Category Archives: Warner Bros.

VAN HALEN “Women and Children First”

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VAN HALEN
Women and Children First
(Warner Bros.)
Available on CD, iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, and Spotify

Well, talk about bad planning… I found out halfway through the day that today is Eddie Van Halen’s birthday. Depending on who you ask, he’s either 55 or 57. Doesn’t matter. So, screw it, even though I did DLR’s first solo album yesterday and 1984 two weeks ago, I’ll overview another Van Halen album.

Women and Children First was Van Halen’s third album – and the first I ever bought. I still have the vinyl. Yes, this is the album that had the famous Helmut Newton photo of David Lee Roth chained up against a chain-link fence. The poster was never hung up – and not for any reason other than it was also serving as the inner sleeve for the record itself. I’m not sure why Warner Bros. – or whoever was in charge of their record pressing plant at the time – chose to have the poster double as the inner sleeve. Right now I’m sure some collector is cringing…

Notable note about this album #1: No cover versions to be found. You wouldn’t hear any more covers from VH until Diver Down a few years later – and then almost out of necessity.

Notable note about this album #2: This was the first Van Halen album to feature keyboards – in this case an electric piano played through a Marshall by Eddie on “…And The Cradle Will Rock”. DLR got a little socially conscious on this one, it seems… but it wasn’t the first time for him doing that, at least if you count the “They found a dirty-faced kid in a garbage can” line from “D.O.A.” on Van Halen II.

Notable note about this album #3: A rare Van Halen all-acoustic moment – the only one in the original six-album tenure of Roth-led VH – in “Could This Be Magic?”. Very cool acoustic blues with Roth on rhythm acoustic guitar, Eddie on slide, and Nicolette Larson adding her voice to the ensemble.

The rest is typical VH rockin’ – “Everybody Wants Some” is a VH set list standard now, “Fools” has some cool call-and-response going on in the intro between Eddie’s guitar and Dave’s voice. “Romeo Delight”, which is said to be one of Valerie Bertinelli’s favorite VH songs.

The album isn’t perfect – there’s really only eight new (at the time) songs (“Tora! Tora!”, which kicks off side two, is really a few seconds of backwards tape of the band going a bit avant-garde), and I doubt too many people would recommend it as a first VH album, but it was mine and I became a fan anyway. No regrets here.

DAVID LEE ROTH “Eat ‘Em and Smile”

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DAVID LEE ROTH
Eat ‘Em and Smile
(Warner Bros.)
Available on CD, iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, and Spotify

Two weeks, y’all. Two weeks until the new Van Halen album. I can’t wait. I’ve been mixing a lot of DLR-era VH in my musical diet lately in anticipation, but I didn’t want to write about any more of the albums until their new one came out, and even then that’ll be going up on the mothership that week.

As a minor break in the saturation of DLR-era VH, I threw on Diamond Dave’s first full-length solo album. We all know he did a great EP of covers the previous year, Crazy from the Heat, but that was meant at the time as a side project – a little musical vacation before he went to work on the follow-up to 1984. What was that about the best laid plans…?

To set up the situation behind the release of this album: Roth had suffered an unfortunate split with Van Halen a year before this album was released; while Van Halen regrouped with a new singer (Sammy Hagar, who proceeded to change the dynamic – quite frankly, not for the better in the long run – of the band) and started cranking out slick, almost formulaic albums. Roth pretty much stayed the course, bringing his wit and his distinctive voice into play with the help of musical partners: guitarist Steve Vai, fresh off finishing work on Public Image Ltd.’s Album, and bassist Billy Sheehan, late of Talas and later of Mr. Big, and infamous already amongst musicians as the four-string low-frequency equivalent of Eddie Van Halen.

Eat ‘Em and Smile would succeed commercially and artistically because all Dave had to do was be himself. Van Halen’s first post-Roth album 5150 had come out a few months earlier, and as OK an album it was, it was too slick and too serious. With Vai and Sheehan supporting him, and longtime Van Halen producer Ted Templeman sitting behind the mixing desk, Diamond Dave brought the two things lacking in “Van Hagar” – soul and wit.

Dave being Dave, of course, wasn’t going to bring out ten headbanging tracks, hand them to Warner Bros., and call it a day. The rocking Dave does dominate the proceedings on Eat ‘Em and Smile, but the other sides of Dave – the soulful side (“Ladies Nite in Buffalo!!”), the crooning side (a fine cover of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life”), and the barband buster (another cover, this time of the garage band chestnut “Tobacco Road”) are represented as well. Anyone who enjoyed classic (read: non-Hagar) Van Halen and Crazy from the Heat would, of course, adore this album.

How did Van Halen react? By calling their next album OU812 (a Hagar-spawned, childish/jealous fuck-you to Diamond Dave) and cranking out another formulatic, slick, and pretty much soulless album. Meh. That ended up being the last Van Halen album I bought until A Different Kind of Truth went on preorder a couple of weeks ago. Dave kept on being Dave (even when the public wasn’t paying attention) while Eddie was being driven to drink by Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony.

Eat ‘Em and Smile still holds up. I wish I could say the same for 5150.

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND HIS MAGIC BAND “Trout Mask Replica”

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CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND HIS MAGIC BAND
Trout Mask Replica
(Straight/Reprise)
Available on CD and 180g double vinyl LP

Today would have been the 71st Birthday of Donald van Vliet, a/k/a Captain Beefheart. And yes, perhaps picking Trout Mask Replica is too obvious of a choice to commemorate the good captain’s date of origin. And no, I don’t need to go on and on about the album myself, when you can just as easily seek out the fine 33 1/3 book on the subject. You either know it’s not an easy listen, or you can sit and listen to it like it’s the most normal collection of music on the planet.

However, it’s always going to be a jarring listen at first, no matter how open minded you are, and odds are good that your first impression of this completely fucking out there music will not be its last and you’ll keep returning to it whenever the mood strikes. Perhaps you know how fucking crazy of an album it is after just one listen, and you want to give it another spin, but something is stopping you.

It’s understandable. I’ve been there. And I’ve pinned down why.

Now, I am far from a format nazi – when it comes to the three most accessible formats currently available for music – vinyl, CD, and digital format – I’ll take it in whatever way I can get it. 90 percent of my listening is going to be via digital format since I carry an iPod most everywhere I go.

My first exposure to Trout Mask Replica was via CD. One of my close friends had caught wind of a CD release of the album by Reprise/Warner Bros. before I did, and even went so far as to proudly display the longbox from the CD in his bedroom. I later got my own copy – from Columbia House, of all places! – and started to dig into it, fully appreciating it after a couple of listens, even though it tended to be overwhelming at first.

A few years ago, I started snatching up heavy-vinyl reissues of most of the Captain’s back catalog – primarily his Warner Bros. and Buddha releases (the rest, save for his infamous “commercial” albums, I haven’t seen on reissued vinyl yet, so I’ve dealt with the CDs there). Sitting with the heavy-vinyl edition of Trout Mask made me realize one thing. This is not an album you can easily digest from beginning to end like a CD or an iPod playlist. It’s best heard one side at a time. No, this doesn’t mean you have to go running out an buying a turntable and a vinyl edition of the album, unless you really want to. What I mean is you should program your CD player or do up iPod playlists that replicate each side of the original vinyl.

At the time of this writing, Wikipedia’s entry on Trout Mask Replica gives the track listing as it originally appeared on vinyl – apparently whoever edited the article also realized that the album is best heard one side at a time. In case someone rewrites the album’s track listing there to come off as a single CD rather than a four-sided album, just program your playlists (or your CD player) like this: The first six tracks on the CD are side one. Tracks 7 through 13 are side two. Tracks 14-20 are the third side, and the rest are the final side.

I emphasize how to listen to this because this album should be listened to more than it is talked about… unless you’re a musician (like myself) and want to talk about it with other musicians. Hell, later editions of Beefheart’s Magic Band (particularly the lineup that recorded his last two albums) ­consisted of younger players who actually had the balls to learn how to play the songs off of Trout Mask Replica by ear! Now go listen to it.

Happy Birthday, Don.

VAN HALEN “1984″

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VAN HALEN
1984
(Warner Bros.)
Available on CD, iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, and Spotify

Since Van Halen’s new single came out today, I figured a quick look at the last real Van Halen album (sorry, I am not acknowledging the Sammy Hagar era or “Gary Jabroni” very much, if at all – they lost me after OU812) was in order.

Let’s be real: Listening to this album last night, then “Tattoo” this morning, and thinking back to the “Van Hagar” output, reminded me that there were two key components to the classic Van Halen sound, one of which was sorely missing for a good twenty-year period.

1984 is Van Halen at both their commercial and artistic peak – which is icing on the cake given all of the gold to be found on the first six Van Halen albums.  The group had moved their recording operations into Eddie Van Halen’s newly-built recording studio 5150 and you could already sense the liberation they were feeling compared to their previous output.

Everybody reading this knows “Jump”, “Panama”, and “Hot for Teacher”, so no need to discuss those songs any further. You know they’re diamonds, I know they’re diamonds, so let’s cut to the chase and deal with the rest of the album.

“1984″, the opening title track – all Eddie on synthesiser, sounding as majestic as John Entwistle’s overdubbed horn parts on most of the Who’s albums. I can’t imagine the album starting with anything other than this – it’s a perfect opener.

“Top Jimmy”, which resonated with me a little more than most people because I knew exactly who David Lee Roth was singing about from day one – the lead singer of the legendary Los Angeles punk-blues band Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs. I had seen Top Jimmy and his band play several times on the late night cable program New Wave Theatre and wished I had been able to obtain whatever recorded output they had – but alas, even though they did one album that I know I have, all I have is memories of those TV appearances and this tribute. (And if recent recollections from Henry Rollins and Joey Shithead Keithley have been any indication, Diamond Dave was already more than interested in what was going on in the punk rock underground at the time.)

“Drop Dead Legs” – said to have originated from an idea Eddie had sung or played into a tape recorder in a hotel room closet while then-wife Valerie Bertinelli was sleeping – is a typical VH rocker with shades of both ZZ and Zep that would have just as easily fit anywhere else in the Van Halen back catalog at the time. Not to say that the boys were on autopilot. only that they had their basic style downpat and could get tracks like this down without a sweat.

“I’ll Wait” – a minor hit compared to the “Jump”/”Panama”/”Hot for Teacher” troika – does in retrospect point towards a ballad style that Eddie Van Halen would undertake as a composer early in the Van Hagar era. Unlike the Sammy Hager-spawned cheese of tracks like “Love Walks In” and “Dreams”, Dave’s lyrics and vocals here reek of sincerity and poetry, rather than Sammy’s half-assed greeting card doggerel.

“Girl Gone Bad” is something most band would kill for as far as song quality goes. Every time I listen to it, I lose track of how many different sections of music there are in it. This isn’t just verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge stuff.

“House of Pain” – first originated publicly as the b-side of the “Jump” single – is again typical of Van Halen’s deep cuts and could have fit anywhere on their early albums – probably because the song itself originated back in the band’s salad days.

This album is what I’ll be almost invariably comparing A Different Kind of Truth to when it comes out next month. If “Tattoo” is already any indication, Dave, Eddie, and the rest of the gang may already be on the right track.