Six-year-old drummer Avery Molek of Washington, Pennsylvania has drumming skills that would make most professionals jealous. The youngster has garnered over one million views at his YouTube channel which features Avery showing his skills by drumming along with a bevy of classic rock and heavy metal tunes. However his latest drum cover might be the best one yet.
Watch as Molek handles Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher seemingly with ease…
[via GuySpeed]
There are very few of us who didn’t grow up on Top 40 music. While many of us have moved on to become fans of music that isn’t played on the radio, we still feel a nostalgic connection to the tunes we grew up on. This past Friday night a band called Omaha Diner made their debut at The Cutting Room in New York City. The group features guitarist Charlie Hunter, saxophonist Skerik, Steven Bernstein on trumpet and Bobby Previte on drums. For this project the four talented and highly-regarded musicians offer their own spin on songs that at one time hit #1 on the Billboard charts.
At Friday’s show, Omaha Diner delivered interpretations of such hit songs as Beyonce’s Single Ladies, Hall and Oates’ I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do), Love Train by The O’Jays and Adele’s Rolling In The Deep. Another tune they covered was Jump by Van Halen and you’ve never heard a take quite like this. Thanks to taper Eric McRoberts we can check out Omaha Diner’s version of Jump…
Omaha Diner will return to the stage at The Maison in New Orleans on April 28.
Earlier this year iconic rockers Van Halen reunited with David Lee Roth for an album and a tour that helped us remember just how good the band was at the peak of their powers. For today’s Full Show Friday selection we’ve got 80 fabulous, professionally-shot minutes of live Van Halen from one of those peak power years – 1983 – recorded in Argentina.
When Van Halen pulled into Buenos Aires, Argentina on February 11th, 1983 they had been on the road for almost eight months straight. This would be the next to last gig of their “Hide Your Sheep Tour” and the band sounds tight as hell. Recorded a few months before Van Halen entered the studio to record 1984, this show saw the group pull from their first five studio albums with a focus on Diver Down. All the hits are here as well as covers of Dancing In The Street, Summertime Blues and (Oh) Pretty Woman. Check out this historic video of Van Halen kicking ass and taking names…
01. Introduction 02. Romeo Delight 03. Unchained 04. Drum Solo 05. The Full Bug 06. Runnin’ With The Devil 07. Jamies’s Cryin’ 08. Little Guitars 09. Bass Solo 10. Where Have All The Good Times Gone 11. Dancing In The Streets 12. Little Dreamer 13. So This Is Love? 14. Summertime Blues 15. Cathedral 16. Secrets 17. Drum Solo 18. Ode To Argentina 19. Ice Cream Man 20. Intruder/ (Oh) Pretty Woman 21. Guitar Solo 22. Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love 23. You Really Got Me
It’s been a big 24 hours for Rolling Stones fans, as late last night we dropped the news that the band will indeed celebrate their 50th anniversary with a handful of concerts in London and Brooklyn this November. Now comes even more news about the iconic band, as they will be the subject of not one but two documentaries celebrating their legacy this fall. On November 15, HBO will debut the Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture/Chicago 10) directed Crossfire Hurricane, which “chronicles their early years and their rise to stardom.”
While on September 29, the New York Film Festival will feature the debut of The Rolling Stones: Charlie is My Darling – Ireland 1965, which was shot shortly before (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction became a #1 hit and according to Vintage Vinyl News contains never before seen footage of “the band traveling through the Irish countryside by train; dashing from cabs to cramped, basement dressing rooms through screaming hordes of fans.”
Finally, while everything appears to be coming up roses for Stones fans, it’s been a frustrating few months of Van Halen fans, as classic rock act continues to cancel more dates due to unforeseen circumstances. Yesterday the band announced that they would be postponing their upcoming tour of Japan as guitarist Eddie Van Halen had to undergo emergency surgery for a severe bout of diverticulitis – a digestive disease that occurs when pouches of the inner lining of the intestine become inflamed or infected, which will require four to six months of recovery time. We want to wish EVH a quick and speedy recovery, and hope to see the band back on the road in 2013.
Back in May, Van Halen announced the postponement of 31 North American tour dates after both Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth felt the band had “bitten off more than they could chew” in performing 48 shows in just a few months. At first the group expected to make up the dates later this year, but as Pollstar reports the plan has changed – the 31 shows have now been officially canceled.
Van Halen currently has no future shows scheduled, though Eddie recently told USA Today that the band would head to Japan in November and might “possibly do something special” towards the start of 2013. For our part, we hope this reunion isn’t over, that the band members were sincere when they said the cancellations were due to exhaustion. Van Halen impressed during the first 48 shows by dusting off rarities and engaging the audience every night.
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals put out an impressive album earlier this week when The Lion, The Beast, The Beat hit stores. Tonight, the longtime HT faves will celebrate the release of the LP in their hometown of Burlington at Higher Ground. This evening’s performance, which is scheduled to start around 9PM ET, will be webcast live on this Livestream channel.
Here’s six other stories of note to help you kill time this hump day…
Finally, Eddie Van Halen gave a rare interview to USA Today that was published today and in it, EVH tells the paper that his band will “do something special” in the New Year leading to speculation that Van Halen will perform at halftime of next year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans. We’d rather see the NFL lean back towards the aging rocker choices of the late ’00s as opposed to the more pop-oriented choices of 2011 (Black-Eyed Peas) and 2012 (Madonna). Stay tuned…
When word came down that Van Halen had postponed 31 shows on the reunited group’s lengthy world tour starting in July, thoughts about the reason why turned to the tumultuous relationship between lead singer David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers that tore the band apart in the mid ’80s. The band members themselves remained quiet on postponement leading to a battle of “sources” – Rolling Stone’s Van Halen source claimed DLR and the brothers “hate each other” and that “the band is arguing like mad. They are fighting.” The next day TMZ had a Van Halen source of its own who said the reason for the postponement was due to the ridiculous schedule of shows, that the group needed to “re-charge their engines.”
This morning we’ve finally got a statement from an actual band member. A video featuring David Lee Roth has been posted on the Van Halen Vimeo channel and the ’80s icon says the group has been getting along better than ever and just needs a break. Take a look…
Here’s the text of DLR’s statement…
“The band is getting along famously, better than we have in quite some time, and I think the shows reveal that through the miracle of YouTube. I think we’re one of the few bands who relishes you bringing whatever camera — if you can carry it in and pull the trigger on it yourself, then please do. And through the eye of YouTube, you can see that we’re having ourselves a hell of a time, and I think that translates into the music. As usual, we’ve bit off way more than we could chew when it came to scheduling. The band is winning but our schedule has been sidelined for unnecessary roughness. If we continue past July 4 and all the way into Australia and Japan, then we’re asking for the robot-zombie tour when you start getting a lot of ‘yes’ questions. [Adopts robotic voice] ‘Do you feel alright’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you having a good time?’ ‘Ahh…’ You don’t wanna get to that point. And we’re nowhere near that point. But we’re gonna take a break and we’re gonna come all the way back around, because this tour is gonna take us about two years. And we’re the guys who brought you KOOL & THE GANG as the ultimate and arguably left-handed top bill co-headline tour — they just went on first every night — and we have in mind a supersize monster truck rally VAN HALEN tractor pull sort of event, and we’re gonna be bringing that back around for the United States as soon as we learn to speak Australian. So stay tuned and we’ll see you down the road in just a little bit.”
[via Blabbermouth]
The Van Halen tour continues on Tuesday in Kansas City, Missouri.
One of the surprises found on Van Halen’s impressive A Different Kind of Truth LP was the inclusion of She’s The Woman. This track was originally recorded by the band on their 1976 demo and has resurfaced all these years later. Van Halen has just released a video for the tune…
In other news, here’s six stories that caught our interest this week…
Finally, Furthur has turned into the Energizer Bunny of post-Jerry bands. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s outfit hasn’t even finished their Spring Tour, and Summer Tour is months away, but they just announced a 13-date Fall Tour that will bring them to Red Rocks for three shows and also includes a three-night stand at Edgefield in Troutdale, Ore. and a pair of gigs at L.A.’s Greek Theatre.
Here’s the full list of dates…
9/21 – 9/23: Red Rocks Amphitheatre Morrison, CO
9/25: WaMu Theater at CenturyLink Field Events Center Seattle, WA
9/27 – 9/29: Edgefield Troutdale, OR
9/30: Shoreline Amphitheatre Mountain View, CA
10/2: SDSU Open Air Theatre San Diego, CA
10/4: The Joint Las Vegas, NV
10/5 & 10/6: Greek Theatre Los Angeles, CA
10/7 Santa Barbara Bowl Santa Barbara, CA
Head to the Tour Page of the band’s website for full ticketing details.
We would’ve pegged the David Lee Roth-fronted Van Halen as a band who doesn’t change their setlist much over the length of a tour, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised over the past month as the group has dusted off classic material from the late ’70s and ’80s at a respectable pace. Last night in Reading, Van Halen offered the tour debut of Jamie’s Cryin’. Take a look…
Van Halen News Desk reports that the group is also working up Light Up The Sky from Van Halen II in soundchecks. With three months of tour dates currently scheduled, we’re excited to see what other tricks the quartet has up their sleeves. Van Halen heads to Washington D.C. next.
In January, the quasi-original lineup of Van Halen sent tongues awag with an hour-long set at Café Wha? No strangers to savvy marketing strategies, there might not have been a better way to announce the return of a David Lee Roth fronted Van Halen or whet appetites for a “reunion” tour than to blow the doors off a tiny club in front of a smattering of music journalists.
For a large majority, David Lee Roth is the only lead singer that will complete their vision of a properly constituted Van Halen. The replacement of Michael Anthony with Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang may have been as significant a personnel change but it never threw off the public equilibrium to the extent of the contentious split between Roth and the band that made him famous. The Sammy Hagar version of the band may have had its moments but in light of the Gary Cherone fiasco, Roth’s descent from the rarefied air of rock star and the band’s general fade into obscurity, it seems strange that it took until the late 2000s for the inevitable lucrative reunion to come together.
Setting aside whether he was a competent EMT, Roth has only been qualified for one job: the lead singer of Van Halen. Even during his brief flirtation with success as a solo artist, the DAVE TV Crazy From The Heat videos for California Girls and Just A Gigolo were simply an extension of the DLR persona he cultivated during his years as Van Halen’s frontman. Once time placed some distance between Roth and his old band, the context for Roth’s outsize antics and gargantuan ego vanished, turning Roth from character into caricature. As his misconceived radio show proved, Roth likes to offer pithy platitudes in the guise of worldly insight. While he’s never come across as grossly uninformed, Roth’s pearls of wisdom were (and still are) nowhere as sage or perceptive as he imagines, the germs of logic to his axioms making him come across like a lesser moron from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. This failing though has never extended to Van Halen; if there is any organization Roth seems to understand implicitly, it’s the workings, relationships and success of this one band. At this point in their career, for Van Halen to attempt a tour without Roth would be an exercise in futility, like Queen touring without Freddie Mercury.
Van Halen’s massive North American Tour, which continues to win raves from longtime fans as well as many critics, rolled into Manchester, New Hampshire last night for a performance at the Verizon Wireless Arena. During the group’s cover of Roy Orbison’s (Oh) Pretty Woman, David Lee Roth stopped the show to address a fight that had broken out in front of him. After admonishing the feuding fans, DLR asked drummer Alex Van Halen to restart the song and the show went on as planned.
Hennemusic has more on what transpired…
Roth stopped the band and dealt with the issue. “Knock off the f-ing fighting. F- you!,” declared Roth from center stage, to the applause of fans. “What do you think this is, a f-ing mosh pit? You’ve got all the best looking women on the f-ing east coast here and all you can f-ing think of is f-ing fighting?!?”
“Ladies, I’m on your side, yeah,” Dave added, to more applause. Fans reports say that venue security stepped in to clean up the mess, as Roth instructed the band to restart the song. “Alex…start it back at the top…let’s do the whole thing over again.”
Van Halen crosses the border to play Montreal’s Bell Centre tomorrow.
[Hat Tip - @Ravenval]
Over the last decade Van Halen seemed to be in the news more for their off-stage, seemingly soap opera story-lines, than for what they were known for best – playing fiery arena rock. The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame act toured with both Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth, kicked originally bassist Michael Anthony to the curb, and saw lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen not only hire his teenage son as the band’s bass player, but also reenter rehab forcing a number of postponed dates during their 2007-08 tour. After numerous rumors that Eddie had been writing and recording new music, the band announced that they had officially gotten back together with Diamond Dave to record their first album of new material together since 1984
After a couple of warm up gigs, that included one at the tiny 250-person capacity Cafe Wha? in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and another private friends and family show at The Forum in Los Angeles, Van Halen officially kicked off their lengthy North American arena tour this past Saturday night at the unfortunately named KFC Yum! Center in Louisville. The band’s 24-song set leaned heavily on their classic material from the Diamond Dave-era, including two tunes Woman In Love and Outta Love Again, that haven’t been played live in over thirty years. Here’s the four song stanza that opened the show, as uploaded by YouTube user Randy Bayers. Let’s take a look…
Van Halen – KFC Yum! Center – Louisville, KY – 2012-02-18
You Really Got Me, Runnin’ With the Devil, She’s The Woman, Romeo Delight, Tattoo, Everybody Wants Some!!, Somebody Get Me A Doctor, China Town, Mean Street, Oh, Pretty Woman,< Drum solo>, Unchained, The Trouble with Never, Dance The Night Away, I’ll Wait, Hot For Teacher, Women In Love*, Outta Love Again**, Beautiful Girls, Ice Cream Man, Panama, <Guitar solo>, Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love, Jump
* first time played since 1980, ** first time played since 1979
Click here for the Panama, Guitar Solo (Eruption), Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love and Jump segment. Head over to the Funk It blog, where Randy will be posting more incredible footage of the tour opener.
Last night Van Halen returned to the stage for the first time since 2008 at the 250-capacity Cafe Wha? in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a club owned by front man David Lee Roth’s Uncle Manny, and won a glowing review from Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene. The group tore through songs from their heyday, ignoring anything they put out after the release of 1984. Van Halen did debut one new song, She’s The Woman, though the original was written back in 1976.
Here’s the setlist from last night’s show…
Set: You Really Got Me, Runnin’ With The Devil, Somebody Get Me A Doctor, Everybody Wants Some, She’s The Woman, Dance The Night Away, Panama, Hot For Teacher, Ice Cream Man, Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love, Jump
[via Van Halen News Desk]
In other Van Halen news, the band finally released the itinerary for their long-awaited tour. The tour kicks off in Louisville on February 18 and runs through (or should we say “is scheduled to run through”) June 26 in New Orleans. Here’s the complete list of Van Halen tour dates…
2012 is shaping up to be a huge year for Van Halen. The reliable Van Halen News Desk site reports that the group will announce dates and cities for the “first wave” of their extensive tour on January 3 followed by a new single and video on January 10. Van Halen’s first album with David Lee Roth since ’83′s 1984 will hit stores on February 7th. In the mean time, our pal Mike Newman hipped us to this video featuring a compilation of David Lee Roth’s karate kicks which made us chuckle…
The Van Halen brothers have always been a secretive clan, but they’ve really taken the cloak and dagger stuff to a new level over the past few year. We all know the group has a new album in the works that Interscope paid big bucks to release and you had to figure Interscope wouldn’t shell out mucho dinero unless the band toured behind the forthcoming LP. Today, Van Halen, featuring David Lee Roth on vocals and Wolfgang Van Halen on bass, have officially confirmed they will tour in 2012. Alas, the YouTube clip announcing the jaunt only contains one detail we can hang out hats on – “first tickets on sale January 10.”
With just over two weeks until that January 10th on sale date, you’d have to think a list of venues and dates will be right behind today’s “announcement.” Yet if there’s anything we’ve learned in our five years of covering Van Halen, expect the unexpected. Stay tuned!
Do you have any interest in catching a Van Halen show in 2012?
