Van Halen!

they should be forced by a court to play "beautiful girls" at least once per day for the next month

I believe that is an FCC violation, iirc, per the Two-Fer Tuesday/Mandatory Metallica/Get the Led Out reauthorization act of 1996.

Yeah, no amount of Breakfast with the Beatles can redeem a DJ essentially cock-blocking a rock block, let alone with the Red Rider.

The shitty song in question was something called "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy." The classic rock station should have known better, or at least if you are going to play a solo song by human dud Sammy Hagar in tandem with a Van Halen song, pick a "classic" Hagar song and not some blatant stinker. As Genius notes in response to the line "hot, sweet cherries on the vine," "This leads one to believe that Mr. Hagar is not much of a horticulturalist. Cherries grow on trees. It’s a tough spot. 'Grapes' would be an unstressed syllable short, and 'melons' would bear unintended meanings." He's got a point, in that Hagar is such a shitty lyricist that what little meaning his songs have are always totally, thoroughly intentional. When Hagar is singing about aliens, he is not using metaphors.

Sammy loves his fruit, though, as one listen to "Up for Breakfast" on the 2004 Van Halen compilation will indicate.

Hmm having just peruse the lyrics for "Up for Breakfast" I'd wager a single US dollar this song is about sexual intercourse

She put the cream in my coffee (first thing in the morning)
Put that butter on my biscuit (honey to my melons)
Woo, cherries on bananas (you gonna need a second helping)
You know I'm up for breakfast so early in the morning

Is cherries on bananas a sex thing? I've been out of the game too long

it means there's acne on his dick, Woo

they should be forced by a court to play "beautiful girls" at least once per day for the next month

nah, just in the vocal

Only time will tell if cherries wilt on vines... yeah!

"The shitty song in question was something called "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy"

you strike me, JiC, as a guy what had listened to or at least was present for the AOR era, distinct from classic rock. and the above indicates that you had not heard the above song prior to the other day? That's odd to me… I'm fond of it, in that I often am fond of songs which owe their existence to John David Kalodner not hearing a single among the songs recorded for an early 80s AOR-oriented record and insisting that the artist write some sell out shit…

Is cherries on bananas a sex thing? I've been out of the game too long

― chr1sb3singer, Tuesday, April 13, 2021 3:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think there's any reason to read anything dirty into this...sammy's just a foodie, for ex "poundcake"

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/TxLCnR2iwGBHejVGMGbKCK-q09QD-4s1nTGrucEWIiTx5AofIrYdQHn2nIMNvRVOLRxC2IJO7ZlulqOXdS6jeaXbhmuTovXkENX5bWzcbPCTLx5fwlRwiYLW1w

thought that was Bob Plant on the right

L-R: Sam Hagar, Bob Plant

Is cherries on bananas a sex thing? I've been out of the game too long

― chr1sb3singer, Tuesday, April 13, 2021 3:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think there's any reason to read anything dirty into this...sammy's just a foodie, for ex "poundcake"

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 14 April 2021 13:44 (one hour ago) link

You are probably right, I doubt Sammy is that crude, it isn't like he would name an album FUCK or anyt-...wait

the "Bob Plant emissions" jokes bookending every trip to the loo must be insufferable.

I need one of those dumb shirts that says:
Sam and
Dave and
Bob and
Guy

"She put the cream in my coffee (first thing in the morning)
Put that butter on my biscuit (honey to my melons)
Woo, cherries on bananas (you gonna need a second helping)
You know I'm up for breakfast so early in the morning"

Also "up": my breakfast

Perhaps there is a cosmic balance between the volume of breakfast consumed by Sammy and the volume of breakfast lost by others as a result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ6bli9Xir4

Alex killing it

It's one thing to alter the pitch and tempo of two songs, isolate certain tracks, and mash those together. Bill is far and away the best in the business when it comes to that.
But THIS particular mashup... if you're a die hard Van Halen fan, you hear it right away... that's NOT how DLR sang the song! Bill altered the tempo, cadence and inflection of INDIVIDUAL WORDS from the original vocal track, and did it so skillfully that it comes out sounding completely natural and unedited. It's the audio equivalent of a Deep Fake... he turned DLR into a country singer. This is Next Level stuff, even for McClintock.
BRAVO, sir.
P.S. am I crazy, or did I hear like 5 notes from the bridge of And The Cradle Will Rock thrown in there? Genius.

tremendous work

David did a country album, Strummin' With the Devil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olk8rZmlhY4

Thoughts on Mammoth WVH? Considering he plays all the instruments, has a tight group sound. He has a good voice, too, reminds me vaguely of Nicky Wire. Surprised at the quality of this, and wonder if EVH hadn't passed, if these songs would have fueled a new VH album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMDoj8VVzh8

Quality butt rock.

1993 called

haha yes. extremely Soundgarden. but i like Soundgarden!

One of the new songs (with Hagar) on Best of Both Worlds, the 2004 Van Halen compilation, sounded like Soundgarden too; it's permanently grunge time at the Van Halen's.

Not a bad thing

In 2015, a writer found an email address that supposedly belonged to Eddie Van Halen. He fired off a note on a lark — and kicked off a five-year friendship that lasted until Eddie’s death.https://t.co/Uar74VTSpo

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 3, 2022

!!

...and the name of that writer...was Gary Cherone

Van Halen is literally my fucking name you grape https://t.co/ceuP5axF1x

— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) March 21, 2023

Which reminds me, Van Halen obviously played for years before the first album came out. Has anyone ever come across any first-hand accounts, in contemporaneous reviews or anything like that, of when EVH showed off his tapping and other sci-fi techniques? I've heard some party band boots of the group doing covers and stuff, but EVH's playing, while good, still sounds pretty conventional. But I assume there's a clear point at which he started doing his trademark stuff live before the release of the first album, right?

Greg Renoff's Van Halen Rising documents it.

Thanks!

That book was great, thanks again. Very interesting and informative.

Meanwhile, found this rippin' performance of "Hot for Teacher" that focuses on Michael for most of the solo, then a bit of the fans, then, finally, EVH ... from the chest up. Weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaPlKTFnXz4

They were a really fun live band back in the day. Very positive energy.

Always shocking how high Anthony’s voice is

It's the pants.

That's probably why you didn't get a closeup of Eddie below the belt.

video shot by charter president of Moms for Michael

that video rules, thanks

I've thought about bands I'd want to see if someone invents time travel and peak Van Halen would probably be in the top five

I saw them in 1979, still one of my favorite shows ever.

goddamn I bet

Old library coworker of mine grew up in Pasadena and very much attended a number of those famed backyard shows in the early-mid 70s. Says it was a real experience.

I saw my guitar teacher's tribute band do a sold out Van Halen show last night, and if the crowd of old people now is any indication, it really must have been nuts back then. people were crazy.

Nailing that HFT tapping riff in the intro…man