Van Halen

Five '70s Metal Bands Who Are Better Than Black Sabbath

By Nicholas Pell OK, we get it. You like Sabbath. Everyone does. But there's a whole big world out there of '70s metal bands that goes beyond Sabbath -- even beyond Sir Lord Baltimore, if you can believe that. The '70s offered so much in the way of doom-and-gloom heaviness that it's criminal so man ... More >>

Iceage, White Lung Parquet Courts - Bowery Ballroom - 4/20/13

Better Than: Wherever Bjork wasn't (!!) A punk show at Bowery Ballroom (in this day and age, anyway) is always more show than punk. Especially when the bill stirs the hearts of critics yearning for a spiritual rebirth of the genres that have fed them since childhood; especially when industry types ... More >>

The 11 Best Fictional Bands of All Time

Who the hell needs real bands when there are so many great fictional ones? Here's some of the best -- our list goes to 11, of course: See also: Top 10 Concert Films to See Before You Die

What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?

What Time Does the Super Bowl Start? A poem to enthrall and inspire!:

What Does Sammy Hagar's Dick Look Like? A Chat With Home Blitz About Van Halen

"I've always thought of myself as a fairly sane person, but chronicling this experience is kind of making me wonder why." Those are the last words Theresa Smith, guitar player in one of New Jersey's best bands, Home Blitz, has to say on her bizarre, year-long decent into obsessively analyzing one of ... More >>

12 Ideas The Olympics Committee Rejected Before Deciding To Have Liam Gallagher Sing "Wonderwall" At The Closing Ceremony

The latest rumor about how the Olympics will close themselves out next month comes from The Sun: "[Oasis's Liam Gallagher] will perform a new arrangement of... 'Wonderwall' with bandmates Gem Archer, Andy Bell and Chris Sharrock." 12. All of the track & field competitors dress up like Benny Hill a ... More >>

First Worsts: Remembering When Bon Jovi Gave "Hair Metal" A Bad Name

This month, to celebrate the Internet's unbridled love for wallowing in nostalgia and even greater relishing of talking about why certain cultural artifacts are horrible, Sound of the City presents First Worsts, a series in which our writers remember the first time... they ever hated a song enough t ... More >>

Matzo Balls And Disco Balls: Pairing Great GoogaMooga's Food And Music Offerings

This weekend Prospect Park will host Great GoogaMooga, a festival that brings together some of New York's best restaurants and musicians from New York (disco technicians Escort; bouncy Brooklyn rockers Fort Lean) and outside the city (Saturday's headlined by the hip-hop polyglots The Roots, while Su ... More >>

A Couple Of Bands That Are Just As Likely To Reunite As The Smiths, Which Is To Say, Not At All

So this morning one of those British music-news sites decided to engage in a little bit of traffic-goosing rumormongering by posting a breathless item about the Smiths reuniting, citing "a source [who] revealed that the 80s icons had been in talks to perform with a well-known promoter." This game of ... More >>

Mas Van Hagar: Why Sammy Hagar's Motivation Is More Powerful Than David Lee Roth's Bravado

The first time I saw Van Halen perform live, the band was colloquially known as Van Hagar. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen, and bassist Michael Anthony had just reunited with their second frontman Sammy Hagar to promote a greatest-hits package titled Best of Both Worlds; I bought f ... More >>

David Lee Roth and Kanye West Get Creative in 2012

This Week In The Voice: Why Kanye Should Hire David Lee Roth; Monster Magnet Storms Williamsburg

In this week's Village Voice, on newsstands now: Maura connects the dots between David Lee Roth, whom she saw perform with Van Halen last Thursday, and Kanye West, whom she saw go nuts on Twitter the night before; then Chris Steffen profiles the perennially uncool Monster Magnet. Meanwhile, we retur ... More >>

In Which We Say Nice Things About The New Singles By Train And Van Halen

​After all the lousiness and anger and general grey clouds that persisted throughout 2011, I've decided to adopt a more cheerful outlook for 2012—because in the face of a crumbling world, not to mention a thousand pounded-out posts and anonymous commenters screeching that 99% of everythi ... More >>

Live: Van Halen Attracts The Naked, Sweaty Eyeballs To Cafe Wha?

Van Halen Cafe Wha? Thursday, January 5 Better than: Listening to David Lee Roth's Spanish-language version of "That's Life" at home alone. The crowd drawn to Macdougal Street in advance of last night's Cafe Wha? show by the reunited-once-again Van Halen—David Lee Roth on vocals, and the Va ... More >>

HOT FOR HALEN

The greatest band of all 
time reunites, sort of

New York's Finest '90s Rock Tribute Acts Get Their Halloween Costumes Ready

Grunge days, revisited

David Lee Roth To Bring His Life To Life On The Web

This week in Internet news that should up the online world's overall quotient of "bozedy bozedy bop"s: David Lee Roth has joined Twitter and Facebook. So far all that the accounts have on them is a lot of teaser text and a link to the Van Halen singer/former radio host's official site, but a look at ... More >>

Facebook + Music: Most People Are DJs

The site's foray into music and the act of performative listening

20 Albums From 1991 That Can Still Be Thought-Pieced To Death Before The Year Ends

20. Tom Petty, Into The Great Wide Open 19. Skid Row, Slave To The Grind 18. Teenage Fanclub, Bandwagonesque 17. Prince & The New Power Generation, Diamonds & Pearls

The Ten Worst Moments On Girl Talk's All Day

Greg Gillis in Williamsburg, summer of 2009. Photo by Sam Horine.​By now you've heard All Day, the fifth full length LP from Pittsburg's Greg Gillis--or, as he's known on chaotic, fan-filled stages around the world, Girl Talk. The record was released to minimal fanfare, at the low price of fre ... More >>

This Weekend! Oneida, Judas Priestess, Kill The Alarm, Psychedelic Horseshit, And The Bellmer Dolls

​If there's any chance your reckless behavior will be rewarded with a shiner this weekend, it's gotta be tonight. Oneida (to your left), with (thoughtfully) abrasive rock and destructive, amped-up guitars, will make all gentle souls within a 100-foot radius of the Knitting Factory shake in th ... More >>

Keren Ann

All Hail White Wizzard and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal

Tranny-welcoming L.A. dudes hop in their GTO and escape from evil girlfriends, each other

Cops, Others Mourn Loss of K-Rock

The news that WXRK, aka K-Rock, the preeminent local FM generator of legacy or "classic" rock, is switching to a top-40 pop format is headlined thus by EV Grieve: "New York commercial radio to somehow manage to become even suckier." Greybeards throughout the greater metro area will certainly be cr ... More >>

GOP Adds $18.5 Billion to Stimulus They Want to Block

Democrats want 60 Senate votes to ensure trouble-free passage of Obama's stimulus package. Republicans have been vacillating between "block that kick" and, in the immortal words of Van Halen, "everybody wants some, I want some too." Yesterday the latter tendency prevailed as the Senate passed a Rep ... More >>

Week in Review: Type "Motorhead" into an iPhone and it Auto-Adds the Umlaut

photo of the Fucked Up Inauguration Day crowd by Santiago Felipe In the week we said goodbye to John Updike, twice, and Missbehave Magazine once, we said hello to American Idol judge Kara's cleavage, the U2 song "Get on Your Boots," and welcomed Hanoi Jane back. Cold and poor, we also watched a ... More >>

Please Go Play the David Lee Roth Version of Asteroids, Immediately

Holy shit. Credit where credit's due to Idolator for availing me of Assteroidz, a fully functional arcade version of Asteroids wherein you fire bullets out of David Lee Roth's crotch so as to blow up Van Halen logos, giant Eddie Van Halen heads, and enormous hamburgers. Sound FX are provided by ... More >>

Battle of the Bands

Paying tribute to Leonard Cohen and the BeeGees

Hugleikur Dagsson's Should You Be Laughing at This?

The X-rated eloquence of a Dennis Cooper novella and the sly drollery of Max Cannon's Red Meat all in one

Bitchin’ Songs of Faith and Devotion

The Donnas worship rock ’n’ roll, cover Ratt, inspire much wanton fist-pumping

Letters

Van Halen Reunites—Just in Time for Their Excellent Unauthorized Bio

Why can't this be love?

Cred Sheet

Stuff You Need to Know to Avoid Cultural Ostracism

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony: Chaos Reigns

Fully Stacked

The Killers: Not Enough Like Def Leppard

The Great Cover-up, Part 2

Might as Well Jump

The triple sweet pleasures of DLR at 51

Rock Star Supernova: Fish in a Barrel

Music

25 or 6 to 1984

Bottoms up! OU812! 5150! Hike! Stop! Hammer-on time!

Listings

Music

R Bar Is A-OK

Knock back a few in Brooklyn's backwoods

Film

Mome Raths Outgrabe

Outsider Rockers Come Inside With Vorpal Swords in Hand and God in Their Din

Wildhearts Can Be Broken

Sodalite

African Connection II

Double Shot