Blowing Smoke: A movie about poker, cigars, women, and getting screwed

Monday
March 03, 2008

If you want to remember Van Halen when they were great, do not watch this

Male Jim Treacher | Category: Music
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Comments

Damn, is the audio on this that bad or are THEY that bad?

Comment by Dmac on March 3, 2008 3:10 PM

Were they ever great? They covered the Kinks, a far superior band, and Eddie played really effing fast. What did I miss?

Comment by Dan on March 3, 2008 5:22 PM

A lot. You missed that he was really effing good. Love the kinks, love 'em, but Eddie was actually as good a guitarist as people say he was. I know I know, I have to hand in my contrarian intellectual spurs by not "positing an alternate narrative" or just pissing on beloved icons like a good Gen-X knowitall, but I'm sorry; for once, naysaying is wrong.

He was awesome, and in a way that Hendrix was: he pioneered new techniques (tapping, alternate picking, hybrid picking) that are still with all metal guitarists to this day. The Kinks had no influence on guitarists, while Van Halen is literally the first metal guitarist as we've grown to know it (ALL lead players from .metal bands now are very direct descendants: entire genres like black metal and thrash are simply catalogues of his technique). He was, in fact, so influential that his kind of picking completely supplanted the earlier, slower, Black Sabbath technique (can you think of any fully slow players now?).

Comment by James Wiggum on March 3, 2008 7:01 PM

Van Halen captured the Reichschancellerie. Who knew?

Comment by Chris on March 4, 2008 5:20 AM

James Wiggum, I like you for just being you.

Comment by Crid on March 7, 2008 2:37 AM