NEW VAN HALEN...yours truly has it!

[Warg Master]

Well, they seem to be working now, but they weren't at the time

 

[OrangeChannel]

DF....That shirt rocks! I made a Buddy Icon out of that a while back. I tell you some long stories as to why I feel the way I do about the RIAA, but that's not what this is about.

Hmmmm....does anyone know what label the greatest hits is going to drop on??? I thought they were off Warners now.

 

[PurpleSport]

Once again, PurpleSport is cool.

So PS, do you mean to tell me that if the radio stations received this fed to them at this point via MP3 delivery this morning, as the snippet I saw suggested, they could/would sit on it until next Tuesday?

Once again, thanks for the kind props, DWF!

No, most stations would jump all over the chance to get a new track on the air first for bragging rights to such an "exclusive" - some stations even have the stones to play tracks that are leaked well in advance of an album release, sometimes even rough mixes show up on the air too, i.e. Audioslave (trust me, I've been there and gotten angry cease and desist phone calls from major label shirts myself). The fact that this didn't leak out earlier seems to indicate that a pretty high level of attention was paid to who got to hear and keep copies of the new tracks.

I'd be careful about doing any filesharing of this file through Kazaa and such. My guess is that this track leaked from a semi-inside source like a radio station, and record companies are known to digitally watermark advance tracks on MP3 and then nail folks who've swapped 'em, or bait folks on Kazaa into grabbing them and then recording their IP addresses for later prosecution. I'm not kidding, this is how they managed to get some of the folks they fingered to pay up recently - the swappers usually 'fessed up after these little details were pointed out to them.

And mind you, as much as VH may not care if you get the tracks or are spending $900 to see them, the lawyers for the record industry do...THEY'RE the ones who'd be knocking on your door with their hands out. My guess, though, is that as long as you play this one close to the vest and don't be stupid, it's not going to be a huge deal, they're probably more concerned about the gross abusers than the occasional swapper right now, as well as the folks on the inside who leak official stuff like this from the source.

Regarding what JDoug said, radio stations (especially those owned by smaller companies and in smaller markets with tighter budgets) will usually do whatever they can to get free product (legally, of course) from a record company. Of course, money and favors talk louder, but they also more easily tracked and are what payola used to be. The line's certainly blurred a lot since the old days, though.

I do indeed feel sorry for ya, Packrat - I'm very familiar with the CanCon stuff, as my company deals with it every day, not to mention that I have several Canadian co-workers. France has the same thing, actually, one of their many famous "cultural protection" exercises (seems like that's the model, perhaps due to the French/Canadian ties?).

The track has grown on me a bit since I've listened to it with headphones - I first listened to it on my laptop's speakers. There's some rhythm guitar doubletracking that fattens things up interestingly. But, like some, I'm wondering about whether this is truly what will show up on the record - the track sounds a bit "loose" in ways that earlier stuff didn't. Hagar's vocals sound a bit off to my ear from the last time I heard him, and his vocal overdubs are much more glaringly apparent than past albums. It sounds a bit "thrown together" and a little forced, which even the less produced previous Hagar stuff never did in an obvious way. Looks like the Howard Stern crew feel similarly (from his site recap of yesterday's show):

"Howard played the new Van Halen single to lukewarm responses from everyone. Robin and Artie were not digging it, and Fred wondered if this was even a finished version of the song."

Lastly, the file itself seems to indicate Warner Brothers as the label, which they're technically been let go from. Methinks this is one of those albums that artists do when they're at the end of their contract and need to meet an outstanding obligation - usually a less than stellar live album, or a greatest hits + bonus tracks (usually B-sides, unreleased cuts, or hastily recorded tracks, which I feel is what this is). Hagar himself did this with Geffen Records right after he joined VH, actually - resulting in the "Unboxed" CD.