Van Halen

Best Of Volume 1

As Usual...SO CLOSE!

Review Score:

(8/10)
Van Halen were a blast. Essentially a covers band with a tongue firmly planted in their incredibly talented cheeks, this band combined a sense of comraderie with a prodigiously gifted guitarist (who was also the most emulated player of his time) and a knack for finding mouthpieces straight from the Rockn'Roll Hall of Fame. Roth was a vaudeville master, so enigmatic in videos that it mattered little if the songs were merely overworked riffs or well-known covers, and Sammy Hagar, whose work as a front man earned him a place in the pantheons of Rock with the release of his first major label outing, the immortal MONTROSE. As with most Best Of collections, the coolest song must be omitted to insure the sale of a "Vol. 2". In this case, it's the omission of "Finish What You Started", which was not only THE video of that summer but tilted VH to a 10 on the credibility scale for it's cool blues inferences (yes, that's inferences, not influences). I, like you (why else would you be reading this ) loved Van Halen. Let's, just for once, get ALL of the beloved hits on one platter, okay?! Long live Van Halen, and may they find new life yet again! This is not a dis on the band, but rather on the calculating marketers who have followed the tried & true rule of stringin' us fans along for that extra buck.

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