Van Halen

Best of Both Worlds

A compilation to make both die hard and casual fans mad

Review Score:

(2/10)
Any casual fan probably bought Best of: Vol. 1 a few years ago only to find that it was missing several of the great tracks played on the radio. The die hards bought that album for the 2 new rushed Roth tracks that were decent but did nothing to add to the original Van Halen legacy.

Move ahead 8 years and here we have another greatest hits album...odd seeing as the band has only released one album in that 8 years and NONE of the tracks from that album are represented here. Seems odd, too, since Gary Cherone was supposedly EVH's "musical soulmate" without which he vowed to spend the rest of his days playing trombone. It's a slap in the face to Gary not to at least include "Without You" here.

So anyway, basically what you have here is a band who claims to have written volumes of music in the past 6 years only to release a new hits package with only 3 new tracks. So answer me this, if you're doing this for the casual fans why not release a single disc "Best of Volume 2" with the new Hagar tracks and the rest of the radio tracks you included here? If you're doing this for the die hard fans why insult them by making them buy 2 CDs full of songs they already have for 3 new Hagar tracks that (just like the Roth tracks on BOV1) are decent but do nothing to add to the Van Hagar legacy? If you've written so much music in the past 6 years, why not give us a new album?

And finally, why the live tracks? They're from a live album that true Hagar fans bought years ago. They feature Hagar on vocals, but they're Roth songs. Wouldn't Hagar fans want to hear Hagar singing Hagar songs? Wouldn't Roth fans want to hear Roth singing Roth songs? So why these tracks? Makes no sense. If you had room for 3 more songs why not give us one of the many radio songs you left off the CD, ie. Mean Street, Atomic Punk, Ice Cream Man, Somebody Get Me a Doctor, Top Jimmy, Drop Dead Legs, Summer Nights, 5150, Cabo Wabo, (Don't Tell Me) What Love Can Do, Amsterdam, etc?

To make a long story short, lately Van Halen seems to be a band that cares nothing about their fans. Indeed, this CD is packed full of great music, but it is also packed with a lot of bad blood.

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