VH1- the pros & cons of their Van Halen show...

[Badabing]

It is a fuckin miracle VH-1 even acknowledged the mighty Halen, lemme start by just saying that. VH-1 is a channel who devoted most of it's time to kissing Def leppard's ass?!?!?

For starters, the show was called "The Sam & Dave Show- Life After Van Halen". Right there you know the coverage of VH's history would be brief, and it was. Freakin' Aerosmith gets a 2 hour show and their history is treated like the bible, but then again, they are Sony's puppets now so who knows.
Anyways, here is the good and bad of the show..

Good- Spoke of VH's discovery by Gene Simmons, how their debut album sold 10 million and how all the Dave albums went multi-platinum.

Bad- Spoke of VH's discovery kinda like a fluke, never mentioning the fact that VH was THE top local band in LA at the time. Also, never mentioned their debut went to no. 19 on the chart, that it is a landmark album, one of the greatest debuts ever, and that all other Dave era albums cracked the top 10.

Good- mentioned VH made a powerful impact on music and had people like Dave Mustaine, Henry Rollins and others give VH props.

Bad- never mentioned that VH created an original, huge rock sound that many others took from. A sound that served as a blueprint for many bands. Hell, after listening to VH-1's pet band Def Leppard and watching their lead singer doing flying splits off the drum riser while wearing a bandana tied around his neck, it's no wonder I often refered to Leppard as Europe's VH!!

Good- mentioned Sam took over and VH continued on with 4 no. 1 albums.

Bad- said VH was succesful through the 80's and early 90's. Actually, VH was highly succesfull from their debut in 78' till 1995-96, when they had 2 no. 1 multi-platinum albums. They also never mentioned all Sammy albums went multi-platinum or the fact that from the Dave to Sammy era, VH had 12 consecutive multi-platinum albums!
No mention of VH selling like 65 million albums either.

They also mentioned something about VH having had lots of platinum albums and a sea of aquanet?? I never recall VH looking like Motley or Poison?? Freddy Mercury, Steven Tyler and even Ozzy had glammy or colorful moments, why is it VH gets branded as having had a ton of aquanet?? Ridiculous.. Also, I notice in other specials with bands like Aerosmith and Def Leppard they interview new artists in an attempt to show how those bands still touch people today. They didnt do that with Van Halen. Truly pathetic considering in most magazines I read these days newbies like Daron Malakian(System of a Down) and Mark Tremonti(Creed) are always giving VH props and talk about how they grew up on VH!
Mike from Incubus, Ramon from Puya, Stephen from The Deftones and Mike from Staind have ALL said one of the main reasons they got into rock music and into guitar because of Van Halen! Jack Black of Tenacious D will almost go ballistic on you if you dont acknowlegde the genius of VH!
Same thing with the guys in the band Fuel. Even Head from Korn listed Eddie in his personal Top 5 All-Time Guitarist list!! Oh, but they couldnt find any new guys to talk about VH? yea right...
Funny how they got Daron from System of a Down to talk about Leppard but not VH huh?

The Van Halen story is amazing and I pray someday someone will tell it RIGHT... These VH-1 idiots didnt even mention the brown m&m's!! jeesh..

[Sean]

I could be wrong here but I would bet that VH1 would've been more than happy to devote more time to the Mighty Van Halen if the Mighty Van Halen Brothers would come out of the bat cave long enough to grant an interview. Without 40% of the band present, the show is likely to be shorter. And, when you think about it, Mikey didn't say anything on it so all you really had was Sam and Dave equating to 40% of the band. 1 hour, 2 former singers....better than nothing my friend.

[Zahzoo]

There's a very simple explaination for the brief coverage of VH in the recent VH1 Sam and Dave extravaganza... Van Halen has not given the nod to do a Behind the Music series...

Sam & Dave got great coverage from that little gem... What was...What was lost... What will probably never be... 15 minutes of What is... YAWN... Flip the channel... Chapter closed. Time to move on!!

[hellohawk]

I think it's pretty impressive they put together a piece that long without any new interviews from the band in 4 years.

[Eddymon]

Maybe it was VH1's way of trying to coherse the Brothers into doing a BTM.
Or are they afraid that things that they said about both singers in the past will come back to haunt them as being not true?

Something HAS to give soon, why would both MTV2 And VH1 have specials about 2 men that fronted a hybernating band and alot of people have written off already? Seems strange that they would put out the time for them if something wasn't going to happen.