Van Hagar

To my surprise, I went to a Van Halen concert last night.

OK, I knew ahead of time that I was going. One of my friends won a pair of tickets from a radio station a few weeks ago, and invited me to go to the concert with him. I've never been a fan of the band and I've never given him any reason to think I was, so I figured he was having trouble finding someone who was willing/able to go. And I'd already admitted I had no plans for that evening, so I had no graceful way to decline. So I went.

I won't make any cracks about how old the band members are. In fact, they all seem to be in fine condition, especially the Van Halen boys. Alex (the drummer) and Eddie (the guitarist) both performed shirtless, and are in considerably better shape than I. Woof. They certainly put a lot of energy into their performances. Most of the band are pushing 50 (vocalist Sammy "I Can't Drive 55" Hagar is 55), but they clearly aren't ready to push up daisies. Even bassist Anthony Michael Hall was pretty wild, and bass players are always the sedate guys in the band. They all seemed to be having a lot of fun and glad to be back on tour again, especially Eddie, who (my friend told me) had a brush with cancer a few years ago.

The show suffered from a compulsion that most rock performances have, but especially the metal/hard-rock genre: turning the volume up high enough to hurt. We were sitting on the far end of the arena from the stage and speakers, but I still felt the music as much as I heard it. I put in ear plugs, which helped, but... why the fuck should a person have to use earplugs to listen to music? That's like having to put on sunglasses to watch a movie.

I've got nothing against loud music, as such. I was into punk and hardcore back in the day, and that's stuff you just can't play quietly. I get that. But this need to push it too far, then push it even past that, is the kind of the thinking I normally associate with shallow-minded 15-year-olds. And I didn't see any of those at the concert (though I suppose a lot of those present were, back when Van Halen's first albums came out).

Likewise with the musicianship. When Eddie or Alex took the spotlight, it was all just "look what I can do with my equipment" (a mindset understandably typical of the aforementioned 15-year-olds). Don't get me wrong: they're good at what they do. But what they do...? Alex's extended drum solo was (like most rock drum solos) mostly devoid of, y'know: rhythm. It was all about beats: how many drumheads he could hit per second. Eddie's guitar solos rarely touched on, say, melody. It was about how many notes he could squeeze in ("look, I'm picking the strings with both hands!"), or other guitar tricks, like fiddling with the reverb controls and picking up vibrations from the speakers instead of actually picking the strings, or using a bitless power drill to drive the guitar's pick-ups. Sorry, Eddie, but I think Jimi Hendrix took that whole concept to its logical conclusion back before you guys got your first recording contract. It's played out.

But from time to time, on a few of their popular hits, and especially reviving their cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me", the band hit a groove and simply rocked. Those were the parts of the concert I enjoyed, and they made the event worth my while.

Of course, getting to see it free of charge helped. I can't imagine spending $70 per person (and more for those with better seats) for it. My friend said they were selling concert t-shirts for like $50. With concerts becoming obscenely expensive, record stores becoming irrelevant, the RIAA trying vainly to tighten its stranglehold on ownership of the recordings, the tedium of all the corporate-packaged music, and the centrally-programmed homogeneity of radio stations across the country, I figure there's gotta be another revolution brewing (like happened with bebop, rock, punk, and rap). But that's another topic for another day.