Road trip to Greensboro this weekend was a great time. Took us about 5 hours each way. Had my first 5 Guys burger.
We got to Greensboro and checked into the hotel. The Van Halen show must have been the only thing going on in that town cause everyone we talked to were asking us if we were in town for the show.
After driving around and finding out that the Greensboro Coliseum was on the same block as our hotel we hit Buffalo's Bar and Grill to kill 3 hours. We drained a few pitchers and had some pub food.
Since the hotel was close to the venue we decided to walk to the show. The guy in the room next to us was also going to the show so he asked to walk with us. Before we left he offered us a beer he had on ice in his room. This 45 year old Southerners beer of choice? Milwaukee's Best Light. It was cold so it went down smooth.
The walk over wasn't that bad at all. We got into the venue and discovered t shirts were 35 bucks so we decided to pass.
Van Halen was awesome. Eddie was the tightest I'd ever heard him before. This was my 3rd time seeing him. They opened with You Really Got Me and closed the show with Jump. The set list had been leaked on the internet a few weeks ago and they played every song off of it.
This is what they played:
1. You Really Got Me
2. I'm the One
3. Runnin' With the Devil
4. Romeo Delight
5. Somebody Get Me a Doctor
6. Beautiful Girls
7. Dance the Night Away
8. Atomic Punk
9. Everybody Wants Some
10. So This Is Love?
11. Mean Street
12. Pretty Woman
12. Pretty Woman
13. Drum Solo
14. Unchained
15. I'll Wait
16. And the Cradle Will Rock
17. Hot for Teacher
18. Little Dreamer
19. Little Guitars
20. Jamie's Cryin'
21. Ice Cream Man
22. Panama
23. Guitar Solo (incl. "Women in Love" intro, "Cathedral", "Eruption")
24. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
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25. 1984
26. Jump
At times the guitar was louder than Roth's vocals which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The tempo for Hot For Teacher was so fast that Roth was skipping words here and there to keep up. For the most part his timing was great.
Roth had a few leg kicks and during Jump did a whole baton twirling thing. On Everybody Wants Some he did a slight variation on the speaking parts. I liked the original. The strong first few lines of the song he just kind of talked them out. That was about the most disappointed I was.
Wolfgang was there. You kind of forgot about him cause you are looking at Eddie and Roth the whole time. He did mess up the "come on Dave, give me a break" part to Unchained. He sounded nervous and flubbed the first part of it. He did move around the stage a little. He definitely has his mom's genes cause he is a pudgy thing.
The stage was in the shape of a giant S and that snaked into the crowd. The whole time Buck and I were thinking that S stood for Sammy. There was a big video screen behind them and they used a lot of video feedback for effect.
Overall one of the best shows I've ever seen. They played song after song after song. Almost no talking in between songs at all. The only long talking part was the set up for Ice Cream Man which Roth played acoustic guitar on.
These pictures are from the Charlotte show:
1 comment:
I got tix for LA in November - can't wait. Fingers crossed that they can keep it together that long.
Funny thing, I was in Carolina this weekend and the classic rock radio station was playing VH all weekend. Forgot that they were only an hour or two away. But it was nice that a station was playing their entire albums without interruption.
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