Van Halen

Copps Coliseum
Hamilton, Ontario
November 10, 2004

Again, my expectations far exceed the delivery. I'm remembering Van Halen back in the day with Eddie and his red taped up guitar, Diamond Dave jumping around like an asshole, flaming drums, tits everywhere, ya know... fuckin VAN HALEN man. That's not what I got. Now, I can't really knock what they ended up delivering us but for the amount of money these guys want you to dish out, the LEAST they could have done was curb Eddie from the bottle. He didn't walk onto the stage, he was poured onto the stage. I mean he was hammered. He almost fell a couple times and everything he said could have been mistaken for something Ozzy Osbourne was trying to blurt out. Most disappointing was much of Eddie's guitar playing. He has had better days. I'm SURE he still has it in him but it's clearly being jaded by the booze.

His hands were tripping over notes the whole time. At one point he even fired up the intro to Little Guitars. After fucking it up in a bad way, he started playing something completely different as if he MEANT to do it that way.... whatever. I must say the most annoying things about the show all pointed at Eddie and what the fuck he was doing. I have a GREAT idea. It's called WIRELESS. Eddie should give it a try. Throughout the whole show, Eddie must have stopped and fucked with the plug on his guitar umpteen times. At one point, Eddie comes walking out with an interesting looking remake of his old red taped up Stratocaster. After fucking with the plug on the damn thing for a minute or so, he walked to the back of the stage, pulled it off himself and threw the guitar off the stage onto the floor below, undoubtedly doing serious damage to it and whoever happened to be standing there. He then grabbed another guitar and started playing like that whole episode didn't even happen. Seeing Van Halen now, was like seeing a rose the day after a heavy frost. Done like dinner. But you KNOW it was once beautiful.

On a lighter note, Sammy Hagar really kept the whole show alive. He constantly signed autographs and ran around the stage posing for pictures with a perma-grin on his face. At one point someone threw a team Canada jersey on the stage and he put it on and wore it for a few tunes. He sounded great. He did justice to all the old Van Halen songs and even treated us to a little one man show for a couple songs with some mellow blues then "I Can't Drive 55". Pissed me off that the rest of the band wouldn't come out and play at least ONE Sammy song. It's the LEAST the fuckers coulda done for the only guy keeping the whole show from falling apart. They opened the show with Jump, a great Van Halen oldie from 1984, they played a couple other classics like Unchained, Panama and I THINK they played Somebody Get Me A Doctor and Ain't Talkin Bout Love but I'm not sure about those two. They played a couple other pre-Hagar tunes that I don't recall.

Isn't it just amazing that I KNOW those old Van Halen tunes inside out, lyrics and all but I can't REMEMBER what fuckin tunes they actually played?? I'm losing my fuckin mind. This is PROBABLY one of the biggest reasons why I could never do this reviewing for MONEY!!!! Other than the few old Van Halen tunes they mostly stuck to the Van Hagar stuff. My wife was elated. She just loves Van Hagar. Me, I'm a David Lee Roth fan so I like the old shit. The more I think about the show, I can't help but gain more and more respect and admiration for Sammy Hagar. What a class act. The rest of his band is staggering around the stage in a drunken stupor, spilling drinks, throwing tantrums and Sammy is having a ball singing, signing autographs and helping Eddie stay on his feet. The whole time he's doing this, he's smiling like he couldn't possibly be any happier. I always knew the Red Rocker was good but after last nights show I've gotta say he's not only good, Sammy Hagar is GREAT.

Van Halen Official Web Site

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