And the Cradle Will Rock by Van Halen

This might be one of the best just turn it up, hit the gas pedal songs you will ever hear. Here is a stereotype or two for you. I was driving to my eye doctor's late this evening, he stays open late on Tuesday evenings, to get my glasses fixed as I had sat on them. Why had I sat on them? Because when I take them off and set them down I cannot see them.

So here I am in my mid forties, late forties, with old bones, eyes that do not work anymore and a litany of aches and pains. One thing I do know though is a great rock song when I hear it. With all the different permutations of Van Halen over the last twenty years it is easy to forget or hard to remember just how great a band they were from the late seventies to the mid eighties.

Everything worked. They rocked.

They never were better than on this song. How many times as you heard David Lee ask " Have you seen Jr's grades? " have you slid the volume up waiting for the guitars and drums to crash back in.

When you hear this song turn it up, even if you can still hear it fine at low volume. This song needs volume and if your like me it will take you back to a time when the future was unknown and the idea of being a suburban parent car pooling kids seemed as likely as, well, as likely as Van Halen still existing thirty years later only Eddie having a plastic hip, no teeth, and having kicked out Micheal Anthony to replace him with his son named Wolfgang. Sometimes my friends the truth is stranger than fiction.

That is alright. As we get older we learn that little turns out as we expected. That is why we relish a song like this. Great then, great now, some things, thankfully, do not change.

A Different Kind of Truth by Van Halen

Van Halen is one of those landmark bands. Divided into the David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar era's. With a bit of a soap opera slant over the last twenty years with Eddie's divorce, Eddie losing his teeth, Eddie's alcoholism, the infamous Gary Cherrone period, the Sammy fueds, firing Micheal Anthony to place Wolfgang in the band, Van Halen has been known for about anything but music.

While it is true that the six albums Van Halen released through 1984 did not have a great deal of range it is also true that these albums had some fantastic songs, even if they all could have appeared on one longplay album and saved us all much time.

Still when reviewung my high school years the songs of Van Halen are front and center. Deservedly so.

The release of A Diffent Kind of Truth was a bit of a surprise. Rumors have been the diet of the Van Halen crowd for years so when this album appeared just a month after the announcemtn of it we all felt a bit surprised.

After listening to the album however we have a differnt feeling. It is not deja vu. It is boredom. Now I think a fair question to ask is does the music miss the mark by that much or do I. I am not a teenager anymore. A 45 year old man cannot review music in the same way as a teenager can. I find the same thing with new Jayhawks, and new Bruce that I do with new Van Halen. Music cannot have the same impact when your 45 as does music that you have heard for the last thirty years and has become part of your DNA.

This album is just not that good. I wish it was. What I do not know is could anything grab me like Van Halen I and II. The first single Tattoo is solid. When we are told it contains remenants of riffs from the seventies we are not surprised. On the song Big River I hear some shredding from Eddie that certainly sounds familiar. Maybe it is hearing David Lee make references to Facebook, it just does not click. All I know is if I never hear this album or any songs on it again in my life I will not care. I will however be listening to And The Cradle Will Rock when I am sixty however.