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, with the results being released earlier this month as their 12th studio effort A Different Kind of Truth.

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.

Our look at the best releases of the year kicks off today with an annual traditional around these parts that we don’t see elsewhere – a list of the best live archival releases from the past 12 months. These are all albums which feature music pulled from the artists’ archives that had never been officially released until 2011.

All in all 2011 was an exceptional year for archival releases as more acts and labels are realizing the benefits of opening their vaults. For this list we focused on straight live archival releases, so I didn’t include live shows that were included with studio remasters such as the wonderful Paramount show Nirvana put out with the 20th edition of Nevermind and the superb Wembley ’74 tracks that rounded out the Immersion Edition of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.  I also shied away from the free download compilations released by Phish (Live Bait) and the Grateful Dead (30 Days of Dead) which each deserve recognition for their awesomeness. With that said, here’s my list of live archival releases that caught my attention in 2011.

10. moe. – December 7, 2000

[Photo by Rob Chapman]

While jam stalwarts moe. have launched two archival series, Warts & All and Dr. Stan’s Prescription, over the years, both series seem to be on hiatus, with the last installments coming in 2007 and 2009 respectively. Without much fanfare moe. added an outstanding show from 2000 to their collection of live shows on LiveDownloads.com and the whole performance absolutely smokes. They come out of the gates with a 20+ minute Time Ed and don’t relent with strong versions of Head, Bring It Back Home, Four and Meat scattered about, but for me the highlight is a Dr. Graffenberg > Linus and Lucy > Dr. Graffenberg sandwich that features at least four distinct sections of improv.

Where You Can Sample This Release: LiveDownloads.com

READ ON

Ok, we know it might be a bit cliche to post a video of Warren Zevon performing Werewolves Of London on Halloween, but I recently finished reading the highly recommended Zevon bio  I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon and have the music of the late singer-songwriter on my mind. While there are a slew of versions of this tune online, we’re going to go with a particularily fiery live version of Werewolves from an October ’82 show at the Capital Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey.

While we’ve posted this version in the past, it’s arguably Warren at his best, with his band firing on all cylinders as Zevon improvises lines and drops random Jersey and pop culture references throughout. This is, in our humble opinion, the best way to celebrate Halloween. Let’s check it out…

Warren Zevon – Werewolves Of London

Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter got their first mention here on Hidden Track back in January of 2007, during HT 1.0, when we had a reoccurring feature around these parts called Listen To This Shit, which featured a mix of music that former E-i-C Slade Sohmer had advised to shove in your ear holes. While that initial post made mention that Sykes sounded eerily like a female version of Widespread Panic front man John Bell, it appears as if a lot has changed in the three and a half years since.

While Sykes’ vocals still channel her inner JB, the band has traded in their alt.country sound in favor of dark, swirly psychedelia that would have been right at home in San Francisco during the mid 1960s. Last week, Sykes & Co. released their third studio album, Marble Son, which oozes with sticky acid-drenched tunes that borrow equal parts from Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Let’s check out this live in-studio performance of the album’s opening track – Hushed By Devotion – that the band turned in for Seattle’s KEXP…

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter are in the midst of a West Coast tour that brings them to The Crepe Place in Santa Monica, CA tomorrow night.

During the 1980s Neil Young found himself experimenting with a variety of musical styles with different degree of success. We highly doubt that there are  many people out there who would list Re-ac-tor, Trans or Everybody’s Rockin’ anywhere near the top of their list of favorite Young albums. With 1985′s Old Ways, Young returned to his roots, releasing an album steeped in a “classic country” sound, that saw the singer-songwriter backed by top-notch group of musicians including fiddler Rufus Thibodeaux that he dubbed International Harvesters.

Earlier this year Young released A Treasure, a live album culled from the year he spent touring with the band. Let’s check out this performance of Amber Jean from their appearance on Nashville Now TV…

Neil Young – Amber Jean

It’s been riot-inducing hot for most of the country this past week, with temperatures today topping out at the 100 degrees mark featuring a heat index of a mere 108 here in NYC. While there are plenty of songs about summer heat that would be appropriate to use, I thought that we’d turn to Mr. Bill Withers for one of the coolest songs I’ve heard recently, Harlem, the lead track from from his 1971 debut album Just As I Am.

The tune, which opens with the line “Summer night in Harlem, man it’s a really hot / Well it’s too hot to sleep, and I’m too cold to heat”, just seems like a great way to sum things up. Let’s check out this live performance, that we hope you’ll enjoy with the temperature on your AC turned all the way down and a cold beverage in hand…

Bill Withers – Harlem

Much like how Desmond Hume was Daniel Faraday’s constant, the same could be said about Bonnaroo and Widespread Panic. The Southern jam- titans have a long history with the fest, serving as its inaugural headliner back in 2002, and repeating as the anchor in ’03, ’05, ’07 and ’08. So when it came to celebrating Bonnaroo’s tenth anniversary, no one was surprised to see Panic’s name once again appear at the top of the lineup.

Let’s check out this twelve-plus minute take on Red Hot Mama from their marathon fest closing set on Sunday night, that featured both Bruce Hornsby on keyboard and the Megablasters horns…

Widespread Panic – Red Hot Mamma

After a brutal winter of blizzards and mounds of snow, and what has turned out to be quite the rainy spring, we’ve finally reached the official kick off summer as Memorial Day weekend is here. With thoughts of warm days, bbqs and drinking your favorite frosty beverage outside, who better to turn to then the unofficial band of the season – the Beach Boys. Let’s check out this live version of arguably their signature song, Good Vibrations…

Beach Boys – Good Vibrations

It’s Friday and it’s time to get funky. To get your weekend off to the right start we’re turning to retro-soul and R&B singer Raphael Saadiq, who will release his fifth studio album, Stone Rollin’, on May 10. Earlier this week, Saadiq stopped by the Tonight Show to perform the album’s title track, which is equal parts Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder and James Brown. If this doesn’t get you moving, we’ve failed you…

Raphael Saadiq – Stone Rollin’

This year’s batch of live concert DVD releases was more about quality than quantity. While there weren’t dozens of releases from the bands we love like last year, the DVDs that did come out make up for the lack of numbers. For this week’s B List, I continue a long-standing tradition of detailing my favorite concert DVDs of the year. I’ve included a taste of these releases, except the Avett’s DVD, so you can get a feel for these outstanding videos.

10. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – London Calling

If 2009 was indeed the last year for the E Street Band, what a year it was. One of the highlights of ’09 for The Boss and his long-time backing band was a headlining set at London’s Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park. London Calling contains 26 tracks from throughout Springsteen’s career as well as a few cool bonuses such as a memorizing version of The River from Glastonbury. As you’ve probably inferred from the title,  the DVD contains a scorching cover of London Calling by The Clash that starts this release out right.

READ ON for my Top Nine Concert DVDs of 2010…

With their foray into the world of rock operas now past them, literary-folk-prog act The Decemberists will return to a simpler sound with their next studio effort – The King Is Dead. The album, due out early next year, finds the Portland-based act joined by folkie Gillian Welch on seven tracks as well as REM guitarist Peter Buck for three.

Last week, The Decemberists stopped by Conan to perform the album’s first single, Down By The Water, with Welch. READ ON…

Last Thursday, a handful of the HT staff headed to see The Black Crowes as their Say Goodbye To The Bad Guys tour rolled through New York City for a five-night stand at the recently renamed Best Buy Theater in Times Square. The Southern rock and boogie act treated fans to three-plus hours of music that that dug deep into the band’s bag of tricks featuring a folk and country rock-infused acoustic set and a raging, jammed out electric one.

One of the many highlights from the evening was a standout cover of the Velvet Underground’s Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ during their two-song encore. Let’s check out this version from their summer stop at the Fillmore in Detroit, MI…

The Black Crowes – Oh Sweet Nuthin’

The Crowes’ continue their 20th anniversary tour on Wednesday night in Scranton, PA. Once the tour ends – it concludes with a six-night stand at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco – the band will go on an indefinite hiatus.

• Previously on HT: Cover Wars – Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

On Friday night, for the first time since March of 2009, the semi-reclusive – though still prolific - Ryan Adams returned to the stage to perform as part of Judd Apatow’s benefit concert for the non-profit writing and tutoring center 862LA. During his short four-song set the singer-songwriter debuted three new tunes and was joined by his wife Mandy Moore for the Heartbreaker classic cut Oh My Sweet Carolina. Check out this video of the lovebirds rehearsal for the gig…

Ryan Adams w. Mandy Moore – Oh My Sweet Carolina

Yesterday the world lost soul legend Solomon Burke, who died at the age of 70 shortly after arriving at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, where he was scheduled to play a concert. Burke, who was one of the last living of the original soul men, was born in Philadelphia in 1940, and began recording gospel songs at the age of 14, before turning to the world of secular music in the early 1960s when he was signed to Atlantic Records.

During the early ’60s, Burke charted a string of hits including  If You Need Me, Got To Get You Off My Mind, Tonight’s the Night and quite possibly his most well known song Cry To Me – which also charted again the 1980s after appearing on the soundtrack for the movie Dirty Dancing.

While Burke never quite attained the same cross-over pop success as some of his contemporaries, he went through a career renaissance starting in 2002 with the release of his critically acclaimed album Don’t Give Up On Me . The Grammy winning album for Best Contemporary Blues Album fused classic soul with contemporary roots music and featured new songs from the likes of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Brian Wilson and Tom Waits that were specifically written for Burke to record.

Let’s remember the great King Solomon with this live performance of Down In The Valley, which also was recorded by Otis Redding and appears on his seminal 1965 album Otis Blue…

Burke, impressively leaves behind behind 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. R.I.P. King Solomon.

A few weeks back, Conor Oberst & The Felice Brothers teamed up for a California micro-tour leading up to their appearances at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. The shows featured the Felice Brothers pulling double-duty as the opening act, and backing Oberst – who mined his catalog playing a mix of Bright Eyes material and songs from his solo efforts.

Here’s the duo take on Four Winds…

Conor Oberst & The Felice Brothers – Four Winds

The Felice Brothers continue their lengthy fall tour with a show tomorrow night at The Waiting Room in Oberst’s hometown of Omaha, NE.