Coming in at number 56 on the Best of the 70's list is this 1978 debut. People that know me know that I'm not the biggest Van Halen fan in the world, but I would put this album in the top 30 for the 70's if for no other reason the impact it had on the pop/rock that followed in its wake in the 80's. This album was incredibly influential in the same way The Ramones first album was influential. These guys made an album of music like nothing anyone had ever done before. When I think of rock and roll, and maybe this is because I was a teen in the 80's, I think of this album. It is everything I think rock should be. It's fun, fast, loud, and over the top. It's not pretentious, it's not mellow, it's not thought provoking it's just a blast of rock from start to finish.
If your feeling a bit down and out and you're looking for a way to get out of your funk then throw this album on and just enjoy it for what it is. If you want to hear one of the most influential records of the past 40 years then throw this on and just enjoy the ride.
Following the Rhapsody rating method I give it 4 out of 5 stars for Really Good.
My college roommate, Doug, and I took a billiards class to achieve the physical-education credits among our general-education requirements at WKU. The class met on the top floor of Western's Downing University Center, which had (has?) a bowling alley, big TVs and video games, in addition to a dozen or so pool tables.
ReplyDeleteI actually learned a great deal in this class that I still use today, given that my wife's parents have a pool table in their basement. I'm not at all a good pool player, but I can drop a couple, three in a row, and I have a sense of how to set up my next shot or prevent my opponent from having a likely make.
Many of the folks in the class, however, were already quite good pool players, and they didn't seem to need much instruction from the teacher, who pretty much everyone called "Dr. Jones" (though I don't believe he had a doctorate). A subset of three or four guys from Barren County were particularly good. I frequently would find my attention drifting from my own game to watch one of theirs.
One time, I'm watching these guys--guys my age and county-school kids like me, but also different in that they talked tough all the time, had long, curly hair, smoked cigarettes and had girls hanging around them who weren't even taking the class. Anyway, as I'm watching them, the opening keyboard strokes of "Jump" start, and immediately, two or three of the guys wheel their pool sticks around as mock guitars and begin a totally earnest air-Van Halen tribute.
I was 19 or 20 years old at the time, and I'm pretty sure this was one of the first times I consciously questioned myself as to what I wanted to do with this scene ... emulate it, make fun of it or just record/retell it.