Van Halen - Fair Warning
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CD Details
Artist: Van HalenEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2000-09-19
Music Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Soundtracks:
- Mean Street
- "Dirty Movies"
- Sinner's Swing!
- Hear About It Later
- Unchained
- Push Comes to Shove
- So This Is Love?
- Sunday Afternoon in the Park
- One Foot out the Door
Music reviews of Fair Warning
Music Review: Fair Warning
Rating: 4 Stars
Fair Warning was Van Halen's fourth studio album. It peaked at #5 on the album charts & it had four singles that charted! This is simply amazing because Fair Warning is probably the LEAST commercial album they released with Diamond Dave on vocals. Though there were four charting singles from the album it's not quite as obvious to the why. It should be noted that all four singles didn't crack the Pop Singles Chart (Billboard's main chart) but only entered Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. "Mean Street" peaked at #12, "Push Comes to Shove" went to #29, "So This Is Love? went to #15,& "Unchained" peaked at #13. Fair Warning is Van Halen's hardest rocking album & also, without a doubt their most dark & unrelenting album. There's very little party atmosphere present. Women & Children First contained a small seed of this darkness & by the time of Fair Warning it had fully blossomed. Even the album cover was a harbinger of what was inside: hard, relentless % unmerciful.
"Mean Street" is the first salvo of the album. Eddie Van Halen starts off with a sizzling guitar lick that lets you know immediately that there won't be any prisoners taken on this trip. "Mean Street" is a hard rocking song with dark & foreboding lyrics that inspired the title of the album. Diamond Dave isn't trying to be cute with his vocals, he's in the battle too, singing in a style that's menacing. "Dirty Movies" is mellower in tone & less menacing than the previous song but there's still something unusual about it; it's still unrelenting. "Remember when that girl was prom queen?" "Sinner's Swing!" revels in its naughtiness & wallows in the things better left unmentioned. "Hear About It Later" opens with Eddie playing a mellow electric guitar before the band breaks into the body of the song. "Hear About It Later" is the one song on Fair Warning that sounds like it could have come from either of the first two albums. But at about 2;40 of the song there's a change in the sound that harkens back to the main themes of Fair Warning before the band breaks back into the song. "Unchained" was the song that was played the most in the city that I lived in at the time. "Unchained" isn't the darkest song on the album, there's even some of Diamond Dave's humor in the song. With "Push Comes to Shove" the tone of the album really moves into the dark side. "So This Is Love", though not menacing in itself, is covering territory lyrically that's to one side of center. Nothing wrong with it but it does contain a dark presence not normally found in Van Halen songs. "Sunday Afternoon in the Park" is anything but what the title implies. Eddie presents us with his first keyboard instrumental that won't let you nap pleasantly. This is a perfect lead-in to the next song, "One Foot Out the Door". This is another song that fits the terror that lies underneath the surface of the album.
Fair Warning is a very good album. Unlike the previous albums there's not an outstanding song nor any Van Halen classics presented here but... there isn't a bad one either. Many have overlooked this Van Halen near classic but those were ones that might not have been die hard Van Halenites either. As with the other Van Halen albums that have been remastered it's nothing short of excellent. This might have been a great direction for the band to have continued but they didn't. With their next album they would cross back over into their pop side, get us back on the dance floor & have us parting on the patio again.
Description of Fair Warning
Japanese pressing. Reissue of 1981 original release has been remastered and comes in a standard jewel case. Warner. 2005.Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) CDs
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