Van Halen "1984" [1984]

A very astute guitar player once told me you should never play faster than you can think. Chief offenders on this front are Van Halen, four SoCal morons who perfected the faster-than-you-can-think playing aesthetic for people who never really thought too quickly in the first place. Between Eddie Van Halen's coked-out noodling and brother Alex's quadruple bass-drum ridiculousness, "1984" neatly displays just what can go wrong when you approach the sound (and pain threshold) barrier. Enter lead singer David Lee Roth: a frontman so cruelly vile you'd wish you were brain dead to begin with. The band slows things down on the gauche cotton candy that is "Jump," the final amalgamation of what these guys always sought in the first place: a #1 hit. Fuck them, this song blows just as badly nearly 30 years later. Historically, "1984" presents a classic good news/bad news scenario: Diamond Dave is jettisoned off the ship after this album, only to be replaced by gold-chained meatstick Sammy Hagar as lead singer. Play this album only if you want mullet-heads to camp on your lawn.