Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Top 40 at 40 #16

#16 Van Halen Feel Your Love Tonight 1978

Let me take you back to 1981, 13 years old....I took the plunge and got the Columbia House 6 cassettes for 1 penny deal from the back cover of a comic book. All you had to do was buy one album or cassette at full price within the following year. I still remember my six, Zep 2, Zep 4, Billy Squier-Don't Say No, Back In Black, Dirty Deeds and Van Halen's self titled debut. I don't think I ever bought that cassette at full price....I was too busy playing the Van Halen cassette until the tape thinned out and a shrilly hiss eminated from my Panasonic tune box with Dolby AND auto reverse, thank you very much.

First front man I wanted to be....Diamond Dave, First Poster I ever bought- Van Halen- From the Diver Down tour,(From Camelot Music in Eastview Mall) first glossy page from Creem Magazine hung in my 8th grade locker- Van Halen.(I used to "wet-rip" the pages and steal them from Wegmans Supermarket..this involves going to get a free cookie from the bakery with my cookie club card and heading over to the magazines and licking the crease of the page I wanted until I could wet rip it out w/o making a noise., put it in my back pocket, no not the one with the purple comb, the other one.....First Concert- VH at the Rochester War Memorial May 18, 1981..and so on.

Can't say enough about the influence of VH One.....nobody had ever heard anything like Eddie Van Halen before...the originality,finger tapping, the Kramer Guitars taped up and spray painted and the Brown Sound. I had to look up the brown sound when my buddy A. Ferrari told me about it. I thought it was something invented while pushing too hard on the bowl......You can Look it up too. Just know it is his...never duplicated...though many have tried.

And David Lee Roth..WOW. The ultimate showman.....the mid air splits, the vaudeville, the leather chaps, the chest hair....the dude set the rock world on fire. And the women dropped and gave him plenty.

Feel Your Love Tonight is just one of many VH classics heard round the skating rinks, parking lot keg parties, beach blankets and sweaty back seats of used Camaros throughout the late 70s and early 80s. Dave Meets Girl, Girl's Boyfriend gets pissed, Dave Gets girl........3:43 minutes, a solo takes you through the party and out the back door with Cindy Suburbia.......and.....its on its way through the uprights........and......ITS GOOD!

Have you ever heard a better guitar solo at the end............? Go ahead, go find one, I'll give you a decade's head start.

For all of you in the VH camp which included he -who-will-not-be-mentioned as their lead singer....I've got news for you..Van Halen's last album was put out in 1984 and it was called..1984. Now go have a shot of Cabo Wabo and cry yourself to sleep, you weaker-thans.

Top 5 Van Halen Songs 1) Feel Your Love Tonight 2)Hear About It Later(Fair Warning- '81) 3) DOA(Van Halen II- "79
4) Everybody Wants Some(Women and Children First-'80) 5)Fools(WACF)
08 Feel Your Love Tonight.m4a
3563K Download

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