Anyone else going to see this years Van Halen tour?

So I bought tickets yesterday to see Van Halen at Blossom near Cleveland, Ohio in August. This will be my 4th time seeing them live, but my wife's first time seeing them.

I saw VH twice with Sammy Hagar and I saw them once (at Riverbend in Cincinnati) with Gary Cherone, which was great because Gary sang a lot of the older David Lee Roth songs that Sammy refused to sing. Even thought I've been a VH fan since before Sammy was around, this will be my first time seeing them with DLR.

Any other Van Halen fans out there? Anybody else going to any of the shows this year?

 

Im a fan but i'm not going to see them, I havnt seen a concert since 2007, Rocklahoma.. My fave VH song is DOA Anyway have fun..

 

I love DOA. Great song. My favorite is probably Panama, and then it's a tough call after that, but some of my favorites are Drop Dead Legs, Ain't Talkin 'Bout Love, Little Guitars, 5150, and Get Up. I like all of their stuff, so it's pretty hard to choose favorites.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd is opening for them. I've never listened to him much other than some of his first album when it came out, but being a guitar player myself, I have a lot of respect for him and I'm excited to get to see him open for VH.

 

I've met KWS and my Strat used to have his signature until I rubbed it off. LOL. I still have a pic of us together when I was like 18yrs old. My favorite music is blues and when I was a teen I was obsessed with him, SRV, Buddy Guy(who I have seen a couple of times and got to have a really cool conversation with his keyboard player), B.B.(who I still have a pick from), Albert King, Freddie King, and all the other blues guys that other blues guys constantly rip off. LOL. I really don't listen to KWS anymore because as I got older I just felt like he reallllly took a lot from SRV and I can never really hear "him" ya know? He's a great player but just not very original. I've seen him live multiple times as well. I can't dog him too much though because when I was 18 I sat in with a band one night and we played Little Wing and their guitar player told me to "stay out of helicopters". LOL. I steal from the best! John Mayer is actually a MUCH better blues player than KWS if you listen to his stuff on Try. I had never respected him until I heard him talk about SRV and then saw him play with Buddy Guy and I knew if Buddy was sharing the stage with him that he was real. I'm not a big fan of the pop stuff but he has really good blues/jazz chops. Rips on SRV a lot too but puts enough jazz in there to have his own voice though. I've never been a VH fan but I have a buddy that's OBSESSED with EVH and a few years ago he won a contest and got to ride around Atlanta in a limo with Eddie. He joked that EVH was maybe even shorter than me. LOL. He got to go to soundcheck with him and everything! He thought he was pretty nice. I probably like Hagar the most though because their songs seem more crafted with him but they definitely "rock" more with DLR. Poor Gary just couldn't win for losing with them. LOL!

 

Speaking of the Blues, I love all blues, only one i seen in concert is Johny Lang, I saw him after his 2nd album come out and he was still a kid, man he could play. His first two albums were Fantastic!!! .. Idont think he has done much latley. after he found religion seems his music lost it's edge , ( not saying thats bad) lol... He is gona be in Tulsa here soon , and i read he is also gona be playing aT the MASTERS when ever that is? im not a golf fan.. I dont kno if he has a new Album out or not....

 

Yeah Lie To Me was a really great album. His newer stuff if more like adult contemporary type stuff. He actually was on the Experience Hendrix tour a few years ago. It's basically a supergroup put together by Brad Whitford and they tour and play all Hendrix stuff. Mato Nanji is one of my favorite guitar players ever and he was on the tour with them a few years ago. He is in a blues rock band called Indigenous and they are a family of Indians that can SERIOUSLY play blues. He's a beast!

 

The only well known musicians I've met were some of the guys from Def Leppard. I liked them fairly well in the 80s and 90s, but I had a friend who was a huge Def Leppard fan. We worked at a music store that was also a Ticketmaster outlet for one of their tours in the late 90s, and we were both working the morning that tickets went on sale, so we sold ourselves the first two tickets that morning before selling to people in line and we got front row seats. During the show, Joe Elliot was walking through the crowd with his microphone, and he went to climb back up on stage but couldn't pull himself up with the mic in his hand, so he turned around and handed it to me to hold it for him. Before I realized that I was holding his mic, a security guard dove on me and yelled, "Give me that!" I was like, dude, he just handed it to me. It's not like I'm going to steal it.

After the show, we saw a couple of girls waiting by the door to go back stage and we thought we'd see if they had backstage passes, and they did. They didn't know us, but they were pretty cool and said they'd act like we were their ride and that they needed us to go back stage with them. So when the security guard came to let them in, with a little hesitation, he let us go with them. We went backstage and there actually weren't very many fans back there at all. We ended up getting to sit down at a table and talk to Rick Allen and Phil Collen for about 15 minutes. They were very down to earth and didn't try to rush off or anything; they just sat and talked to us the whole time and only left because they said they had to get their stuff packed up. I still have no idea who those girls were and we never saw them again, but it was pretty cool that they helped us get back stage.

 

Was that the OU812 tour? I would have loved to have seen that show.

 

When 1984 came out, we played the shiite out of it! Love me some "Hot for teacher" I also really like "Ice Cream Man". I really liked Diamond Dave then. Now, It sounds like he can't carry a tune in a bucket! Even now, IMO, he's WAY better than Hagar!

 

One thing about Dave singing live is that he always sings much more like a jazz improv singer than he does like the album. Even in the old days (from old concert footage I've seen from their early days) he did that. I've never really liked what he does live because it's out of sync with the music and more like he's talking than singing on a lot of songs. But, I mostly go to watch Edward play, so I don't mind.

 

That's pretty awesome dude. I've been backstage at a Skynyrd show and a Perfect Circle show. I've also met some guys from The Allman Bros and when I was about 13 my dad took me to my first Allman Bros show and Warren Haynes, one of my all time favorite players forever, was watching me during the show because we were on the front row and he took a shirt and him and Dickey Betts signed it and he tossed it right to me, along with one of Dickey's picks and a Butch Trucks drum stick. Then a few years later at another Allman Bros show me and my buddy were waiting on his mom to pick us up and we went over to this big Holiday Inn to meet her and we were in the lobby and Dickey Betts came walking through and we almost pooped. LOL. We went and had a total starstruck moment with him but he was extremely nice and gracious to us. I know a lot of the older guys really love seeing a new generation enjoying their music so much. Then we saw Butch Trucks and he wasn't nearly as nice. I've also met Jerry Cantrell and he signed my Strat as well. He must have been REALLY strung out because he was skinny as a rail but his hands were huge! It's no secret how his tone is so punchy.

I think Phil is the best guitar player to ever be in Def Leppard. Steve Clark was cool from a "rock" perspective but Phil is highly technically sound. I know that Vivian Campbell hates Joe Elliot with a passion. That story of you talking about going backstage there reminded me of Wayne's World 2 when Wayne and Garth were trying to get backstage at Aerosmith and they said "BUT OUR GIRLFRIENDS ARE BACK THERE!" and security said "Lots of guys' girlfriends are back there..." LOL!!! If you had seen Def Leppard in the 80s though you would have never gotten to go backstage since you are a dude and they also claim that they had an "under stage" area for DURING the shows where girls would gather and wait for them!

 

Hagar can technically sing MUCH better than Dave but he's not got the charisma and isn't as much of a true "front man" or "rock star" as Dave. Did you know that DLR had started doing bluegrass a few years ago? LOL!

 

I have a friend that has this album:

http://www.amazon.com/Strummin-Devi...428333034&sr=8-2&keywords=bluegrass+van+halen

 

I like SH but when he joined VH they just sound'ed like SH , his style of music remained the same. AND VH's changed ... VH sound's totaly diff with Diamond Dave .. but i like both versions

 

Yeah, I have to agree with that assessment. Dave is definitely the greater showman, but Sammy the better singer.

I like both eras of VH. Some of my favorite VH songs are from 5150 and OU812, and it's a shame that they'll probably never be performed live again because I just can't see Dave ever doing any Sammy era songs. Sammy would basically only do Panama, Aint' Talkin' Bout Love, and You Really Got Me in concert. He refused to do any older songs because he didn't want to be compared to Dave.

The cool thing about the show with Gary was that they did songs from every era up to that point. Gary didn't have any hangups at all about performing songs that previous singers did.