Mean Street

Van Halen, Mk.1. No brown M&M's but plenty of Jack Daniels.

There's an urban legend in Philadelphia about the unusual way that Philly rock audiences show their appreciation for an unknown opening act that looks a hostile crowd right in the eyes and proceeds to kick the audiences butt against seemingly insurmountable odds.

So what happens is, when a 'take no prisoners' opener finishes their surprisingly impressive set, the crowd, who had showed up to see the headlining band, will not only applaud wildly, usually with an extended standing O, but they will then pack up and walk out on the headliner. They will actually leave the building! This is their way of telling the hapless headliner, "You just got completely blown off your own stage and there's absolutely no way you're gonna be better than the band we just saw". It's a fairly harsh and disrespectful rebuke. Although this particular phenomenon is infrequent, it demonstrates that Philly rock fans appreciate work ethic, attitude and balls more than anything else.

Bet they tore up Niagara Falls too.

The first instance where I heard of this mass exodus occurring was at a Black Sabbath gig at The Spectrum in late August of 1978. The opener was a brand new band from California that Philly hadn't met yet. Their name was Van Halen. Reportedly, Black Sabbath played to fewer than 1000 stragglers in an arena that 30 minutes prior held nearly 20,000. Sabbath clearly got owned that night and they wouldn't be the last band shamed off their own stage by Van Halen, who would not be a support act for much longer.

Here's "Mean Street" from what I feel is still their hardest rockin' album, "Fair Warning".

Niacin: Dennis Chambers, Billy Sheehan, John Novello

I heard someone describe the band Niacin as "Emerson Lake & Palmer re-imagined as a funk band". That's close, but not entirely accurate. To be sure, the band has chops to spare. Niacin is session drummer Dennis Chambers, bassist Billy Sheehan, and John Novello on keys, primarily the Hammond B3 organ; hence the name Niacin, which is vitamin B3, but you knew that, didn't you?

Given the classic premise of a keyboards, bass and drums three-piece, the results could have been less than spectacular in the hands of lesser musicians. But these guys aren't lesser than anything, having learned their craft through decades of rock, fusion and jazz performances. Billy Sheehan, bass monster for such bands as Talas, Mr. Big and coincidentally, David Lee Roth, following Roth's departure from Van Halen, talked about Niacin in an interview. "We definitely went more towards some of our late '60s, early '70s prog rock roots; people like King Crimson, Gentle Giant, early Genesis and of course, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who we often get compared to. Both John and I as writers have many influences. A good part of that is that you have a big bag of tricks to pull from. So we have a lot of things that we can reference as inspiration."

The new Niacin album "Krush", is available now!

Billy's bandmates are more than up to the task to help shape the vision. "Dennis Chambers, man, I wouldn't know where to start to tell you what records he's been on. He's worked with Chick Corea, Steely Dan, Parliament/Funkadelic, Santana, even James Brown! He's just an absolute champion of the drums. His jazz and funk roots are deep, and as a person, he is ego-free and completely selfless. It's an inspiration because he is just so possessed by playing music. That's all he does, tour and play music. And though his background is jazz, he loves rock. At soundcheck, we'll play Grand Funk or Zeppelin. He digs so many different kinds of music and that's kind of inherent with all of us, so it works out really good when we play together."

Keyboardist John Novello is, in essence, the guitarist and lead vocalist of Niacin, even if he accomplishes it all using B3 vocabularies. "John is a real expert at the B-3 thing. It's fallen on keyboardists' shoulders to know the computer and MIDI stuff, and he's become an expert at that too. But he can also remove himself from that whole computer thing and play real heart and soul type stuff, almost like gospel, on the B3. And as a person, he's really fastidious, and he cares a lot about the overall sound of the band; he's more of a team player than an individualist. I like that a lot."

A drivers seat view of Dennis Chambers' Pearl drum setup. Nice!

I was lucky enough to attend one of Dennis Chambers' drum clinics a few years back. I am a bassist, but yes, I will go to drum clinic. It's the other side of the rhythm section coin. Chambers is known for his powerful playing and explosive fills, much like one of his chief influences, Billy Cobham. Dennis walked in and sat at the drums, took a big swig of his coffee and played solo for roughly 40 minutes. He played riffs on top of riffs, in multiple time signatures, blazing fast and achingly slow, and generally pushed himself as hard as any pro athlete would in a typical workout. A jaw dropping performance.

During the Q&A time afterward, I got to ask him how, when walking into a session with players you've never met, do you sound like you've been playing together for 5 years after only 5 minutes of actual playing. Dennis stood up and addressed the room of drummers with "OK, listen up. All that bulls**t I just played has nothing to do with his question!" He then went into an extended instruction on how to listen to the other players; not leading the dance, but fitting your drum parts into the rhythm of the music. "The music will tell you where it lives.", he said. Sound advice for players of any instrument. And, just as Billy Sheehan described, he was a super nice guy to meet and talk shop with.

From their 2000 album, "Deep", here's Niacin kickin' the snot out of Van Halen's "Mean Street". That's Sheehan doing his best Eddie impression on a bass in the intro. Dude is no slouch. Crank this up!

Niacin just released a new album, "Krush", early in April. It, along with the rest of Niacin's catalog of brain melting recordings, can be found at Amazon. In case you didn't think it was possible, you can indeed get all the Van Halen you would ever want there too. I will direct your attention toward a nifty import boxed set of all 6 of the Roth era studio albums; the only ones that matter in the humble opinion of many. It's yours, new, for about $25. Such a deal.

Regarding those brown M&M's, you can peruse Van Halen's infamous 1982 contract rider here.