Fun Machine Rescued by Van Halen

It's about freakin' time.

Note to future employers: skip this one.

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: job offers kinda suck.

Nah, I’m kidding all you working folk out there – they’re pretty swell provided you don’t spend every waking hour tinkering with your low-traffic website. But 24 or so hours ago, my second to last semester of college (ever) looked something like this:

Monday: three-hour class, blog

Tuesday: three-hour class, blog

Wednesday: three-hour class, blog

Thursday: Blog, drink, blog more, prepare to drink more, drink more, go dancing

Friday: Blog

Now it looks highly likely that a very big portion of awesomeness will be sucked Jerry-Jones-lipo-style from my once-incendiary schedule. Will working for my college have its benefits? Sure: mad bank to spend on the ladies and the intangible good vibes that only radiate from doing something so ridiculously productive that you don’t really have time to do it.

Even so, I’m a little bummed as of 11:35 on Monday night (Tuesday afternoon update: un-bummed!).

Thought this extended run of youthful dalliance (via “chillin’”) might last forever, or at least till September. Instead, I might be forced to wear regularly-fitting pants for the first time since I got cool.

I believe I posted something to the effect of “The fun machine took a sh*t and died” on Facebook just an hour ago, except without the little asterisk that SC so unwaveringly uses out of respect to our younger readers and my grandma. And to make matters worse, this is before I knew the Mariners fired Don Wakamatsu, thus preempting my “Domo Arigato, Mr. Wakamatsu” post and further screwing my once impeccably laid plans.

****.

Then I saw Van Halen trending on Yahoo! News… to which my first reaction was, “Eddie has cancer.” But that was just my bummedness getting the best of me. I really thought that Sammy Hagar had gotten eaten by a shark (please God), or Diamond Dave had recorded another bluegrass album, the latter of which didn’t make me feel any better.

Wrong again. So I go to Billboard and low and behold…

DAMN!

Bottom line: I think I read somewhere that Van Halen – the Van Halen, the one with golden god David Lee Roth – is in the studio recording an album in advance of their 2011 tour. This is good news for a number of reasons:

1) The band’s never not recorded an excellent album with its mullet-toting front-man – the flamboyant first one, not the guy you wish would “just get hit by a fire truck already” second one.

2) Just thinking about any of the first six albums makes me feel all warm and tingly inside (and like destroying a hotel room).

3) I’d totally go see VH on tour next year, what with all this extra coin I could have by then.

4) Eddie won’t live forever. He’s already looking a cross between Mick Jagger’s cadaver and Sofia Loren.

5) Life is just more fun with Van Halen.

So last time we saw the boys together (Eddie, Alex, Dave, and Eddie’s son Wolfgang), they were raking in crazy cash on a 2007/2008 reunion tour – $93 million, by far the highest grossing VH tour ever.

Ed may or may not have gotten a little tipsy one night and threatened to beat up his son, but that’s happened to all of us. And as far as I know, this is water under the bridge – our favorite guitar virtuoso supposedly pulled a reverse-Lohan, exiting rehab 100 percent clean and sober.

Kudos, Edward.

Live Nation expects the band to singlehandedly rescue the entire touring industry next year, and judging by the reception of the previous escapade, I’d venture this is well within Van Halen’s mighty reach.

The album, of course, is the more precarious element of the story. Publisher Warner/Chappell recently stated in a press release to commemorate its re-upped recording deal that the band is actually in the studio recording with Dave. Like right now. You’re eating lunch. Van Halen’s making music. Exciting, I know.

But if you recall correctly, the band made the same claims back in 2000 and before that in 1996. And then there was the whole VMAs tease job, when the original incarnation took stage, hinted at reunion and promptly proceeded to tear into each other like over-caffeinated kindergartners off camera.

Short-lived, but cool pants, Dave.

Still, I’m hopefully optimistic – feeling like this could be magic, like the cradle will rock, like I’ll hear about it later. Like I could fill several more lines with lazily veiled song references.

Ew. Buzzkill.

Random factoid: Diamond Dave is only four years older than Bono. Plus he has the vertebrae of a spry young lass. More random factoids to come in my introductory playlist to the best of Roth Era Van Halen. Bottoms up, y’all.

__________

Outta Love Again My favorite from II, my favorite period. Teeming with creative, muscular hard-rock riffs. Pay attention to the one beginning 1:07. Or don’t. It’ll hit you like a ton of bricks either way. The solo is something to gawk at, over-analyze, honor with a tribute band.

I’m The One Oddly overlooked jewel from the debut. Used to play this one a lot during those elbow-grease club days on the Sunset Strip. It’s common knowledge that doo-wop harmonies are the butter of rock ‘n roll (i.e. more is always better)…  Eddie, per usual, peppers us with face-melting guitar exploits out of the break.

Unchained Don’t know how this song even exists. That crushing, descending riff baffles me, and the finger-tapped, dive-bombing solo is even more inexplicable… The critics panned Fair Warning upon it’s ’81, proof critics shouldn’t exist… A dark, driving track on a dark, driving album.

Everybody Wants Some!! A song that does everything in its considerable power to justify that second exclamation point… A band at the very height of their party-rocking powers. That it’s on an album called Women and Children First makes it that much cooler. ”Look, I’ll pay you for it. What the fu…”

Drop Dead Legs Proof that the mid-80′s wasn’t completely bereft of good music. Alternately sweet, sexy – and with that “Back In Black”-nicking riff and massive chorus – anthemically stomping.

Sinner’s Swing! Boy these kids could sing. Kicks loads of ass. Ass here. Ass there. Ass behind the refrigerator. Ass everywhere… A pean to wicked awesomeness, the essence of Van Halen, and more evidence that critics do indeed suck.

Happy Trails Thought I’d send you off on the appropriate note. Feeling tons better now, thank you.

- Robbie