Before thoughts start running through your heads, I need to say that I am NOT a Van Halen fan. In fact if I was to start a list of rock stars that I hate, David Lee Roth would be a good starting point. Not to put you down at all if you are a fan, in fact I make a conscious effort NOT to put anyone down for their musical taste. Damn, if you are a music lover of any kind, you have something good going for you. I can not stress that enough.
I think I've mentioned it before, that when I was a kid living in a shitty part of L.A. during the late 70's there were two brothers who were friends of mine living in the apartment downstairs. One was a big time Led Zeppelin fan and the other had picked out Van Halen as his favorite. They used to fight over who was a better guitar player, Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen. I'm not much of an expert on that but what I would always say was that Jimi Hendrix was better than both. Now one of the tunes I have for you here is the only tune that I really like by Van Halen, Atomic Punk. There's something about the tune going way back to those childhood years that made it a standout among the various rock tunes being played back then. Maybe kind of stupid if I really stopped to think about it but I try not to do that too much. It popped in my head recently when I heard it on the classic rock radio station that I've talked about the old lady and I listening to around these parts. KFIX, "the Fix". They play too much Van Halen in my opinion, which brings me to the other tune I've included for you. They play the song Eruption followed, as it is on the album, by the Kinks' You Really Got Me all the time. Now the song Eruption brings back memories for me too. When I moved to Burbank in 81' we lived across the street from this stoner park, Monterrey, that I've mentioned before. There was this guy who was constantly on acid or something equally mind altering that would bring his Pig Nose amp along with a guitar and would rock out tunes all the time. His favorite thing to play apparently was Eruption. Maybe you guys have memories attatched to those songs as well (or not).
Here they are.
Just for fun I wanted to see if I could find live versions of the tunes for you. Just goes to show you can find just about anything these days on the internet. I found the Atomic Punks Bootleg here, http://vivalesbootlegs.blogspot.com/ , which has mostly mainstream stuff, but is a pretty good resource for bootlegs. Funny thing is that the S/T Van Halen album was released in 1978 and this bootleg was from 1977. Maybe not funny at all, but here's those live versions for you.
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