The show was in Charlottesville, VA at the John Paul Jones arena. It holds about 15,000 but I’d say only 12,000 or so were there. I think Charlottesville has been having problems filling the arena, it’s in the center of the state but most of the state’s population is in Northern Virginia and the coastal region. Still a great show though, I’m amazed how much these guys still rock. David Lee Roth came out with his toothy grin and high kicks, his voice was still great. He looked like he worked out too, he was in good shape.
They gave it 100% and played a lot of songs, I think it was almost two hours. All the standards like “Jump”, “Panama”, and “Running with the Devil”, and they also covered “Magic Bus” and Cream’s “Crossroads.” DLR also did a really cool acoustic guitar and story intro to “Ice Cream Man.”
The drummer Alex looked sort of skinny and wrinkled up like Keith Richards, but he was amazing on the drums. He did like a 10 minute solo at one point, I took the chance to sit down for a while during that. Eddie didn’t move around that much, he had a corded guitar, but he’s still incredibly talented and did some great solos, including his “drill on the strings” routine. Eddie’s son Wolfgang was on bass and had good stage presence. He looked to be about 17, a down to Earth kid but seemed pretty cool too.
The opening act was ok, I forget the name but the lead singer was a black guy with short dreads (Whoopi type of hairstyle.) He had a great voice but I just didn’t dig the music, and I’m not sure why they were opening for VH. Sort of reminded me of Living Colour but less hard. They only played 5 songs or so. I remarked to my sister’s boyfriend that this was the sort of band that you’d see at Outback Lodge, a local bar/nightclub. And then during the set the singer said “If you like what you hear, come see our full set at Outback Lodge on Sunday night.” So I don’t know if they are a regular part of the tour or what. Originally one of Bob Marley’s sons was the opening act. He at best plays reggae (which is great music, but not to open for a rock band) and at worst plays hip-hop, I’m glad he wasn’t still on the VH tour… Honestly, is it so hard to book a ROCK act to open for one of the biggest rock bands of the 80’s?
We had seats to the left of the stage and about 12 rows up, really cool seats that let us see part of the back stage activities. I could see DLR come from further backstage and stand behind a speaker psyching up waiting to come back on stage after Alex’s drum solo. My sister’s boyfriend won the tickets, they were $150 (!!!) tickets. Plus they wanted $17 for parking. We parked at a parking garage for $2.80 and walked a 1/2 mile or so. I like Van Halen but I’d have to be a huge fan to pay $150. I don’t know why they price concerts like that, there were $75 and I think $50 seats too, but this was a big arena and I wouldn’t have liked sitting up in the nosebleed section, free tickets or not.
My only complaint was the volume was too damn loud, so loud it was distororted. If they’d cut it about 25% it would have sounded a lot better.
