[Album] Van Halen - Impressions of the new tour(and Wolfie!)

Well, I saw Van Halen in Greensboro, NC a few weeks ago. I have to say they played a damn good show and surprised the hell out of me.
Eddie was in top form. Rehab did the man some good, looks like. Eddie's fuckin' guitar amps were turned up crazy loud, too! Damn near killed my ears for the first 10 minutes of the show, but after that everything was cool.
Alex was pretty good. Played everything perfect, but his drum solo later in the concert was WAY too much like Neil Peart's solo he does live at Rush shows...only nowhere near as good.
DLR really surprised me. It's been so many years since he's been with the band, I expected him to fuckin' suck. He did really well though. Can't hit all the high notes, and he doesn't kick quite as high as he used to, but he was still out there kickin' ass and giving everybody a good show.
Now what really blew my mind, was how well Wolfie did. He was shy, and he didn't move around the stage a lot, but his backing vocals were dead on and he never missed a beat on bass. Playing runs in the blood, and you can tell.

They didn't play any Sammy Hagar tunes, which as much as I would have loved to hear Poundcake, I'm glad DLR didn't try. I just don't think he could have pulled it off. But if you can name it, they played it. Right down to Ice Cream Man, with David on an acoustic for the first half of it.

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw my two cents out there if anyone cares. Anybody else make it to one of the shows yet? What did you think?

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Sounds awesome...I've only seen the Youtube rehersals (and a bit of the NC show, but the video sound was awful), but they've looked and sounded great so far. I gave some thought to their Philly show, but I'm scared to look at prices (a friend told me they ranged from $700 for primo seats to $200 in the nosebleed section...). I'm in for the inevitable DVD release though and even more excited about the prospect of all new material next year (I remember reading EVH had, like, 10 albums worth of material he was sitting on).

Great to see Roth and the VH's together again...And I imagine I'd be a little nervous if I were in 10th/11th grade and playing bass for VH in front of a huge crowd too. I don't think he and Eddie will be doing any guitar duels onstage anytime soon, but I'm happy...Be interesting to see what his role is a few years from now.

I was generally happy with the set (not one Hagar song, thank god), but I was hoping they'd do at least one of Roth's solo songs as sort of an easter egg.

Where did you sit, BTW?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

$200?! Good god almighty! We only paid $75 a piece for ours and we were sitting basically directly across from the stage on the other end of the stadium. It was just the right spot to be able to see everything. Nosebleed seats were cheaper, but we got in soon enough to buy some decent tickets.

I just hope they stay together long enough this time for it to matter. The world needs Van Halen, in any form. It's interesting to note that they all seemed to be getting along quite well during the show, with Dave giving Eddie a hug at least two or three times during the show. At one point toward the opening of the show, the crowd just stood up and cheered like a motherfucker, to the point they couldn't start the next song for a second. Dave actually got pretty choked up for a minute(you could see him on the big monitor behind the stage). I think the man just finally realized where his place is in the world, as the lead singer for Van Halen. Once he left Van Halen he never really did that well on his own, I think he just realized how much a part of Van Halen he actually was. You could tell he was thrilled to be amoung all his VH fans again.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.