Van Halen officially cancels its postponed shows

By Kat

After postponing their tour gigs after June 26 back in May, it appears the plug has finally been pulled on Van Halen for this year.

The Rolling Stone reports that Ticketmaster is listing many of the remaining dates as canceled:

After postponing all tour dates after June 26th, Van Halen has now canceled those shows, reports Pollstar.com. The band has not announced the cancelations on their site, but Pollstar notes many of the tour dates after June 26th are listed in red as canceled on Ticketmaster, including tour stops in Baltimore, Detroit, Memphis, Sacramento and Milwaukee. Refunds are reportedly available at the point of sale.

There are conflicting reports that the band members were embroiled in conflict with each other. At any rate, it’s an anticlimatic end to what had been a somewhat disappointing tour – concerts had received mixed reviews, which commonly targeted David Lee Roth’s performance at the age of 56.

Do you think it’s the end of the line for Van Halen?

Yearning for the A-Train: Missing The Rolling Stones

By Adrian

Thus far in 2012, we’re seeing plenty of classic acts in music still doing tours in a big way. The notables include the just-announced RUSH Clockwork Angels Tour, Van Halen, The Beach Boys, Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame), Aerosmith, Neil Diamond, Bryan Adams…..the list can go on and on. But for all the acts that are still going, I can’t help but notice that The Rolling Stones aren’t on that list. There are reports that we may see Mick Jagger and the boys at the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Games in London, but it’s hard not to wonder whether us Northwest music fans will see The Rolling Stones in concert again.

Any true Stones fan knows what I’m talking about when I mention ‘A-Train’, the jazzy intro piped over the P.A. system just before the MC says those words we’ve all been anxiously waiting for ever since we skipped school and drove down the I-5:

Please welcome The Rolling Stones!

*enter a fist-pumping Mick Jagger belting out “Under My Thumb”.

That was back in 1981; the Stones were on their ‘Tattoo You’ tour, it was well worth the $16 ticket price and subsequent suspension from the school soccer team for missing a game.
Move forward 13 years, the Voodoo Lounge Tour hit Vancouver for 2 dates in 1994, then again in 2006 as part of the Bigger Bang tour. Now I know they average coming to the Pacific Northwest every 12 or so years but they’re getting old, really old. In fact, they are celebrating their 50 year anniversary this year so I’m saying lets get the petition started and bring them back before it’s too late so we can hear that familar jazz line followed by “Please welcome The Rolling Stones!” one last time.

What are some bands or musicians of decades past that you’d like to see on stage one more time?

Article: Bryan Adams, Van Halen bring back a summer of classic rock

By Kat
The start of the NHL playoffs may be foremost in everyone’s minds in Canada these days (well, in Vancouver and Ottawa at least), but the next few months will be also an exciting time for classic rock fans. While the Madonna and Coldplay tours will be dominating headlines for the most part, classic acts such as Bryan Adams, Van Halen and Aerosmith will also be criss-crossing North America this summer.

As Jesse Kinos-Goodin writes in his latest article featured in The Vancouver Sun, the return of Bryan Adams to the big stage will be a long-awaited throwback “to let audiences forget their worries and immerse themselves in a long-ago time and place, where everything and anything seemed possible.”

You can read the full article on The Vancouver Sun’s website.

bryan adams
Photo: The Vancouver Sun.

Links to upcoming tour dates:

Bryan Adams
Van Halen – A Different Kind of Truth
Aerosmith – Global Warming
Rogers Waters – The Wall

It’s a summer full of exciting concerts for music fans of all genres, and ShowTimeTickets.com can get you tickets to the show anytime, anywhere! Check out our website or give us a call and we’ll get you stage-side!

Van Halen’s “Running With The Devil” without the instruments sounds very strange.

Turns out that David Lee Roth’s vocal performance from Van Halen’s 1978 hit “Running With The Devil,” sans instruments or effects, has been leaked to YouTube. It’s incredibly weird, but kind of amazing–Diamond Dave sounds kind of like a saber-tooth tiger who just stubbed his toe. Try listening to this while reading their 1982 concert rider. You know, the one which demands a bowl of M&M’s with the brown ones removed.

Van Halen are allegedly recording a new album right now (their first with David Lee Roth in decades!) and will be putting together a world tour to promote it. If you need tickets, we’ve got you covered.

Five Bands Who Should Have Kept Their Original Names

Not surprisingly, many of our favorite bands took a while to come up with a name for the group (Toad the Wet Sprocket is not among them). Whether it’s Oasis (originally Rain) or Led Zeppelin (originally the New Yardbirds), sometimes bands just have to get out there and play before they can come up with a moniker which works for them. Sometimes, when the bands later become huge, this is hilarious. Here are five of our favorite instances.

Johnny and the Moondogs (The Beatles)
It’s hard to imagine John Lennon as someone who went by “Johnny,” and it’s even harder to imagine the world’s most popular musicians not named Justin Bieber going by this name, which makes them sound like some kind of biker gang. But hey, it could have been brilliant: maybe Lennon, McCartney, & Co. could have invented punk rock a decade early.

Rat Salad (Van Halen)
Whether you prefer Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth, it’s difficult to picture either becoming popular as singer for a band called Rat Salad. That’s what Van Halen started out as, though, before one or more of the band members decided that people seeing them as conceited was better than people seeing them as members of a band called Rat Salad.

Psychedelic Rangers (The Doors)
Sure, “Psychedelic Rangers” describes the Doors a lot better than “the Doors.” It’d work equally well, though, at describing a spandex-clad group of superheroes on a Saturday morning cartoon. Jim Morrison, nuclear-powered crime fighter? Hey, why not?

The Polka Tulk Blues Band (Black Sabbath)
Imagine going to see the Polka Tulk Blues Band (is it polka? Is it blues? It was actually named after singer Ozzy Osbourne’s favorite brand of talcum powder). Imagine watching the frontman for the Polka Tulk Blues Band bite the head off a bat. Imagine your mind EXPLODING.

Sex Maggots (The Goo Goo Dolls)
Adult-contemporary favorites the Goo Goo Dolls (you know, the guys who do “Iris”) would have provided the soundtrack to a lot less slow dances at high school proms and weddings if they’d stuck with their original (kind of awesome) name. When a promoter refused to book them, they changed their name to “Goo Goo Dolls” and ended up selling 9 million albums in the US and having 14 of their songs make the Billboard Top Ten. Okay, never mind–maybe they’re better off as the Goo Goo Dolls.