Disco de Van Halen: “Van Halen Live: Right Here, Right Now”

Live: Right Here, Right Now is one of the best sounding live rock albums ever produced. However, it suffers tremendously from too many indulgent solos and way too many tracks from the uneven For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album. Many of the tracks sound just like the studio versions sounding like a greatest hits album recorded live with a poor tracklist.

The album does contain many of the hits from the Sammy Hagar era such as "Right Now", "When It's Love", "Why Can't This Be Love", and "Dreams" among others. The album also contains two of his solo hits, "One Way To Rock" and "Give To Live." While these are both good tracks, his signature song "I Can't Drive 55" is noticeably absent. Eddie Van Halen's solo "316" is surely an excellent showcase on the album but Michael Anthony's "Ultra Bass" is way too long and Alex Van Halen's drum solo is nothing spectacular. One senses these were pretty impressive to see live but sound indulgent on a live album.

The album also suffers from featuring no less than 10 tracks from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and very little from the David Lee Roth era skipping completely over Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, and Diver Down. The addition of tracks such as "Dance The Night Away", "Beautiful Girls", "Everybody Wants Some", "Take Your Whiskey Home", "Unchained", "Mean Street", and "(Oh) Pretty Woman" and limiting down to 3 tracks from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge would have helped this album big time. Hagar's singing on the few Roth-era tracks are decent but lack Roth's charisma. On a high note, their version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" is certainly one of the high points of the album. It's a shame that with all their strong material, they couldn't come up with a better live album. It reminds of you how Led Zeppelin released the lackluster live album The Song Remains The Same after releasing at least six classic albums with the only real difference being that this album sounds much better.

In 1993, at the height of grunge and alternative rock, Van Halen released yet another multi-platinum CD with their first ever live album "Live: Right Here, Right Now." Compiled from various shows between 1988 and 1993, "Live: Right Here, Right Now," focuses mainly on the Sammy Hagar era of the band and Van Hagar's first three albums "5150," (1986) "OU812," (1988) and most notably "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" (1991). Hagar's renditions of a couple Roth-era songs, a WHO cover, a few Sammy Hagar songs, and a few instrumentals round-out the album.

"Live: Right Here, Right Now" has a lot going for it. Many of these live renditions sound fuller than the studio versions, especially songs from "5150" and "OU812." Hagar's monologues, although at times long-winded, are generally interesting, especially his speech about living in the moment in the middle of "Panama." The instrumentals are more hit-or-miss. And there are A LOT of instrumentals; a drum solo, a guitar solo, and a bass solo. If you're into that sort of thing you will be well pleased with this release. But if you don't care for long instrumentals and solos, you may find them tedious. A cover of the WHO's "Won't get fooled again," sounds good, an obvious choice it may be.

The biggest drawback of this release is that it focuses exclusively on the Sammy Hagar-era of the band. It would have been far more desirable to have two CDs, the first covering '78-84 shows, (with Roth) and the second covering the Hagar era. But because the Van Halen brothers have always tried to downplay the Roth years and make Van Hagar out to be the definitive Van Halen (see "The Best of Both Worlds") we get a double-album of the Red Rocker without any Diamond Dave. When the band plays Roth-era material, it sounds good, until the vocals come in. As much as I like Sammy, he never could pull-off singing the Dave songs. While Hagar doesn't butcher the Roth songs, they just sound goofy, i.e. "got my ass against the record machine"(Hagar's replacement, Gary Cherone, did a terrific job singing all three eras on Van Halen's 1998 World Tour). Another problem with "Live: Right Here, Right Now" is that there are too many songs from "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge." Even if this had to be a Hagar-only live album, more songs from "5150" and "OU812" should have been included.

While "Live: Right Here, Right Now" isn't exactly KISS "ALIVE," (1975) it's still a pretty good album. While casual fans are advised to stay away, VH fans, especially fans of Van Hagar will enjoy this release. Hopefully someday an official Roth-era live VH album will see the light of day.

I really like this album, But maybe it was a little bit ofensive including almost the whole F.U.C.K album. I am not saying that I don?t like it, because I think it is the best Van Hagar album. However, Van Halen has more to perform alive. I think that more songs from the Roth's period would have been cool! Rock N Roll Forevaa!

In 1991, Van Halen released the album "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge". This album got a surprsingly good reception from both critics and longtime fans of the group, who initally dismissed the Sammy Hagar-led VH as a formulaic ballad machine. To celebrate this newfound exceptance, the band launched a massive world tour. The result was the two disc live album "Live: Right Here, Right Now", containing 24 tracks from the tour. How is this live album? Here are the highlights and the low points.

Highlights:

The majority of the album is really great. Sammy's vocal are in top condition, Eddie plays like a madman, and the rest of the band delivers. The performances are energetic and full of life, from the opening "Poundcake" to the closing "Top Of The World". They stake a great stab at The Who's classic "Won't Get Fooled Again", and Alex shows his talents on the drums with the nine minute "Pleasure Dome/Drum Solo". Forced to pick a highlight, though I'd go for Eddie's 11 minute instrumental "316", which also manages to incorporate "Eruption" at the end.

Lowlights:

The reason I don't give this collection five stars is for the performances of the David Lee Roth songs. Sammy actually manages to pull of "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and "Jump" pretty well, but it's "Panama" that doesn't work. It starts off well enough, but then Sammy launches into this whole foul mouthed dialouge about tomorrow and stuff. It's somewhat amusing and a little uplifting, but overall unneccessary. Also, I think they leaned a little too heavily on the "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" tracks. They perform pretty much the whole album. I would've had them do just "Right Now", "Poundcake", "316", "Runaround" and "Top Of The World" and then do some more stuff "5150" and "OU812" and maybe some more Roth stuff.

Overall, this is a great live album. With some changes, it would have been perfect.

Considering this is the only Van Halen live album, it's not bad. Pulled from live shows in the Sammy Hagar era, with a few tracks originally sung by David Lee Roth redone by Sammy. Key tracks are: Poundcake, When It's Love, Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love, Panama, Runaround, Right Now, Why Can't This Be Love, You Really Got Me, Jump and Top of the World. Worth getting, and a good introduction for newbies, like a live greatest hits up to that point. Hagar says- you never know you might not see tomorrow. You gotta be satisfied; I could die right now and be somewhat satisfied.