David Lee Roth – Diamond Dave – Review

David Lee Roth

Diamond Dave (Magna Carta)
by Martin Popoff

I can hardly bear to listen to this because I’m so pissed off at how this guy who could potentially bring so much rock’n’roll joy to a hurtin’ America (with a stroke of the pen and a frontal lobotomy) has pissed away his life, or at least his responsibilities as ex-president. For no good reason, he ends up at Magna Carta – a great label, but a progressive rock and progressive metal one. As I write this, no one at the label has ever spoken to him yet, and the record’s done produced, possibly out… who knows? There won’t be an ounce of press on it. Blessed with an intriguing and infuriating mind – and the motor mouth that allows us see it in full technicolor – David Lee Roth, inexplicably, stingily, maddeningly deals us covers, middling, perky, commercial ones played by a back cast who… who cares? OK, let’s go so far as to say Dave can’t write (I don’t believe it) but he can bloody well co-write. So man, please do so. You owe us. We spent a lot of money on you. This record should not be called Diamond Dave – there’s just not enough of the guy here, mathematically speaking. It’s the sorry work of a guy plugging in his stupid party rock jukebox (in the seclusion of home – Dave’s Never-join-Van-Halen-land – surrounded by hangin’ on human cartoons) and then singing along – jes’ fine thanks, full of life, power, style, even mouthing words that can more often than not be construed as autobiographical. But man, please, for the love of collective happiness, either fake together a Van Halen record or reform the classic solo band. This release is so below the radar, it doesn’t even qualify as a caricature of “Diamond Dave,” something that would at least satisfy like a sugary cereal.
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