Thursday, February 01, 2007












Van Halen: Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love [1978]

I haven't listened to Van Halen in a long time, and I am fairly certain I never owned Van Halen on anything but cassette. Until recently. Inspired by the coming Rock & Roll HOF 2007 induction ceremony, I bought a handful of used CDs, and will post a brief series of songs by this year's inductees. And yes, I do think it's a silly little institution. This song is the first in the series.

Somewhere, some bar will play Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love tonight and it will be okay for the crowd to dance because: 1) it's Van Halen, and even if their reunion tour this summer is going to finish a strong 5th in ticket sales behind a) The Police, b) Elton John, c) The Killers, and d) Disco Biscuits, they are still not that cool; and 2) the chorus of galvanic "hey"s at the end of the song negates all social inhibitions. Songs like this make me want to drive to Brewster, NY in the middle of a snow storm on a February evening.

And I just learned that Eddie Van Halen is actually Dutch by birth and shares a birthday with a friend of mine in Madrid.

Buy Van Halen here. If it's possible you don't already own them.

The choice photograph above is taken by Geraint Smith. Check out his site. His photos are beautiful.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The remix by apollo440 is quite good :

http://www.dailymotion.com/visited/search/Apollo%2B440/video/x132p9_apollo-440-aint-talkin-bout-dub

Anonymous said...

What's wrong with Brewster NY?
I stayed there on my first ever trip to the the US in 1972, and it's a pretty little town. Mind you, I was madly in love with a lovely lady from Brewster then, so maybe I was biased.....

Mike said...

Anon-

Nothing's wrong with Brewster at all! It's a fine town to drive through at 3 AM on a snowy evening listening to Van Halen. Apart from that, I know little of Brewster, though I grew up not far from there.