Van Halen Live - 1995

I stumbled on this beauty via YouTube... what a great show! A full concert from Van Halen in Florida in 1995. Also the video is so old - there's no cellphones in the air, blocking the view! Happy Monday and welcome back to work, Americans. I'm dreading the day but you gotta #KeepGrinding.

Van Halen - OU812

Comments

[Steverox]

Decent performance from the Balance tour, though I don't love the setlist - at all. Way too much from the new album, and obviously almost nothing from the Dave era. Also a bit of a basic stage setup for VH, it was much better for the 5150, OU812 and F.U.C.K tours (I saw all of them).

I actually also saw this same show in Salt Lake City, and it was (no joke) one of the absolute worst concerts I have seen in my entire life. By that time in the tour, Eddie was so tuned out (drugs/alcohol/personal life, whatever) that his playing was just crap. Every song it took at least until the chorus to even figure out what they were playing. And his wonderful guitar solo we all love was just plain noise with zero melody.

Now I will say the Delta Center as it was called back then was a terrible venue for concerts, and the sound was poor. Maybe that's improved by now? We were on the floor so maybe the mix was especially bad there. But I have seen some good shows there as well, so who knows.

Anyway, it's not a knock on Eddie in general as he was awesome on some of those other tours and shows I've seen, and clearly is a master on the guitar and wrote some killer tunes that I love, but on this tour - at the venue where I saw them - it was really bad. Of course, this was shortly before the break-up with Sammie.

[Metalboy!]

Great perspective, Steverox ... I never saw Van Hagar but I did see Van Halen pint blank twice, both times at Capital Centre in D.C. (Largo, Maryland), the first in 1978, a couple of months after the first album was released and the second, off Fair Warning, in the Summer of 1981, just shortly after that album’s release.

As I’ve described the ‘78 show here before, VH blew Ted Nugent off the stage before he even set foot on it, as they opened for him that fateful night, literally leaving him flapping in the breeze, as he swung back and forth on a rope swing in his loin cloth during “Wango Tango” or some sh*t after VH effectively tore the roof off the joint.

I don’t recall who opened for them in 1981, but the show was nearly just as dazzling as the first. That ‘78 show was a tad better simply because there were no “Jump” keyboards which were still so prominently featured as late as ‘81. Still, as you point out, Steverox, about some of the shows you caught, Eddie just absolutely shredded everything in his path at those two shows I saw, especially poor ol’ Terrible Ted in ‘78.

[Bkallday]

EVH threw in the towel long long ago. Sad imho.

[Bob]

Saw Vh with dave in '84 with Autograph as the opening band, then again with Sammy in '86 with BTO as the opening band. I don't know about other years, but in '84, EVH was throwing a little bluesy stuff into his solo; doing a short takeoff on cream's version of "Sitting On Top of the World." Pretty cool to hear him play stuff like that. Probably a nod to the blues thing he played on the Star Fleet Project album he did with brian may a year earlier.