rushfan4 In response to David Lee Roth's Eat 'Em And Smile, we got Van Halen's rebuttal Oh, You Ate One Too. Pretty witty.

Anyhow, I have written this elsewhere in the forums but on the day I purchased my first CD player I bought 2 CDs. This one from Van Halen and Long, Cold Winter from Cinderella. I loved the Van Halen one and played it numerous times. Those were the days when I only had 2 CDs and therefore spent a lot of time listening to my entire discography instead of just select portions of it. Anyhow, at this same time I was reading the Stephen King novel "IT", and this album became the soundtrack for this book for me. Not really sure why. My memory has gotten worse with age and it is funny the things that the brain remembers, but I always associate these things together. As I listen to this album for the first time in ages, my memories of the book come back as well. I used to devour Stephen King books in my youth, and "It" was probably my 2nd favorite from him after "The Stand". Back on point, OU812 is my favorite Van Halen album from the Sammy Hagar era and 2nd only to 1984 in my favorite Van Halen albums. Probably because of all those listens it is ingrained in my head pretty deeply. For me, there are no weak moments on this album. The musicianship is splendid and unlike the David Lee Roth years most of the songs exceed 4 minutes in length, with Cabo Wabo topping 7 minutes. On the other hand, Long Cold Winter is mostly just a footnote in my CD collection history as one of the first 2 CDs that I ever owned. It is actually a decent album, but at the time I didn't really like it all that much because the music was actually better composed and played and more mature than their previous release which was an awesome hair metal album (at the time anyhow).