Whereas Holly was less than exuberant when I asked her about going to the Bon Jovi concert a couple of weeks ago, she was very in on going to last Thursday’s Van Halen Reunion concert at the American Airlines Center. She did suggest that her brother fly down from Kansas City and go with me, but he couldn’t make it on such short notice.
The show was opened by Ryan Shaw, who has a good voice but didn’t seem to appeal to the Van Halen crowd–late arriving though it was.
Funny story about my first exposure to Van Halen. I won’t say too much about my upbringing, but as of the summer of 1984, I’m not sure I even recognized the name Van Halen much less knew any of their songs. But my church, concerned about the impact of Rock & Roll, e.g., angels smoking cigarettes on album covers, held lengthy meetings attempting to dissuade us from listening. In these meetings, we listened to the music–exposing yours truly to much of it for the first time–and talked about its evils. This did not have the desired effect on me. And the rest, as they say, is history.
On to the concert: The first song, You Really Got Me, concerned me. David Lee Roth sang only about half the words, there was at least one little break mid-song, and it was cut short. At that pace, the concert would have lasted about 52 minutes. Thereafter, the show got much, much better. Roth was great in the first encore especially Ice Cream Man. Eddie, Alex, and Roth were all great.
The setlist:
- You Really Got Me
- I’m the One
- Runnin’ With the Devil
- Romeo Delight
- Somebody Get Me a Doctor
- Beautiful Girls
- Dance the Night Away
- Atomic Punk
- Everybody Wants Some
- So This Is Love?
- Mean Street
- Pretty Woman
- Drum Solo
- Unchained
- I’ll Wait
- And the Cradle Will Rock
- Hot for Teacher
- Little Dreamer
- Little Guitars
- Jamie’s Cryin’
First Encore
- Ice Cream Man
- Panama
- Guitar Solo
- Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
Second Encore
- 1984
- Jump
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