Saturday, March 24, 2012

Van Halen "A Different Kind Of Truth"


Not what you expect from me, is it?  Yet this band sprung into being during my tumultuous sophomore year at Jolly Rolly Colly, the one that allowed me WAAAAAAYYYYYYYY too much free time due to blowing out the medial collateral ligament in my pitching arm, resulting in the switch from mild-mannered, soft-spoken college disc jockey into the alcohol and drug-fueled MAD ROCKER!  So many wonderful things happened to me between September, '77 and May, '78, the most notable was falling into true love for the first time as an adult, having been burned by a puppyluv heartbreak at 15.  The second best thing was the discovery of the effects of THC on my musical appetite.  My God...Pink Floyd live at Tampa Stadium on the Animals tour about three weeks into the school year...whew, too many details to go into now.  One of the other life-changing moments took place the following February in someone's dorm room following a lengthy TM session.  Erupting (get it?) from the radio came this storming version of the Kinks "You Really Got Me," and 150 seconds later when the announcer said "Van Halen," the gathered stunned stoners decided then and there to trek to East-West Records in search of this shredding brilliance.  There, in one of the New Release baskets, was the target.  One peek at the striped guitar and the contorted figure of the singer on the back cover and it was mine.  Little did I know at the time that I was holding one of Rock's greatest debuts. 

Being afforded the opportunity to actually participate in Spring Break without the constraints of college baseball, I went home to Tennessee to celebrate the break and my birthday with family and friends.  Turning 20 was a big deal, and my sister knew I would enjoy the concert bill scheduled for 4/7/78 at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville (seating approx. 1500), so she presented me with two tickets as a gift.  Headlining was Journey, whose music I discovered in late '76, but they had added a new singer for the fourth album, Infinity, which had been out about ten weeks.  Obviously, there's more to this story, but it will have to wait for another time...  Middle act was Ronnie Montrose (R.I.P.), one of my favorite guitarists, supporting his first solo album, Open Fire.  And the opening band was Van Halen.  That's right, opener.  I swear to you, their stage set was three microphones, four amps, and what looked to be a bed sheet spray-painted with the VH logo hanging behind them.  They had been on their first tour for a month, also opening for Black Sabbath.  Needless to say, they were phenomenal!  Their live show was so fantastic that word spread far and wide, sparking sales to a point which demanded the band headline a world tour no more than two months later.  So I got to see them in their true infancy, and they deserved every praise they got.

So let's talk a little about the new album.  I'm sure you've all heard it by now, how most of these songs were originally conceived in 1977 for the debut.  There is the band's attempt to write an "Ice Cream Man" called "Stay Frosty," and it may be the least of the assembled tracks.  There's a clone of "Hot For Teacher," too, but overall, this is a fun record, and I was highly skeptical.  Eddie's guitar hasn't changed, Alex still slaps the skins like before and Wolfy VH performs admirably on bass in place of Chickenfoot's Michael Anthony.  The weak link is David Lee Roth's vocals, clocking in at about 75% of his prime, which isn't bad for all the abuse the 58-year-old cords withstood.  You have plenty of chances in the studio to get things right, but I doubt they'll work well consistently on their tour.  And who thought it was a good idea to have Kool & The Gang open?  Really? 

That's two reasons I won't be attending, but it would be impossible to top the memory of the concert from nearly 34 years earlier.  

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