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Thread 6994

Thread ID: 6994 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2003-05-30

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il ragno [OP]

2003-05-30 02:28 | User Profile

If I said David Lee Roth was utterly contemptible a la Gene Simmons, I'd be lying. He's always been a likable sort of asshole, on purpose. But as his 'career' whirls down the rock'n'roll port-a-potty, the croaking, no-range, twice-removed voice of Van Halen is desperately reaching. I've seen old pix of Roth brandishing Tony Iommi-sized crucifixes round his neck - and now, alluvasudden, he's a lifelong Zionist battler against 'anti-Semitism'. Kind of sad to watch this one-time arena draw reduced to wearing a silver-lame yarmulke on his way to the dinner theater circuit, but that's how it works: when a show-biz Jew who passed for white has to 'suddenly remember' he's Jewish after all, just to goose ticket sales in Tel Aviv, he's officially a has-been. (It doesn't help that he's flogging his old VH hits with a tribute-band behind him, either.) He's still trying very hard to be 'likable' .....but now he's got the 'asshole' part down pat.

[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51509-2003May28.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2003May28.html[/url]

David Lee Roth, Hoping to Take Classic Rock to Promised Land

By David Segal Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 29, 2003; Page C01

Since the dawn of distortion, men have fronted metal bands for simple reasons, like sex, drugs and the joy of wrecking hotel rooms. David Lee Roth has partaken of his share of groupies, consumed his share of drugs and trashed a whole Holiday Inn's worth of suites. But throughout his career as lead singer of Van Halen, and now as a solo artist, he's had another ambition, one a bit more esoteric and a lot less sordid.

He's on a mission from God.

The God of Moses, to be specific. The God -- let's just spell this out here, shall we? -- of the Jews.

"There's not a lot of Jewish action figures," says Roth. "Heroes for little Jewish kids are very few and far between when it comes to belligerent enthusiasm, a confrontational red-meat approach. I'm a highly literate slut. I dig only intellectual smut."

Roth is sitting in his tour bus behind the 9:30 club, where he's just finished a swaggering two-hour concert filled with karate kicks, crotch grabs and Van Halen classics. He's just now getting his breath back, drinking a Budweiser and sporting lace-up leather pants and an unbuttoned, showbiz-blue shirt studded with tiny jewels. The mane of blond hair is more silvery now, but at 47, he's as lean as he was in the days when Van Halen was an MTV darling and you couldn't sweep the radio for 10 minutes without running into "Jump," or any of the band's other hits.

As he explained in his autobiography, "Crazy From the Heat," Roth relished every decadent minute of band life, but much of his style and energy came from fury over anti-Semitism and an urge to crush Jewish stereotypes. That might surprise longtime Van Halen fans who missed the Talmudic side of Roth's tequila-Tarzan persona. But as Roth explained on the bus Tuesday night, he's never stopped celebrating the idea of Jewish identity.

"Be different," he says. "Keep it separate. Every neighborhood's got something to contribute, so let's not mash it all together, let's not shop at Beige R Us. No, I want a bagel in the morning and Chinese food at lunch, and I'd like a Russian to teach me chess, and I want a Mexican to make me tacos. And there should be a black guy on bass."

Roth pauses for a cackle. He cackles a lot, raspily and for way longer than most people cackle. It turns his eyes into maniacal slits.

"Viva la différence, as they say in Israel," he says, lifting his Bud toward the ceiling and cackling again.

There's some madness in that laugh, and at various moments in this 15-minute interview, it's easier to figure out when the punch lines have arrived than the logical links between the setup and the joke.

"Like it says in the Bible, turn the other cheek, kid," he effuses at one point. "Welcome to Weber grill territory. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

What? It doesn't really matter, because Roth can sound oracular as often as loopy and he perpetually exudes a joy that says, The party already started, dude. His show these days is mostly Van Halen hits, including "Everybody Wants Some," "Panama," "Hot for Teacher" and "Dance the Night Away." Lead-guitar duties fall to the frizzy-haired Brian Young, whose qualifications include a stint in a Van Halen tribute band.

Onstage, Roth is a few parts Bruce Lee, a little bit of Neil Diamond and a whole lot of porn star. He kick-spins like a cornered martial artist, leaps occasionally off the drum riser and suggestively wedges his microphone down his pants. He keeps a bottle of Jack Daniel's nearby, which he sips in dramatic gestures designed to look like heavy swigs. Most of the booze actually ends up sprinkled on fans near the lip of the stage.

"You do more for brunettes than anyone since Snow White," Roth leers midway through the show, pointing at a woman a few rows back. She's invited to come forward, close her eyes and place her hand on Roth's fly, which she gamely does. Roth clasps her hand in place, grinds his hips a little and mentions "little Elvis." Later he grabs a Japanese fighting stick and spins it like the blade of a Cuisinart. The crowd, which includes both fortyish Van Halen stalwarts and 23-year-old classic rock fans, hoot throughout the evening like drunks at spring break.

"My whole show is based on something between the guy in Led Zeppelin and chief of the village at Club Med," Roth says later on the bus. "Somewhere between 'and she's buying a stairway to heaven . . .' and 'don't forget, two-for-one happy hour, 5 till February. Welcome to Diamond Dave's tiki bunker.' Ha ha ha ha ha ha! It's Spider-Man meets Groucho Marx. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Roth appreciates the gaudiness of the show, its dated crudeness, its nostalgia for teased locks and tight trousers. It's a caricature now, of course, but it's not a Jewish caricature, which for him saves it from cliche. Maybe it's not a lesson that the graybeards in the faith want to teach in Hebrew school, but if his career proves anything it's that a bar mitzvah boy can do lewd and loud as well as anyone else.

"Jewish kids take a paperback to the beach instead of a football," he says, half-approvingly. Roth might take a paperback, but he'd persuade a dozen blondes in bikinis to join him and then shoot a raunchy music video when he wasn't reading. If he still had the spendthrift budget of his Van Halen days, he says he'd have a Portuguese teacher on another bus, a kung fu teacher on another bus and a chess tutor stashed somewhere else.

"I don't want to get off the bus the same guy who got on 10 weeks ago," he says, momentarily serious. "Let's take this somewhere. Let's take ourselves somewhere. Why would I do this again and again? To repeat? No. To improve. The same thing only better. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

And how long will Roth be on this bus?

"Until Hanukah," he says, laughing. "Eight encores, baby!"

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Kurt

2003-05-30 06:54 | User Profile

Yeah has-been is right. I do agree with this, though (even though I'm quoting it out of context):

"Be different," he says. "Keep it separate...let's not mash it all together, let's not shop at Beige R Us.

"Beige" seems to be the jewish plan for the future of humanity. Everyone the same color; except for jews, of course. Only members of their tribe will be allowed to keep their ethnic/racial identity.

On a somewhat related note, I read that the Van Halen brothers are part gook, Indonesian I think. I always thought that Alex looked a little funny. No wonder he always wore those sunglasses.

Texas Dissident

2003-05-30 07:14 | User Profile

Originally posted by Kurt@May 30 2003, 01:54 ** On a somewhat related note, I read that the Van Halen brothers are part gook, Indonesian I think. I always thought that Alex looked a little funny. No wonder he always wore those sunglasses. **

Michael Anthony always did strike me as the only sane and normal kinda guy in the group. Not much on the bass, but could hit the high harmony with the best of 'em.

In my opinion they peaked with "Diver Down" and it was pretty much all down hill after that. Roth's just an obnoxious loony now.

N.B. Forrest

2003-05-31 03:24 | User Profile

In my opinion they peaked with "Diver Down" and it was pretty much all down hill after that.

Diver Down was excellent (Pretty Woman cover excepted). 1984 had some fine tunes, but I noticed what I would soon come to realize were the beginnings of a decline. Edward began to use more stock blues licks in his solos, rather than infusing them with the inventiveness & unpredictability he was famous for.

When Hagar took over the mic, the quality of the guitar work completely turned to crap: a bag of shopworn flashy tricks, wretchedly delivered. It's as if he simply stopped caring. I can't listen to any of it.

van helsing

2003-05-31 03:36 | User Profile

they suck but roth was interesting.

not my cup of tea anyway. more older rock and stuff for me. most new stuff bites. too homogenized and 'safe'.

il ragno

2003-06-07 05:13 | User Profile

Nothing is ever funnier than the plain truth.

[url=http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/03/40/music-seigal.php]http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/03/40/music-seigal.php[/url]

[SIZE=3][color=red][font=Times]Jew or Not a Jew? [/font][/color][/SIZE] The case against David Lee Roth

by Buddy Seigal

If you look up David Lee Roth on jewhoo.com, a database website of famous Jews (no, I’m not kidding), the curator has himself a kvetch about people continually checking to see what "everybody already knows," which is that Roth is a lantzman. Today I am here to have a kvetch of my own: if David Lee Roth is the world’s most renowned circumcised rock star, something is terribly wrong in the universe; may the moyl that cut him be consigned to an eternity of listening to Jackie Mason performances.

We, the Hebrews, beloved and embraced the world over (most notably by Aryans and Arabs), have graced the world with such musical menschim as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Randy Newman, Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, Perry Farrell and Richard Hell. Okay, so we’re also responsible for Kenny G, Michael Bolton, Neil Diamond and Richard Marx, but yin/yang is nothing but a philosophy that the Buddha—who I understand came from Yemeni stock—appropriated from Kabbalah.

Anyway, even though I’m much too lazy to indulge in anything resembling investigative journalism to get to the heart of the matter, I would put forth the proposition that Roth isn’t really a Jew at all. The evidence is clear:

•Roth was born in Bloomington, Indiana. There are no Jews in Indiana.

•With his homeless-person tan, hideously stringy mop of straw topping his thinning, vein-encrusted pate and countenance so craggy it calls to mind the folds in Louie Anderson’s torso, Roth has "ugly white guy" written all over him. No Jew outside of Golda Meir has ever been so painful to gaze upon; Roth is now so repulsive he looks like one of those albino karate twin guys from The Matrix: Reloaded.

•Jews simply do not behave as flamboyantly as Roth; we never choose to call attention to ourselves as we go about the business of world domination. We don’t flit about onstage smelling of Aqua Net and testicle sweat; we don’t prance about like Richard Simmons with vibrating ben-wa balls shoved up our ass. We prefer to work our subjugating power discreetly, behind the scenes, quietly colluding with Satan and controlling every facet of your foolish, goyish existence.

•Roth stood me up on an interview for this story. Jews never stand people up, especially other Jews. We keep appointments, we return phone calls, we meet deadlines, we come in under budget, we conduct business in a professional manner and we expect the same in return. If you don’t comply with us, we tell God on you and then you’ll be sorry because we are, after all, the Chosen People.

•Roth recently floated a bogus story to the press about how he apprehended a knife-wielding intruder on his property and held him at bay with a shotgun until the police arrived; of course, the police report told a totally different tale. Jews never personally soil our hands with violence or even claim to; we send our Italian friends out to f*ck you up instead (we control the Mafia as well as the world banking system, print and broadcast media, all of Hollywood and, of course, the Dixie Chicks). In fact, I suspect that Roth planted this story just to prove to the world that he’s more of a badass than intruder victim George Harrison, who was so physically unintimidating he’d have made a fine Jew.

Even if Roth didn’t claim to be a Jew, I’d have a hard time with him. I couldn’t stomach his "ain’t I adorable" fancy-boy shtick with Van Halen, and it only grew worse once he went solo and started ruining perfectly good Louie Prima and Beach Boys tunes. I cannot tolerate the baseless high regard in which he holds himself, and it is he, perhaps more than any other rock star, who personified the Hairspray Metal Problem that afflicted this otherwise great nation in the ’80s. Once Roth rather quickly became irrelevant, his attempted comeback in the early ’90s was among the most embarrassing makeovers ever witnessed, as he scrubbed up his persona and image in a transparent endeavor to become a middle-of-the-road pop-rock guy not so far removed from, err, Michael Bolton. I still suffer nightmares about his contemporary appearance on the Today show, rife with witty banter.

And so now, it is with much shame and trepidation that I must admit to really liking Roth’s upcoming CD, Diamond Dave, to be released in July. The CD has surprisingly—dare I say it?—tasteful elements of blues, jazz and R&B, guest spots by the likes of Edgar Winter and Nile Rogers, and a bevy of interestingly chosen and expertly executed covers, including the Doors’ "Soul Kitchen," Jimi Hendrix’s "If 6 Was 9," the Hombres’ "Let It All Hang Out" (which here sounds like a Frank Zappa reworking) and the Beatles’ "Tomorrow Never Knows" (here inexplicably retitled "That Beatles Tune"). Gone is the bombastic, grandiose fluff-metal we’ve come to expect from this guy, largely replaced by seriously fine musicianship and a new vocal style that is surprisingly—dare I say it?—deep and soulful. Questions of theological identity aside, I must report the truth, for this is what I’m paid to do, and David Lee Roth has belatedly made an album that’s really, honestly, damned good, whether the vibrating ben-wa balls remain embedded up his quivering starfish or not.

But Diamond Dave, the next time you decide to blow off an interview, best to remember that it’s unwise to piss off a writer for a rabble-rousing communist homosexual newspaper with free reign to say anything he chooses. Especially a Jewish one.

David Lee Roth; Jibe at the House Of Blues, 1530 S. Disneyland Ave., Anaheim, (714) 778-2583. Wed., 8 p.m. $42.50-$45. All ages.

$45.00 to see this burnt match-head of a 'rock star'? No wonder rock'n'roll is dead.

Roy Batty

2003-06-07 05:27 | User Profile

Roth's uncle owned a string of nightclubs on the East Coast. He also helped Joan Rivers into the biz. Diamond Dave is a yahoodi. Not that any of us doubted it, but just in case ...

Funny article though.