Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Van Halen in Atlanta last night

Went downtown to see the Van Halen show last night here in the ATL...was'nt impressed. I've been a Van Halen fan from the beginning, have seen them 3 times in Europe, twice in the US, and they have'nt gotten a bit better. When the lights went down around 8:30, of course the crowd of some 30,000 went wild, Ed's guitar broke out with screaming tremolo and harmonic dive bombs, accompanied by Alex's thundering drums backing up the intro that lasted some 45 seconds, then the spots and set lights exploded and the band broke into "You really got me". The lead vocals were extremely distorted, and Dave, as usual, was singing half a note off, and showing zero respect for the lyrics. They played quite a few numbers from the original album, women and children first, mean street, the second album, and 1984 of course, some you could'nt really recognize until well into the song. Alex did a fantastic drum solo, and poor little Wolfgang did a respectable job, considering his age. Eddie's guitar solo started out the same as the "live without a net" tour, with few changes. About half way through his solo, he lost all of the house amplification, and the only sound was coming from his 16 strong EVH 5150 stacks on the stage, which cut the volume to below half. He made this painfully obvious by throwing his arms in the air, and yelling at people on stage right, who you could see scurrying about trying to render the situation. Someone finally plugged something back in, and all was well, but Eddie is not one to try to cover up anything, for sure. One encore of "Jump", complete with canned keyboards, that were about 1/4 step out of rhythm, and the show was what my brother called, a "complete train wreck"....I have to agree, DEFINITELY not worth the $240 we paid for 2 tickets...

Thats quite sad to hear mate.
I wouldn't say I'm their biggest fan, never seen them live but do like some of their music so I couldn't really comment.
The thing is do you think that when groups reach a certain point they don't perform as you would expect them to. Me and the wife went to see Aerosmith last year in London and to be honest, I got the feeling they were there really just to run through the tunes everyone wanted them to play and take the money and run.

So now i'm a little bit wary of paying good money to see bands who probably should have left it when they were on the top of their game.

Very sad to see and Old Relic trying to re-capture the glories of the past . What can we learn from this ?

1. Never go to see Old Relic bands
2. Spend the $ 240 on chrome for the bike

Ouch , Mark , I'm sorry , that's painful .
Group Hug needed here

I saw Van Halen right back in their early days supporting Black Sabbath on the Never Say Die Tour at The Rainbow, Finsbury Park, London.

Still brings back fond memories even now!!!

was'nt my money....was a Christmas gift....

I saw Robert Plante and Jimmy Paige doing old Led Zeppelin tunes about 5 years ago. The show was fantastic, they hadn't lost a beat. Otherwise my experience with relic bands has been underwhelming. I suppose it's hard to go back. God knows, I'm nowhere near as good as I used to be(at least at anything anyone might want to watch).

Dang, that is sad.....they were very good in Oklahoma City but I guess that was after their "rest" ......over Christmas
OKC kicked off the second half of their tour....I hope RUSH has not "pooped-out" by the time they show up in April.

Two-hundred and forty dollars?! Did you have front row seats? I saw them in Atlanta years ago and didn't think much of 'em then. I guess they sound better on the CD or regular radio. Almost as bad were the Grammys last night. Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and the old crew were all just trying there best to sing the way they used to and it was a joke. Someone should just tell these guys there time to shine is long past before they take your money for a trash concert.

Gotta tell ya though...the video portion was nothing short of spectacular...they had cameras EVERYWHERE. You could see the veins in Eddies hands, the scratches on the neck of the guitar, up-close of the the amplifiers, and even a camera (the coolest) directly over Eddies foot board, showing the "EVH" wah-wah (that he used ALOT), and all of his effects and switches....