Sorry for the absence the last couple of days. A bit about me: I get *wicked* serious tension headaches and back aches, to the point where they’re actually debilitating. I’ve been hospitalized for these in the past for the most severe cases–twice in about 20 years, but still … having to go to the hospital because of a headache is kind of ridiculous. Fortunately, I’ve discovered some techniques to combat these without having to check myself in at the local emergency room. Yesterday and Thursday though … holy crap. It felt like hundreds of knives were digging into my shoulders, middle back …

and of coures, after that HUGE Sabres win against the Flyers IN PHILLY isn’t helping me any. Too much cheering, jumping, thrashing and celebrating. Okay, maybe not TOO much of any of that cuz hey–how is there too much celebrating when the win is THAT huge?!

Anyway, now you know the reason for being in abesntia for the last couple of days. And now, back to your regularly scheduled post.

So I actually started writing this around 7 am. I was up, I hadn’t written in what seemed like forever, so I thought I’d jump in. The first thing I did was hit my “Stumble” button and see what popped up. This is what greeted me. If you’re a Van Halen fan, this … this may hurt to read. Not in a painful, “Kill me now; my life is over” kind of way … but in a “Dude. Dude …” kind of way. Read it, then come back.

All done? See what I mean? I mean, even if you’re not a VH fan, that’s still tragic. There is hardly a honest to goodness musician who would not tell you that Eddie Van Halen was a virtuoso with the guitar. He innovated some playing techniques that were simply out of this world. He constantly tweaked his sound and tinkered with different ways to get different noises. My favorite was finding out that he used an actual drill on his strings to achieve the sound at the beginning of “Poundcake.”

You’ll notice that the video is from the 1991 MTV awards. This was the opening performance, and did it ever set the tone for the rest of the evening. There were a ridiculous number of amazing performances from just that show. Queensryche performing what I consider to be the best live version of “Silent Lucidity” ever; Guns & Roses performing “Live and Let Die“; Metallica performing “Enter Sandman“; L.L. Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out“; EMF performing “Unbelievable” … of course, there were some “less than” performances too, like Mariah Carey doing some stupid ditty, so it wasn’t all highlights. But man.

Yah, that Queensryche performance was just mind-blowing back then. Even this evening when I watched it for the first time in probably 19-20 years, it floored me how pure and precise Geoff Tate’s voice was then. Even today he can still belt it out. I saw another video of him and a couple of the other band members doing “Killing Words” from an acoustic set in May 2008. NAILED it. As if he had just recorded Rage for Order and decided to do an in-store performance for kicks. There are few voices in music that hold more power than his.