November 17th, 2007
From: http://thephoenix.com/
Van Halen, TD Banknorth Garden, October 30, 2007
By JAMES PARKER
How much red-blooded American entertainment can one town take? Mere hours
after the Red Sox had completed their victory cavalcade a week ago
Tuesday, a reunited Van Halen took the stage at the TD Banknorth Garden
and saturated the pleasure centers all over again. The eternally warring
factions of Roth and Van Halen have been reconciled, and Diamond Dave
stands once more beside Eddie, making grotesque pop-eyed faces of wonder
and naive delight as the guitar god spews his miracles. Eddie in turn does
his drunk-boy grin and rushes around with his shirt off. On bass, where
the smiling Michael Anthony once stood, is Eddie's son Wolfgang -- a round
and rosy-faced teenager in a black hooded sweatshirt. Somehow he is not at
all out of place.
The incredible façade of cheeseball camaraderie projected by Eddie and
Dave might lead the amateur psychologist to surmise that they continue to
detest each other. But who cares about that? Eddie's technique still
sounds as if it had been scraped off the back of a passing asteroid, and
Diamond Dave in the autumn of his renown is really something else. The
physical limitations that age has placed on his performance (now 53, he
can no longer make those kamikaze leaps from the drum riser) have had an
alarmingly concentrating effect on his personality: he leers and preens
and savagely grins, wizened and tricksterish under his top hat. The bawdy
talk in "Everybody Wants Some" ("No, no, no, no, don't take 'em off! Leave
'em on . . . " etc.) was word for word as you hear it in the recorded
version, but there was an impressive piece of freshly minted doggerel
about the home team: "I love every base those motherfuckers steal. . . .
Everybody knows New England is for REAL!" Nice one, Dave
Slideshow: Van Halen at TD Banknorth Garden, October 30, 2007
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