Metal Reviews

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Got this one on vinyl a few months ago.. havent heard the whole VH back catalogue but this is one of my favorites so far. Great album!

i grew up listening to this stuff, i enjoy hearing it from time to time..

Never liked Van Hagar

David Lee Roth ftw

haha, this.
Diver Down and 1984 were kinda weak, but this is truly the beginning of the end for such an awesome band.

Great songs on this one, as well as the follow up to it OU812. I'm just amazed at how people lack the historical perspective to enjoy them for what they are.

at the
"historical perspective" bit.

Comparing the Van Halen from 1978 - 1982 to post - Fair Warning Van Halen and especially post - Roth era Van Halen is like comparing, well, Jack Daniels to Coor's Light.

+1

Van Hagar blows

I wouldn't say it blows necessarilly (though, I don't really care for it personally), but it just isn't the same Van Halen.
And it's not just the absence of Roth... you could kind of see where they were headed with Diver Down and even more so on 1984 (Jump, anybody?). There was a hint of what I would consider the true VH with Hot For Teacher, but really, the check was in the mail at that point.
I could see how some would like this (5150), though, it's still fun, feel good music, just a little greyer and softer around the edges.
It's just too "nice", if you know what I mean.
Early VH was anything but nice.

Hot Summer Nights baby! I spent many an hour trying to play those riffs ..

Van Hagar is too 80s pop rock crap. I don't like it. I can't even think of any song sung by Hagar that I enjoy, by Van Halen or other. Except Poundcake, that's pretty cool.

edit: Pound cake is pretty weaksauce...

Not even old Montrose?

Yeah, I don't know about them. It's like, I know I enjoy it, but something is missing when I listen to them.

God some of you people don't understand the way the recording business works. They had two choices. Make a record that would be released, or get dropped by the label. It is that simple and that complex at the same time. Bands had the option of being a over-produced AOR band or they had the option of staying home and not doing shit. No one seems to appreciate the position these bands were in. The bands that didn't make pop records didn't get a deal and everyone was releasing pop records that had any kind of past. The forumla worked so many times the labels were not going to allow anyone the luxury of changing it.

Who really gives a fuck about any of that crap?
I know I don't.

Way to overreact holy shit

If I understand correctly, he is saying that basically VH prostituted themselves to Warner Bros....

like I give a damn what some slimy fat assed pin-striped bottom-line-reading cigar chomping record label exec in some Burbank penthouse suite thinks... all I care about is: is the music good, or not?
everything else is just a lot of squeaky bullshit.

I'm a huge fan of pop music until it took the biggest nosedive in the quality of anything around 1996, so obviously I think these bands made amazing music. I was looking through my collection and still can't think of a band that was doing anything close to what they were doing in 1987 to even 1982. I think we are ignoring that Van Halen wanted to make those records. late 70's hard rock was such lame ass dinosaur music to everyone at the time. Starship may have taken it to it's extreme and at that point it started looking tired again...then GNR hit the scene and by the early 90's a lot of bands were trying to apologize and retcon their past once again.

To put things in another way, virtually every 70's hard rock guitar god had sold their large collection of vintage guitars because they thought at the time that a fat, thick heavy rhythm tone was just embarassing compared to a super-hot solid state hot yellow kramer with an inverted headstock.

Van Halen happened to make the best records of all these bands really. Bands like 38 special were bonafide pop acts, but at least VH maintaned a good hard rock foundation. They were fucking rowdy as shit compared to bands like autograph and night ranger, who at a time were just like VH.

Eddie has still maintaied he loved "jump" and was very happy about it's success. IF DLR is runnin around acting like he hated that sound, just listen to "Goin' crazy" it'll tell you the truth.

If it was up to DLR ... they probably would have made a record of sleezy bebop tunes and lounge numbers.

Great review, i totally agree with the point of view expressed here.
Van Halen with DLR is harder, so what? Here they put 3 AOR songs( and i'm talking about very good AOR), the rest is classic hard rock.
I like Van Halen with DLR as much as with Hagar; i like AOR as much as thrash metal and also as much as hair metal or southern rock. People who like it only when it's hard maybe have immaturity issues...