The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

For some reason the song “There’s Only One Way To Rock” by Sammy Hagar has setup shot in my forebrain (prosencephalon) and keeps repeating “Crank up the drums, crank out the bass, crank up my Les Paul in your face” …

I don’t even LIKE this song! And I am certainly not a Sammy Hagar fan.

There may very well be only one way to rock, and I am sure that I’ve long ago forgotten what it was. I do know this, though…it wasn’t Sammy who let me in on the secret.

HIE THEE HENCE, METAL POSEUR AND LEAVE MY BRAIN BE!!!!

This got me thinking about Van Halen. When David Lee Roth left and Sammy stepped in, Van Halen officially died for me.

I remember the first time I heard Van Halen. It was in my friend’s 1974 Dodge Challenger. The year was 1978 and he had just bought the 8-Track and we were cruising around town listening to it. At the time I was just weaning myself off of Kiss and moving into my art rock phase. I remember looking at the production credits and seeing that the album was produced by Gene Simmons. It was an impressive tape, I must say. The only Van Halen I ever owned or liked.

I even remember the urban legend that Kiss and Van Halen were actually the same band…there was some deep controversy surrounding that rumor until it was finally dispelled satisfactorily. This was in the pre-Internet days. You kids today have it EASY. Back then you didn’t get a humility inducing e-mail directing you to a link at Snopes. We relied on sources like Rolling Stone Magazine and such for our facts. And that was only if you could afford to pick up a copy or browse the latest issue at the drug store quick enough not to get the bum’s-rush from the shop-keep.

Once my brain got to thinking about 8-Tracks I regressed to the time I was at my neighbor’s house in 1976. Peter Frampton Comes Alive had just been released and it was playing in the back room on his 8-Track player.

We must have let it play through 5 or 6 times (for reasons any child of the 70’s can relate to) so it became somewhat ingrained into my adolescent brain.

To this day, whenever I hear the song “Do You Feel Like We Do”, my mind puts in the audible click where the 8-Track manufacturer had to fade the song down, change tracks and fade back up on the next seeing as how there was not enough space to contain the whole song in a single track.

Speaking of Frampton, I just heard “Do You Feel Like We Do” on a XM Radio rebroadcast of American Top 40. I’d forgotten that pop radio often created short 3-4 minute remixes of the longer songs for airplay. Seems they didn’t want to play the full 14+ minute version. For the record, the short version sucks mightily.

I leave you with this recent Geico commercial which clearly shows that there’s more than one way to rock….