Am listening to one of my favorite Van Halen tunes "Baluchitherium" on repeat today at work (Sammy Hagar-era haters can suck on this one for all I care, 'cause it's instrumental!) It is one of the most beautiful, bombastic sounding recordings he's ever done and might even be fun to try covering someday with Iced Ink if I can find a dozen or so willing and able guitar players to sit in on it. Oh-mah-gahd what a wanker-filled fucking nightmare that would be. Forget I even mentioned that.
Anyhow, one of my favorite things about this song really has nothing to do with the song at all. I remember reading a story about it an interview with Mr. Van Halen in some guitar rag when this album came out: He mentioned that you can hear his dog bark at the end of the song (you can! To the 2 other people out there that have this CD, give it a spin!)
But it's how he got the dog to bark that's cool. The dog evidently had some nerves about being in the studio and wouldn't bark on command into the microphone, so Eddie had to dangle a hot dog by the microphone and tease the dog with it in order to get him to start yapping. And when you know that, you can sort of hear it in the bark. It starts off as an apprehensive long growl, and eventually the dog's instincts take over its shyness and the growl turns into a full blown pissed off, hot-dog craving bark.
Every time I listen to this song I can't help but start feeling empowered by the sheer massiveness of it all. Big heavy drums that sound like tanks, a sonic slow motion waterfall of 8 gazillion beefy guitars playing at once, and a big crunchy bass tone that would make you swear your speakers were about to grow legs and start stomping after you if you didn't feed them some raw steak.
And then right at the end along comes that dog bark and all I can picture is Eddie Van Halen with headphones on dangling a hot dog in front of a very expensive microphone trying to get his dog to bark. I don't know why I think that's so awesome, but I do...
