order..... if Blood and Fire wasn't the opener, She's The Woman should have been...

[ZahZoo]

I'm not an audiophile by any stretch but people playing music near me through the speaker on a phone actually makes me feel angry even if it's music I like. In fact if I like the music that maybe makes me angrier.

That's because those tiny speakers on produce highs and high-mid frequency tones... high-mid frequencies in a specific range irritate the human ear and brain.

Think about it... the most primal music came from hollow logs covered with animal skins... drums. All low and low-mid frequencies. The local tribesman beating rocks with sticks got fed to the local predators...

[Kristy]

She's the Woman

A tune that mocks poverty and despair in America while these rich fucks drive around in their Ferrari's. Roth's Van Halen was always a Republican band with Ayn Rand idealism. Fuck them. A Different Kind of Turd was nothing more than a noisy, scattershot of canned tunes brought forth to soothe Roth's stupid ego. This was a record that required little to no effort to write, record, produce, and distribute. It's like the Led Zeppelin II of its time. Of course not one of you Roth sycophants will ever question its integrity you beaten over the head one too many times with the mediocrity carrot on the stick imbeciles. A Different Kind of Turd lays testament on why the music industry is so shitty these days and why people "download" absolute shit like Lobo and Cat Stevens because they wrote better songs.

Oh, and Roth's singing on that dismal slab is atrocious like a two year-old pulling on a cat's tail. Yet all of you overlook that fact of my theory of the fact based on another theory that alcohol, ciggies and groupie pussy led to Roth's demise that he never recovered from. It's quite noticeable here. "AiiEEEE YAWWW oooH EiiiEEE yaH"\ is not singing, people, it's 70's est therapy. A Different Kind of Turd should never be placed within the halls of the original Roth years VH cannon, okay?

[Kristy]

That's because those tiny speakers on produce highs and high-mid frequency tones... high-mid frequencies in a specific range irritate the human ear and brain.

Think about it... the most primal music came from hollow logs covered with animal skins... drums. All low and low-mid frequencies. The local tribesman beating rocks with sticks got fed to the local predators...

Jesus, not another fan of Pearl Jam.

[Kristy]

I've done two albums and mixes in the last 8 years so spent around maybe 100 hours recording in professional studios and I feel like i know far less about this than I did in the late 80s/90s doing demos.

Mixes used to be good or not good, Now it has to be compressed to fuck or it sounds stupidly quiet, it has to work on your headphones and an iPhone speaker and a TV and a good stereo. I don't understand it to the point of not even knowing what is good or shit - it's weird and unsettling.

All of that is an engineering/mixing issue though, John Shanks has to be given big credit as a producer for bringing out great performances by everyone and it not falling to bits in petty shit.

This post brought to you by the year 2005.

[Terry]

She's the Woman

A tune that mocks poverty and despair in America while these rich fucks drive around in their Ferrari's. Roth's Van Halen was always a Republican band with Ayn Rand idealism. Fuck them. A Different Kind of Turd was nothing more than a noisy, scattershot of canned tunes brought forth to soothe Roth's stupid ego. This was a record that required little to no effort to write, record, produce, and distribute. It's like the Led Zeppelin II of its time. Of course not one of you Roth sycophants will ever question its integrity you beaten over the head one too many times with the mediocrity carrot on the stick imbeciles. A Different Kind of Turd lays testament on why the music industry is so shitty these days and why people "download" absolute shit like Lobo and Cat Stevens because they wrote better songs.

Oh, and Roth's singing on that dismal slab is atrocious like a two year-old pulling on a cat's tail. Yet all of you overlook that fact of my theory of the fact based on another theory that alcohol, ciggies and groupie pussy led to Roth's demise that he never recovered from. It's quite noticeable here. "AiiEEEE YAWWW oooH EiiiEEE yaH"\ is not singing, people, it's 70's est therapy. A Different Kind of Turd should never be placed within the halls of the original Roth years VH cannon, okay?

Yes, but didn't you find Roth's concluding lyrical couplet in the second verse of ADKOT's She's The Woman - "Your I.Q. plummets fourteen points/Her thunder thong around your neck" - to be a delightfully nostalgic and wonderfully illustrative portrait of the age-old romantic pursuit re: men and women?

[Seshmeister]

She's the Woman

A tune that mocks poverty and despair in America while these rich fucks drive around in their Ferrari's. Roth's Van Halen was always a Republican band with Ayn Rand idealism. Fuck them. A Different Kind of Turd was nothing more than a noisy, scattershot of canned tunes brought forth to soothe Roth's stupid ego. This was a record that required little to no effort to write, record, produce, and distribute. It's like the Led Zeppelin II of its time. Of course not one of you Roth sycophants will ever question its integrity you beaten over the head one too many times with the mediocrity carrot on the stick imbeciles. A Different Kind of Turd lays testament on why the music industry is so shitty these days and why people "download" absolute shit like Lobo and Cat Stevens because they wrote better songs.

Oh, and Roth's singing on that dismal slab is atrocious like a two year-old pulling on a cat's tail. Yet all of you overlook that fact of my theory of the fact based on another theory that alcohol, ciggies and groupie pussy led to Roth's demise that he never recovered from. It's quite noticeable here. "AiiEEEE YAWWW oooH EiiiEEE yaH"\ is not singing, people, it's 70's est therapy. A Different Kind of Turd should never be placed within the halls of the original Roth years VH cannon, okay?

[Nitro Express]

Van Halen was a Southern California party band. They existed before political correctness and political division and silly social identity games. Nobody cared about your politics, everyone wanted to get laid and pass the Schlitz Malt Liquor.

[Nitro Express]

I remember when Jump came out, and the kids in my high school who had previously thought Van Halen was dumb rock for burnouts were all of a sudden saying how great Jump was, and I was puzzled at the time because Jump and I'll Wait were the tracks on 1984 I liked the least.

When Hagar joined the band a couple years later, those same "I like Van Halen: they did Jump!" high school kids - which were pretty much all either jocks, cheerleaders or class president types - REALLY started liking the band. They loved those synth tunes...they actually thought the band got better when Roth left.

Yeesh.

I started seeing this high school girl in my class in 1987. We'd go to her house after school, because both her parents worked, and we'd go upstairs to her bedroom and fuck around. She insisted we listen to either the 5150 album or Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet while we were fucking around. Subsequently, I heard both of those albums dozens of times that year.

About 30 years later, I looked her up on facebook. She put on (more than) a bit of weight. Sad. Made me wistful, because she had the greatest tasting pussy. That teen twat circa 1980s, back when many girls even in their mid to late teens hadn't had ten million dicks in them already.

Fresh pussy and getting slippery and wet while listening to Slippery and Wet. Nice memories! I don’t know if I could hold an erection while hearing Sammy’s voice so I assume you ate oysters when 5150 was playing.

[Nitro Express]

That's because those tiny speakers on produce highs and high-mid frequency tones... high-mid frequencies in a specific range irritate the human ear and brain.

Think about it... the most primal music came from hollow logs covered with animal skins... drums. All low and low-mid frequencies. The local tribesman beating rocks with sticks got fed to the local predators...

Then someone invented the damn flute.