Episode 17 - Van Halen Discussion

For anyone living under a rock or not named Sammy Hagar, the hype surrounding the recently-released single and forthcoming album from Van Halen has sparked loads of excitement and speculation whether the new tunes will cause us to break out our Rubik’s Cube and ponder the days of bellbottoms through Wall Street excess. The first album released by a David Lee Roth-fronted Van Halen since 1984; ‘A Different Kind of Truth’ promises to illicit reactions of all kinds on February 7^th when it’s released. The newly released single, ‘Tattoo’ has drawn mixed reviews as well. 

We are without co-host Aaron Camaro this week, as he’s on assignment with one of his other ventures. Never fear though, we brought in guest commentator Mitch Lafon from Bravewords.com this week.

Before we delve into Van Halen, we have a few news items to discuss in the intro to the show. By the way, if you want to skip straight to the Van Halen discussion, it starts just after the 5 minute mark though I’d rather you listen to me prattle on about other stuff for a few minutes.

We’ve brought on a few new writers to the Decibel Geek website. Please welcome J Alexander, JB, and Andrew to the team! We’ve had some amazing articles and interviews posted in the past week since these folks came on board and I’d like to tip my hat to them. JB’s first articles will be coming very soon. J Alexander wrote a fantastic article about Why Boy Bands Aren’t So Bad (trust us, it’s not what you think) and Andrew Jacobs has been churning out tons of great interviews for us including Larry Harris (former Casablanca Records), Blare N. Bitch (Betty Blowtorch), and Patrice Zappa-Porter (sister of Frank Zappa). Many new articles and interviews are planned in the future for the show and the site as well as a full revamp of the site itself that will
make it much more user-friendly and fun to visit so stay tuned!

Chris  and Mitch first share their thoughts on Van Halen’s appearance at a cramped Café Wha? in New York as well as the then-sample of ‘Tattoo’ that was floating around. They also discuss the different lineups and albums released by Van Halen from the 1977 debut all the way to today. During the discussion, you’ll hear music from each album, some tracks you may have never heard before, and some entertaining (we hope) commercials and liners. There’s tons to discuss and we cram it all into an hour. Van Halen has seriously passionate fans and we are sure that some of our opinions will bring out some pitchforks and cause some bewildered looks but remember, it’s just our opinions. Feel free to use the comment section on the site or facebook or twitter or any of the other outlets we use to tell us how wrong we are. We like the attention.

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