Van Halen on the I-Pod

[HissingCobra]

Hey everyone, I don't start too many threads here as I just mainly lurk and post here and there. Anyway, I decided to start this one because it's about Van Halen's evolution as a band.

Yesterday, I uploaded EVERY Van Halen studio song (except the ones on "3") onto my I-Pod (including Zero - the Gene Simmons Demo songs). Today at work, I had 6 hours of Van Halen playing in my I-Pod Shuffle. I set it to shuffle so that I could here Dave and Sammy songs intertwined. This is what I came up with.

David Era:

(Plusses) - Charisma to the max with Dave's little schtick talk going on in between verses. CRAZY f-n guitar and a great guitar sound by Eddie. With that kind of ability, he was destined for fame. Also, the band had an overall hardcore sound that let you know that something special was happening. They also had "the look" of a rising band with the outfits, crazily painted guitar, etc...etc...etc...

(Minuses) - Overall sound quality of the rest of the band was lacking as there isn't a great bass or drum sound. Lyrics were kind of lacking, as was song structure.

Overall, this era kicks you in the balls and makes you want to pick up a guitar. During this era you can clearly see that there was a lot of "winging" going on, mainly due to youth. But it kept the band loose and allowed them to just say "fuck it". They really put it together on the 1984 album.

Sammy Era:

(Plusses) - Great vocal sound. Lyrics are much better and songs begin to make more sense. Overall sound of the band improves dramatically. There's now bass! Song structure also improves and a more mature band is working hard and showing a much deeper side. You can clearly see that they're now true professionals who know which direction the band should be moving in. Songs become a little bit longer.

(Minuses) - Spontanety and raw sound is gone to a certain extent and some of the power is lost. Albums take too long to make.

Overall, I heard things in the headphones that I don't normally hear on the car stereo or home stereo, especially when they're cranked up. Each member of the band brought something to the table and they made it work.

What I can say is this, both eras have their positives and negatives. They both had bad songs, good songs and AWESOME songs, and they both produced MILLIONS of fans WORLDWIDE.

Van Halen, you've done us proud. You deserve to be in the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame. The legacy that is Van Halen will live on in history, even if you never make another record. I can truly say that I'm a FAN!

[extreme red roth]

Music is in the ear of the beholder. I find your comments interesting though. I agree with some of it, and disagree with some of it.

I always thought Mikey's bass and Al's drums were mixed wrong on 5150 and 0u812, and you could barely even tell a bass was being played.

I always thought Al's drums were monstrous throughout VH's history. Listen to Van Halen II...outta love...or Women and Children first...some awesome sounding and playing of the drums.

How about the bass on Fair Warning? Provided it's Mike, that's probably some of his best work, no?

[extreme red roth]

O, and lyrically, I think you're going to lose that arguement as well. Dave was much more of a poet than Sam ever was. Dave has double meanings and such, Sam was always right in your face with what he was singing about. I've always leaned a little towards Sam, because 5150 was my first album, but let's give Dave some props...for the most part his lyrics are 10 x better than anything Sam has ever written.

[smithjc]

I don't really get into an in-depth critique of the songs but LL managed to put together a very nice mix of VH tuneage in the Scum Halen Marathons.

Good enough for me.

[rockyvanheineken]

I have mostly Dave with a little Hagar and Cherone.

[Nostalgia Act]

This is not gonna go well with the plus and minuses

[vistadelrey]

nice one

[Van Squalen]

Music is in the ear of the beholder. I find your comments interesting though. I agree with some of it, and disagree with some of it.

I always thought Mikey's bass and Al's drums were mixed wrong on 5150 and 0u812, and you could barely even tell a bass was being played.

I always thought Al's drums were monstrous throughout VH's history. Listen to Van Halen II...outta love...or Women and Children first...some awesome sounding and playing of the drums.

How about the bass on Fair Warning? Provided it's Mike, that's probably some of his best work, no?

Dude. It's Mike.

The electric 5150 percussion, the deep end on OU812, and the general mix and tone on III were far and away Van Halen's biggest production errors. 'Course, III goes without saying.

[smithjc]

It's gotta be Mikey.

[AT]

Hey, HissingCobra...

Do you have the six remastered Dave-era VH CDs? When VH was making those albums they were mastered for LP and of course sounded great on that format. When CDs were introduced, for all the hype about the high audio quality, record companies didn't remaster anything--just took the original masters and dumped them down to disc. When the Best Of CD came out in '96, I was floored at how great the old songs sounded. And Chris Bellman, the guy who remastered the songs for Best Of, did all the Dave-era remasters in 2000. They sound great!

I wish they'd remastered 5150 and OU812 at the same time, as those albums on CD still sound flat.

[Zahzoo]

It's things like this that remind me that the digial age is killing musical tone. It's a crime in my opinion!!

I don't care what advances are claimed... my ears can tell the difference in a heart beat. You will never experience the full range of tone listening to music with a 3/8 inch speaker jammed into your ear. Not gonna get it with $500 studio quality head phones. Not gonna get it with 2 inch sattelite speakers and a 6 inch subwoofer nor the latest Bose sound hummer deluxe.

For especially rock music... you gotta have speakers pushing air. Volumes of air. New technology can approximate it but there's nothing like a driven 12-15 inch woofer, 6 inch midrange and solid horn tweeters working in conjuction with each other.

In simple terms... if your chest cavity ain't resonating and the air in the room getting circulated like an ionic breeze on crank by your bass speakers... you are not getting a rock and roll experience for your listening pleasure.

Sure... old school. But consider this... what was primary recording source for every Van Halen guitar note played? A Shure SM57 angled on a 12 inch Celestian speaker... Mike's bass a 15 inch speaker. If that's your recording source... wouldn't a simular device to reproduce what was captured make logical sense??

My worst nightmare which is not too far fetched... is to walk into a concert venue and gone are the walls speakers and you're handed a $2.00 pair of headphones with a built in RF receiver so you can experience the live sound in a true digital experience... BARF!!!

Do your ears a favor... go buy an old stereo system with real speakers at a yard sale. Pickup a refurbished turntable and the classic 6 pack of CVH on vinyl in decent shape. Set that up in your living room, crank it and Dance the Night Away... You'll never look at a frickin i-Pod the same!!

[G3fan]

I'm glad I'm not you, Zahzoo...with all do respect. But I love my iPod with my Bose headphones...sounds absolutely remarkable. But you're right, the true rock 'n roll experience is supposed to be earthshaking. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment.

[Ashe]

And how is the original poster supposed to do all that at work, Zahzoo? iPods are great for work. I take mine to work all the time with my Bose TriPort headphones. It sounds fucking great. As Eddie would say, "If it sounds good, then it is good." Currently, I have almost 2,000 songs on it. Every note of Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hendrix, Cream and tons more. Switch the iPod to shuffle and I could be listening for days and not hear a song repeated. The convenience factor is off the scale. And if you convert them to MP3 at a higher sampling rate than the default, the quality can rival the CDs. No, I'm not throwing out my collection of music for my iPod. But come on, for work, it rules.

And dude, I highly doubt your going to find decent speakers without shattered cones at a typical yard sale.

[onefootoutthedoor]

Guys, Zahzoo has it right. We've been getting poorer and poorer quality music because of the digital age. Is it more convienient? Of course it is, I think that goes without saying. The point is that if you were to take a recording from someone on vinyl and then listen to the same recording from them on let's say itunes, the difference is quite noticable. There is technology out there currently that enables you to copy your records to a portable device that preserves that original sound. One of the biggest reasons we have the popularity of the mp3 format is because of the limitations of downloading files over dial up and broadband. As the broadband technology is readily available to more and more people and its technology improves, you will start to see a return to a higher quality form of music recordings.

[jgdrag]

MP3s SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FLAC RULES