Van Halen

Essential for the first ten seconds of "Dancing In the Street" alone, Diver Down is one of the VH records everybody should have. The Greatest Bar Band the World Has Ever Seen rips through a collection of covers and originals with their patented horniness and pyromania in full effect. Even the filler is great.

Strip away the four cover versions, the three brief instrumentals and the minute-long goof
on "Happy Trails" and Van Halen's fifth album, Diver Down, suddenly seems like a cogent
case for consumer fraud. Van Halen, it appears, is running out of ideas: there's more
excelsior here than in a shipment of glassware. The LP kicks off with a cover of the Kinks'
classic ode to better days, "Where Have All the Good Times Gone!," that lays bar... More >

Less impressive, if only because hangloose covers like "Big Bad Bill" and "Happy Trails" are for more attractive bands. More attractive, if only because the Ray Davies and Roy Orbison covers are so carefully conceived. Attractive sexist original, unatttractive (hence unimpressive) sexist original, guitar as cathedral organ. And so it goes. (Grade - B-)