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Live: Right Here, Right Now
Van Halen
Warner Brothers, 1993
REVIEW BY: Bruce Rusk
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 06/24/2004
Van Halen recoded this live set during the tour supporting For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. At the time they were one forthe biggest arena fillers in the world. Live albums are among themost difficult to critique. For one thing, most bands don't reallysound that much different in their live recordings than theoriginal studio tracks. So essentially live albums frequentlybecome greatest hits collections. Which seems silly since they'llinevitably release a compilation of some sort, eventually. Thetrick to a successful live album is to give the people somethingdifferent. Live: Right Here, Right Now does not accomplish that.
The big mistakes that made L:RH,RN a lackluster affair are as follows:
The songs sound pretty much the same as they do on the studiorecordings. Other than Eddie's solos, they are primarily note fornote recreations.
They recorded almost the entire For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album, save one song. It'stotally excessive to overload a live set with 10 tracks from onealbum, especially one that was only marginally successful (in thespectrum of their career). Sadly, the one standout track from For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, "Right Now," gets a shabbyand uninspired treatment in the live version. I understand thatthey recorded the tracks on the supporting tour, but this was mixedat least a year later. Any momentum for For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge had long since spun out, andthis material was included in lieu of much better songs from theirearly years. Which leads to my next point…
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