Best Van Halen Album

if you change your guitar's low E string, you know it's not ready for prime time until you can play the chorus of Panama and stay in tune

Yeah, we're runnin' a little bit hot tonight.

I can barely see the thread from the heat comin' off of it.

Ah, you place your mouse pointer between the 'g' and 'P', ease the seat back.

She's flag postin'. I'm flag postin'.

listening to 1984 it's such an odd blockbuster pop metal album....opens with a 1:30 Vangelis song then there's not a guitar til about halfway thru "Jump"...

obv it's got hits but there's also so many "prog in miniature" moments, little odd breakdowns or places where Eddie plays fancy 9th chords or some shit, weird touches that don't have to be there and make the song less commercial if anything but Eddie makes it work....or just having a hit with the ominous synths of "I'll Wait" they could really do it all

also like he's so much more fluid than every other pop metal guitar hero, he sounds like liquid mercury

also Alex and Ted Templeman never went for the big "Phil Collins" gated snare and huge cannon toms thing so the recording actually sounds a lot less dated than a lot of 80s stuff

like first 30 seconds of Top Jimmy is a good example, the weird little harmonic pattern is gorgeous but what other band of their era would start a song like that (that wasn't at least cod prog like Triumph or something?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8lFZdGpYhQ

Hard to believe 5150 is the followup - talk about two records light years apart on so many levels.

3,166 levels to be exact.

xpost I'm not sure there was enough sonic room for a big, booming gated snare. I think it was Jimmy Page who opined that you can either mix up the drums or mix up the guitar, but you can't do both. LZ obvious mixes the drums high, Phil Collins/Genesis was sort of radical for pushing the drums super high in the mix, but those 80s Genesis songs have virtually no guitar, let alone big guitars. VH goes for the guitar, which is also taking up a ton of sonic real estate. A big poosh-y snare in VH would detract from the guitar.

The toms and cymbals of "I'll Wait" comes as close to Collins, i suppose, but some fine trap-work and production on that track, fer sure.

These days, i go back to Women and Children First, moreso than any other of their albums.

xpost And not a coincidence, the guitar plays second fiddle on that track, at least until the solo.

Listening to the Gary Cherone album Balance right now (don't judge me motherfucker)

but anyway, like I swear to god his Hagar impersonation is uncanny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYMcSHzHqxA