Light up the sky 2015!

[unchainedguitars]

What a fucking set-list: Dirty Movies, Drop dead legs, Feel your love, IN A SIMPLE RHYME!
Growth....and....they opened the night with this lost gem!

Musically, they sound the best i've ever heard them (this current version of the band).
Dave is a fucking champ too, because this is a toughie, vocally.

IMPRESSIVE!

[DLR 1973]

With Light Up The Sky, Van Halen were on fire .

And what a setlist!

***SETLIST (Unveiled by VHND)***

1) LIGHT UP THE SKY!!! (Van Halen II classic not performed since ’80!)
2) RUNNIN’ WITH THE DEVIL
3) ROMEO DELIGHT
4) EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!
5) DROP DEAD LEGS!!! (1984 classic – never performed live!)
6) FEEL YOUR LOVE TONIGHT (Van Halen classic not performed since ’98!)
7) SOMEBODY GET ME A DOCTOR!
8) SHE’S THE WOMAN
9) CHINA TOWN
10) I’LL WAIT
11) DRUM SOLO
12) LITTLE GUITARS
13) DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY
14) BEAUTIFUL GIRLS
15) WOMEN IN LOVE…
16) HOT FOR TEACHER
17) IN A SIMPLE RHYME!!! (W&CF classic not performed since club days!)
18) GROWTH!! (W&CF instrumental very rarely performed!)
19) DIRTY MOVIES!!! (Fair Warning classic – never performed live!)
20) Dave playing harmonica & ICE CREAM MAN
21) UNCHAINED
22) AIN’T TALKIN ‘BOUT LOVE
23) GUITAR SOLO (9 minutes long)
24) YOU REALLY GOT ME
25) PANAMA
26) JUMP
http://www.vhnd.com/2015/07/05/van-h...r-tour-begins/

They finally dropped Pretty Woman. This must mean they are listening to the fans.

Finally we get a setlist that Van Halen could tour the world with.

I don't wish to distract from the kudos Van Halen deserves right now, but technically on the opening song they really needed Michael Anthony on backing vocals, plus Mike's stage presence adds to the whole occasion.

On the whole, that was a great performance and I can not understand why any fans who live in North America would not travel and make the effort to see this Van Halen tour.

[unchainedguitars]

Roth is back!

They are killing it on "Drop Dead Legs" and "Dirty Movies."

He sounds much, much better to me, more attitude & lower register.
Ed, Al & Wolf are killing it, musically.

We need another album.
https://www.facebook.com/jon.storms/...4/?pnref=story

[unchainedguitars]

I fucking love this one, a seemingly impossible one to play live, but they do it!

Roth sounds so great on the first verse & chorus.
I love his expression at the 1:17-1:20 mark.

[Nick AVH fan]

I was actually impressed when I heard it. They are really tight, even after not playing this tune for years. They did do it in 2012 for pre-show sound check though.

[punkatomic]

... On the whole, that was a great performance and I can not understand why any fans who live in North America would not travel and make the effort to see this Van Halen tour.

Being that I'm a fan that lives in North America and didn't go to the show. Let me help you understand.

I drive in the 4th worst traffic in the country, twice a day, 5 days a week. There is no way that I'm driving down to Whiteriver to watch a concert on July 5th. The traffic and parking is enough to make me want to shoot myself.

I have yet to go to ANY outdoor concert and experience good audio. Doesn't happen, IMO.

I've seen this tour twice. 2007 and 2012. Nothing beats the 2007 show. Drop Dead Legs and Dirty Movies would have been nice to see in....the 1980's. I applaud them for pulling out those classics, but I don't feel like I missed anything.

Effort? Them or me?

How about new music? How about talking to your fans, together as band? How about giving something back to the fans? Live videos of the classic era? Effort? It's goes both ways, dog. A tour supporting a Live Album isn't effort IMO.


One last thing...

Listening to the local CLASSIC Rock station again this morning. RIGHT NOW was being played. Thought to myself, LAME. When the song was over, the DJ mentioned he was surprised that song wasn't played. I was like, WTF?

He also when on to mention that "Ain't Talking Bout Love" wasn't played last night. Again, WTF. I see it on the set list? I actually wondered if he even went to the show and if he knows that Sammy isn't in the band anymore.

[unchainedguitars]

Being that I'm a fan that lives in North America and didn't go to the show. Let me help you understand.

I drive in the 4th worst traffic in the country, twice a day, 5 days a week. There is no way that I'm driving down to Whiteriver to watch a concert on July 5th. The traffic and parking is enough to make me want to shoot myself.

I have yet to go to ANY outdoor concert and experience good audio. Doesn't happen, IMO.

I've seen this tour twice. 2007 and 2012. Nothing beats the 2007 show. Drop Dead Legs and Dirty Movies would have been nice to see in....the 1980's. I applaud them for pulling out those classics, but I don't feel like I missed anything.

Effort? Them or me?

How about new music? How about talking to your fans, together as band? How about giving something back to the fans? Live videos of the classic era? Effort? It's goes both ways, dog. A tour supporting a Live Album isn't effort IMO.


One last thing...

Listening to the local CLASSIC Rock station again this morning. RIGHT NOW was being played. Thought to myself, LAME. When the song was over, the DJ mentioned he was surprised that song wasn't played. I was like, WTF?

He also when on to mention that "Ain't Talking Bout Love" wasn't played last night. Again, WTF. I see it on the set list? I actually wondered if he even went to the show and if he knows that Sammy isn't in the band anymore.

Reading this made me smile, because i recognized myself in there.
The old unchainedguitars!

I think the Links have softened me up a bit.
It's so Sammy orientated, that something like this, these performances of old tunes with Roth,
feels like a 1980 Invasion footage reel. LOL!

I guess the old me would have been more jaded or critical, which is cool.

Damn you, Links!

[DLR 1973]

Being that I'm a fan that lives in North America and didn't go to the show. Let me help you understand.

I drive in the 4th worst traffic in the country, twice a day, 5 days a week. There is no way that I'm driving down to Whiteriver to watch a concert on July 5th. The traffic and parking is enough to make me want to shoot myself.

I have yet to go to ANY outdoor concert and experience good audio. Doesn't happen, IMO.

I've seen this tour twice. 2007 and 2012. Nothing beats the 2007 show. Drop Dead Legs and Dirty Movies would have been nice to see in....the 1980's. I applaud them for pulling out those classics, but I don't feel like I missed anything.

Effort? Them or me?

How about new music? How about talking to your fans, together as band? How about giving something back to the fans? Live videos of the classic era? Effort? It's goes both ways, dog. A tour supporting a Live Album isn't effort IMO.

Maybe I have a different perspective from living in England.

The last time Van Halen were here was with Sammy in 1995 when they supported Bon Jovi.

All the Van Halen III British shows were cancelled due to Alex injuring himself.

Dave last toured over here in 2004.

Van Halen have turned down every single European tour that they have been offered since Dave rejoined in 2007.

[DLR 1973]

Van Halen Play Nice, Shred Hard at High-Energy Tour Opener

Despite harsh words in the press, Eddie and David Lee Roth share stage like old pros, not old enemies, delivering set of hits and rarities

By Robert Ham July 6, 2015


Van Halen lit up the sky in Seattle, Washington, at the opening gig of their first North American tour since 2012. Photographs by Jim Bennett

The thousands of Van Halen fans assembled at White River Amphitheater on Sunday evening to catch the opening night of the hard-rock band's first North American tour since 2012 had plenty of questions for each other as they waited in line for overpriced beers. What songs from the group's late Seventies/early Eighties peak would make the set list? Would David Lee Roth's voice sound as shaky as it did when the reunited band played on Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel Live!? The most important concern though was simply: How long is this reunion going to last?

For one tattooed couple from Canada, the less than generous comments that Eddie Van Halen made recently in Billboard about his band's limber-limbed frontman led them to wonder if this seemingly friendly détente between the two musicians would hold for the whole run of summer dates, one night or even the entire set. Not that a further tear in the already threadbare fabric of their favorite band really concerned these two B.C. twentysomethings; they seemed more excited about the idea they could potentially be at the last ever Van Halen concert.



If there were any friction still being sparked up between the guitarist and vocalist, it wasn't apparent for any part of the group's two-hour set. From the moment the two men and their bandmates, Alex and Wolfgang Van Halen (Eddie's brother and son, respectively), ambled on stage with zero fanfare, it was all business. Well, all business for the three instrumentalists at least. The Van Halen brothers moved much slower than they did during their heyday but still brought ample amounts of energy and power, even as they were shaking off the rust in the early going.

Roth, on the other hand, was as hammy and corny as ever. With that beaming smile fixed to his face throughout and a section of slick wooden flooring under his feet, he slipped and slid about, did some quick pirouettes and contorted his body into all kinds of angular shapes. Gone were the reverse karate kicks, replaced with play-acting that his mic stand was, at various times, a baseball bat, a golf club and a weightlifting bar. He also continued his reign as the king of stage banter with some truly funny asides and head-scratching attempts at comedy. While the band tore through "Dirty Movies," from 1981's Fair Warning, he marveled that so many Van Halen songs are about sex and girls. "That just how it's gone down," he said, grabbing his crotch. "We've been doing this for 40 years and it's not gone down once."

As for his voice, well, Roth is never going to be the nightingale he once was, but he hasn't seemed to come to terms with that. On otherwise fine performances of classics like "Hot for Teacher" and Kinks cover "You Really Got Me," he brayed when he could have crooned. And throughout he seemed to be working on his own internal clock, which seemed to throw Alex Van Halen off a bit during the show's opening one-two punch of "Light Up the Sky" and "Runnin' With the Devil."

When Roth eased up on the throttle and locked in with the rest of the band, Van Halen sounded positively unbeatable. "Everybody Wants Some!!" (from 1980's Women and Children First) was a tribal monster that sent the singer into a shimmying, shaking frenzy as he flew a little off book with his vocals. Their loose run through the 2012 single "She's the Woman" was held together by Eddie's delirious wah-wah heavy solo. Both Fair Warning's "Unchained" and Van Halen II's "Beautiful Girls" were hurricanes of snapping rhythm and bloodthirsty guitar noise. And of course Eddie gave himself a run in the spotlight with an extended "Eruption" that swung from finger-tapping frenzy to a delicate passage that was almost new age in its timbre.



No mud was slung, no hard feelings were on display, and for good chunks of this opening night set, all felt very right in the world of Van Halen. In fact, Roth seemed to make a point of being gracious to his longtime bandmate, skipping over the first couple of lines of "You Really Got Me" to instead say "Great solo, Ed." It was a tiny gesture amid the lights and volume of an arena-rock show, but hopefully one that will help keep their relationship intact for a few more months, at least.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/li...pener-20150706

[unchainedguitars]

He's playing a relic-ed Wolfgang!

Kind of odd, but why not?

Where is everyone?
I thought opening night & the set-list would bring out everyone.
Not many comments.