Van Halen - A different kind of truth

So back in 1996 when that "greatest hits" thing came out with 2 new songs featuring Dave, it was pretty much the greatest thing people could have imagined.  Sammy was out on his head, Dave was back in making new music, and for the first time in a decade, Van Halen was gonna be the party it had been in its heyday.  Then we found out Dave was back out and he was replaced by that (ugly) nincompoop Gary Cherone from Extreme.

Fast forward another 11 years.  Cherone's tenure was mercifully brief and his career has deservedly been ruined by the everlasting grudge that basically everyone on earth with a pair of ears holds against him for presuming he was up to the task.  Sammy rejoined and got re-kicked out.  Mike Anthony also got the boot.  Then, bliss: VH was reforming with Roth as frontman.  But wait: what's this shit about Eddie's kid playing bass?  Uh oh.  Yeah, so they toured and there was this fat spoiled little asshole tagging along and pretending to be part of the band.  The tragedy is that Mike Anthony's background vocals were kinda key.  So that happened, and then finally they came out with this new album and yep, it's kinda what I thought would happen: The different lineup has a different chemistry.  Part of it is that those background vocals are just not there.  Part of it is the last 25 years since they released a whole album with Dave.  The songwriting is more like Van Hagar than actual Van Halen.  Also, Dave doesn't screech and yowl!  They used to have separate vocal tracks for his singing and screeching, and then a separate "woo!" track.  I guess his pipes are blown out, and he ends up doing a Ken Nordine deep voice thing on a bunch of tracks instead.  So there you have it: Van Halen went and got old.  OLD, YOU GUYS.

That said, there's at least a couple of good parts/aspects to pretty much all the songs.  In fact, I really kinda can't help myself from liking "As is".  Still, there isn't much to actually grab you and make you listen.  Van Halen, it seems, have become the world's foremost Van Halen cover band.  You can really hear this in "Outta space", where Eddie recycles an entire solo, just about.  In fact, you hear reheated licks of yesteryear all over the record.  How sad.

Van Halen - Van Halen II

So they went and did it. They blew the roof off of the faltering rock scene with their whooping displays of showmanship, virtuosic riffage, Michael Anthony's fantastic background vocals, and a whole bunch of really tight pants. So what does a band do next? This! This is what they do next, they do much the same thing, only this time it's even more of a party. Plenty of hard rockers on this one, and Ed responds to "Eruption" with the classically tinged "Spanish fly". It's cut from the same cloth as their first, but there's just a bit more in the way of pop sensibility that comes through in the bridges and stuff. "Dance the night away" is just a try at writing a song that girls will like but that has enough rock in it not to get heckled. It works. "Somebody get me a doctor" is one of the rockingest riffs you've heard in your life, has an awesome solo, a crazy harmonic run, and is the very song that came on the radio immediately after I signed out of the army and played as I sped away off-post, never to return again. Talk about your life-affirming moments. "Beautiful girls" is stupid in all the right ways and everyone loves it no matter what. "Out of love again" features a second vocal track strictly for Dave to go "Woo!" on. Beautiful. Every song on this is solid. It's their best as far as I'm concerned. I used to ride around with my friend JJ in his van (that had a tuck-and-roll interior and a mirrored ceiling) listening to this album, mooning people and honking at girls and throwing our empty beers out the windows while smoke billowed out as well. There is no better soundtrack for that sort of thing, although ZZ Top's "Deguello" comes close. And no, I'm not even remotely making the Spiccoli high-jinks up. It happened.

Everybody wants some! A loose interpretation of the musical genius of Van Halen

I came across this one about 10 years ago, not long after it was released. Basically, it's a covers comp done by various Boston-area musicians, taking Van Halen tunes and taking them in very disparate directions. It begins and ends with Eruption. The first version is performed on a pipe organ by a priest. The second version is wanked out on a banjo by some dude appropriately named Crick Diefendorf. Of the 17 tracks, only one is Van Hagar, and it's far, far, far better than the original, thankfully. It's the Gigolo Aunts covering "Why can't this be love?" and it's actually not bad. The rest fall all over the spectrum of being whacked out. The standouts for me are "Everybody wants some", as lounged out by Talking to Animals, "Jump" by Mary Lou Lord (anybody remember her?), Fuzzy's 60s girl-pop version of "Feel your love" complete with sleigh-bells a-jingle, and "Panama" as recorded by Captain Rock. For one thing, his name is Captain Rock, and I wish it were mine. For another thing, it's all played on tubas and trumpets and trombones and stuff, and the vocals sound like they were performed by Animal from the Muppets. It's really awesome and makes you wish your high school's band wasn't completely lame, because if they had played this, booze and drugs and naked women would have fallen from the sky and the basketball games would have been way better. Also really good are Tom Leach's excellent country take on "Dance the night away" and Sam Black Church rocking the fuck out of "Romeo Delight". But for all the good, there's plenty of bad. This mostly plays out with failed experiments. The sort of stuff that might be really fun to fuck around on yourself, but that you'd never want to put on a record. There's also Jajuya's cover of "Jamie's crying", which is well done to be fair, but anything that sounds remotely latin gets shuffled in my brain to the "shit" category, so sorry guys. Mean streets got wrecked, Somebody get me a doctor got wrecked, Little guitars didn't work out so well, Atomic Punk was ruined and Beautiful Girls tried too damn hard to be jaunty and funky and came across like G-love and special sauce all taking their dicks out and waving them in your face.

So it's a really mixed bag, but one well worth listening to.