MCMLXXXIV

I was eight years old in 1984 and I can still clearly remember begging my then fifteen year old uncle to listen to his newly purchased and much coveted Van Halen cassette. At the time, I had no idea who Van Halen were or what they would sound like, but the tape’s cover art was so enticing...so daring...so bad. It was the embodiment of rebellion. I was mesmerized by the picture of the little boy with angel wings on the cover. He was doing the forbidden: smoking cigarettes. I simply had to listen to it. So when the opening chords of “Jump” punched their way out of the portable ghetto blaster and into my young eardrums, the hurricane force instantly obliterated my petty little girl crush on Michael Jackson and forever hooked me into the defiant world of Rock & Roll.

Despite using practically all of my preteen birthday cake candle-blowing-out wishes on hopes of seeing them in concert, I never did have the chance to see a live performance of the band whose logo I routinely inked on countless pairs of slip-on checkered Vans and Pee Chee folders. As an adult, I conceded that I never would—I didn’t want to see Van Hagar (or God forbid Gary Cherone), I wanted Van Halen featuring David Lee Roth or I wanted nothing. And nothing’s what I got...until last night.

I sat alone at the Key Arena. I went with friends, but we couldn’t get seats next to each other, and I’d be damned if I was going to let either that or the torrential rains pounding down on Seattle stop me from seeing what Diamond Dave and the boys still had to offer decades after the first time I heard them. What they brought was a montage of my adolescent years set to the perfect guitar squealing soundtrack blasting out of stacks upon stacks of signature EVH amplifiers. What they brought was David Lee Roth, all fifty three years of him, poured into a pair of tight, tight leather pants perfectly balancing a top hat on his protruding crotch. What they brought was pure Rock & Roll. Sure, the jumps caught less air than they did in days past (more resembling high scissor kicks) but it was Rock & Roll none-the-less, and this lifetime fan was not even remotely disappointed.

In the end, I found that my schoolgirl crush on Eddie* and the boys, has never quite been extinguished. The flame just burned on low for decades waiting to be reignited. Only this time the butterflies in my belly were more for excitement and respect at seeing one of the best guitar players in the world perform live and pure admiration for a band that has continued to rock for decades. Last night, I discovered that the rush I felt the first time I heard Van Halen and the spine tingling, goose bump enducing noise that is Rock & Roll still has the same magical ability to move me in ways that nothing else in this world can.

SET LIST
You Really Got Me
I'm the One
Runnin' with the Devil
Romeo Delight
Somebody Get Me a Doctor
Beautiful Girls (complete with Diamond Dave shaking maracas!)
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'
Ice Cream Man (and stories of Dave's early pot smoking years)
Panama
Eddie's amazing guitar solo!
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
1984
Jump

*Even though a friend recently reminded me that it was, in fact, a good thing that Eddie Van Halen broke my young and tender heart when he choose Valerie Bertinelli (that bitch) over me, he will always have a special and cherished place in my music crush history.