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.
Someone took David Lee Roth’s isolated vocal track from “Running With The Devil” and, um, ran with it in a pretty funny way. More »
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. More »
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.
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.”
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.
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. More »
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… More »
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. More »
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. More »
