I knew this spider that sat down beside ‘er while she wuz eatin’er curds & whey, said he’s at this Beatles gig back in 63 where he fell upon a fckn drunken fly...got heartburn for a week.  So we got to talkin’ bout the C major bIII chord and all it’s relative minors....for a while until the bastid tried to bite me; ...I said my g.i. joe likes spiders whole...& then i plunked ‘at helmet down on hardwood floor like Maxwell’s silver hammer and...just...crawled...off....

That was 65, ...I was two, ...the Beatles already owned the American youth...that had not already been made, bought and paid-for, on the rhythm, the tenor & cool rockabilly energy of the man who th’ hep cats just called...E.

Back in 84, no less, some pals & I got to see Van Halen 1984, live @ Greensboro Coliseum in N.C..  This was not a big venue, by comparison, ...so we were...in the music....  Diamond Dave was nutZ-on ...with Katanas blazin’ and full of every pizz-&-vinigar known to the cosmos at th’ time; ...Eddie was being reborn with the keyboard...and Alex unloaded the guns in maybe the best drum solo I’ve ever seen live...off the out-tro of Hot For Teacher...that started the building on fire~~had to bring-in the fire marshal to put out the teeny-bopper libidos that hadn’t already been set ablaze by David Lee Roth’s mechanics on stage (although Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chilies held us in a 10 minute twisted-zone of rock & roll drum-kit between sets @ the Mellon a few years ago, ...I’ll give’im that/another great band every time.)  Then, accept for the shenanigans of Diamond Dave...which never switched-off from intro to house lights, ...the second set belonged to Eddie...who keyboard soloed into ...Everybody Wants Some, that’s how I remember it anyway, as a foreshadowing of the eventual intro to 1984/Jump.  Then after Jump he guitar soloed...for about an hour...that seemed like only 10 minutes...genius [not Hendrix, not Stevie Ray, not Gilmore, but Eddie] personified....  Then a whole mess of dizzying Diamond Dave mechanics in songs like O Pretty Woman, You Really Got Me, Panama...& Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love (some of it and more in and around the proverbial encore) ...with the family-circle-lovey-dovey dis’iz m’ best bros (whom I will be dissin’ in 6 months) Happy Trails to close.

Still one of the Best concerts I’ve ever seen, no schidt Mick....