John McCain's Friday rally announcing that Sarah Palin would be his running mate on the Republican Presidential ticket* was capped by a rousing play of Van Halen's "Right Now," a song selection that put Van Halen's management in a snit. "Permission was not sought or granted nor would it have been given," an unidentified person in the Van Halen camp told TMZ. But tequila maven and longtime GOP supporter Sammy Hagar—who sang the lyrics that the McCain/Palin campaign was so inspired by—begs to disagree! He thinks "Right Now" is a song for everyone, no matter what the jerks who are now touring under the Van Halen banner might think.
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Friday Morning Giggles
Someone took David Lee Roth's isolated vocal track from "Running With The Devil" and, um, ran with it in a pretty funny way. [YouTube via John Mayer]
On the left: The inexplicable winner of last night's episode of Project Runway, which I found really ill-fitting and not as worthy of last night's title as Kenley's gorgeous design. On the right: Eddie Van Halen's "Frankenstein" guitar, which I didn't realize was the designer's unconscious inspiration for the frock until MTV's blog pointed out that fact. (NB: That doesn't make me like it much more.) [MTV Newsroom / Dress pic via Jezebel]
The guy who got pulled over while driving under the influence of nuts and tried to explain away his crimes by waving around his scarves claiming he was David Lee Roth has been unmasked: His name's David Kuntz, and he's a musician who's been tooling around Ontario for a number of years. According to the Globe & Mail, Kuntz celebrated slipping through the fingers of the law last month by "[breezing] into a Brantford bar with a few women in hospital scrubs on his arm.... between sips of orange juice mixed with ginger ale and cranberry juice, [he] climbed onstage with a local band and belted out a few bars of 'Ice Cream Man,' an early Van Halen tune." Sounds like the opening to the "Just A Gigolo" video, no? But as it turns out, people do know about the part Kuntz has been playing for years.
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Despite Eddie's rehab stint turning a summer tour into a fall tour, despite Eddie's health (and rumors of a feud with the band) causing postponements later in the tour, and despite replacing their bassist of more than 25 years with Eddie's frikkin' child (who looks more like the child of Valerie Bertinelli and Danny Partridge), the recent Van Halen reunion tour made a whopping $93 million plus, easily making it the top grossing tour in the band's history. All that's currently planned for the future is a live DVD and a spot on Guitar Hero World Tour, but I'd be surprised if Dave and Eddie won't at least try to work up some new material, only to split again when Dave changes Eddie's song "The Dream Of Love" to "Wolfie and The Hand Jive."
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Chickenfoot is go! The supergroup, led by Sammy Hagar, will also bring together fellow former Van Haleneer Michael Anthony, wank wizard Joe Satriani, and Red Hot Chili Pepper Chad Smith for an album, and Hagar could not be more pumped. "When people hear the music, it's Led Zeppelin. It's as good as that. I know that's a mighty bold statement...We could rival Zep." Dude, I love Led Zeppelin! This is great news! I was totally telling someone the other day that we needed a new Led Zeppelin, and here comes Sammy Hagar with a bottle of tequila, saying that he's got one. I haven't been this stoked since Walking To Clarksdale.
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One of the hardest things to do as a human being is to parse the emotional from the rational part of your brain, especially when it comes to music. No matter how good a band is, if they break up and reform with a different lineup, it is almost quantitatively impossible to prefer the latter incarnation. Van Halen could be the archetypal case, but somehow, Andrew Unterberger breaks down the differences between Van Halen and Van Hagar with a sober clarity often tough to find when dealing with the perverse world of Sammy Hagar, a land in which no one will ever be allowed to drive a mere 55 miles per hour. [Intensities in Ten Suburbs]
Initially postponing four gigs last week, the reunited, DLR-powered Van Halen has now decided to put their Google-bait tour on hold until at least the April 19 show in Vegas; turns out the mysteriously illin' Eddie still needs a little more time under the watchful eye of a physician/team of physicians/witch doctor/barber with leeches. "According to organizers, Van Halen, who has battled cancer and substance abuse, 'is currently under doctors' care' and will 'continue medical tests to define a course of treatment," sez Billboard. "No further details were made available." Screwed attendees and Wolfgang fans should hang onto their tix until rescheduled dates are announced; 17 shows are currently on hold thanks to Eddie coming down with the vapors/boogie woogie flu/consumption, from tonight's Charlottesville gig through the band's Baltimore stop on April 15. [Billboard/Photo: AP]
To cap off Van Halen's Lost Weekday Of Cancellation-Related Speculation, Live Nation has issued a statement saying that four shows, including the band's show tonight in Dallas, have been postponed because of an unspecified medical condition afflicting guitarist Eddie Van Halen. The statement goes on to say: "According to Eddie Van Halen's physician, he is undergoing a battery of comprehensive medical tests to determine a defined diagnosis and recommended medical procedures." In addition to tonight's show being postponed until April 24, Wednesday's show in Cincinnati has been moved to April 22, Friday's show in Raleigh has been moved to April 13, and the band's March 9 show in Baltimore has been rescheduled to April 15. [MTV via Blabbermouth / dates via Pollstar / Photo: AP]
Van Halen concert promoter Live Nation is claiming that the band's show scheduled for the American Airlines Center in Dallas tonight will be tentatively made up on April 24, a few days after the tour is currently scheduled to end, and that no official reason for tonight's postponement has yet been given. Personally, I can't wait until we go through this whole rigamarole again on Wednesday, if only because refreshing the message boards has certainly livened up the day. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
From the slow-as-molasses site for the American Airlines Center, where tonight's Van Halen show was supposed to take place: "The Van Halen concert scheduled for tonight has been postponed. An official press release announcing the rescheduled date will be forthcoming as soon as possible." Ticketmaster's site is also saying that "tickets are not currently available online," but the site is still selling tickets for Wednesday night's VH show in Cincinnati, which will no doubt fuel even more speculation from the folks on the Van Halen fan boards. Over/under on the "the tour's just been cancelled outright" announcement: Three days? Maybe? [Official site / Full coverage / Photo: AP]
Despite the tour-cancellation rumors that have run rampant since last night, tonight's Van Halen concert at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas is "still scheduled," according to the nice woman there who I just spoke to via phone. (And Ticketmaster is still selling tickets the the show, too—there were $149.50 seats available not 15 minutes ago.) She did note, however, that any changes to that plan would be announced via the venue's official site, which is, as you may not be surprised to hear, currently getting completely slammed with traffic to the point where it's nigh unusable. Between this and the Nine Inch Nails thing, productivity at cubicle-monkey jobs across America must be reaching quite the low point today. [Photo: AP]
The Van Halen reunion tour—recently plagued by postponements that were reportedly the result of Eddie Van Halen being very unhappy with his ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli's tell-all biography—has reportedly been canceled, or at least postponed indefinitely. The band was scheduled to play a show at the American Airlines Center in Dallas tomorrow night; the venue's Web site is proceeding as normal, but MelodicRock.com is corroborating the story originally reported by TMZ, saying that there will be no further live shows at this time, that some dates may be rescheduled—and that the cancellations aren't David Lee Roth's fault. [TMZ / Photo: AP]
Van Halen has canceled two shows—one in Charlottesville, Va., and another in Decatur, Ga.—in the past week, and that fact is sending members of the fan site VHLinks.com into speculation overdrive. Initially thought to be the result of last week's winter squalls on the east coast, some are now suggesting that the shows are being axed because interband tensions that many onlookers thought would have surfaced a year ago are finally coming to the forefront. One report has members of Van Halen—including Wolfgang!—getting into a scrap at a Charlottesville bar the night before the canceled Charlottesville show, while another claims that the cancellations are the result of a "shitstorm" in Van Halen's camp because of the new book by Eddie Van Halen's ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli, in which she lets fly numerous lurid details about the couple's infidelities and other problems. The next Van Halen show is schedule for March 3, and it's still on... for now. After the jump, a clip of la recent show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that ended with Eddie flinging his guitar to the floor and knocking over a couple of amps, nearly braining David Lee Roth. Nervous energy or misdirected ex-wife anger?
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Van Halen kicked off its "we're back with Dave" tour in Charlotte, N.C., last night, and from most reports, things seemed to gel onstage at the Bobcats Arena (even if David Lee Roth's hat seemed to have lost its "In this style 10/6" slip of paper sometime during the show):
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Idolator
