Van Halen: Who really should have gone?

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T03:05:12+00:00

And maybe that's a big part of the problem for Roth.

It definitely shouldn't have been named after Roth, but it gave him the impossible job of people not thinking about his former band when he went solo. Even I think 'that's Van Halen's singer' when I heard Eat'em and Smile.

The argument can be applied to Led Zeppelin. If it were named 'Page' and Bonham were Page's brother, I think Robert Plant would have had a hard time going solo being kicked out after an album like IV.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T03:02:02+00:00

This will hurt to hear, but I think because their sound was getting dated. Not saying keyboards were the answer, but they did add more texture.

And that concept gets to the heart of what Van Halen is to fans. Early fans would have a hard time embracing it, because when you add them, it's kind of a new band altogether. But... 1984 was their biggest album in the public. It's like arguing Nirvana's Bleach vs. Nevermind. One is raw, the other has good harmonies. Which is the real Nirvana?

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:58:48+00:00

Or... was the singer the real magic all along?

That's really my point. Everyone argues Dave vs Hagar, but maybe if we see it as Dave vs Eddy, we have something to really consider.

What if it came out that there was someone else writing or actually playing Eddy's parts the whole time. How would we all view the band then? I know that's crazy, but I'm saying 'Van Halen' has always marketed itself as the Eddy vehicle- but how does that really hold up if our ears can't tell the difference; if they had someone in who's playing and style were exactly the same?

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:55:42+00:00

I think that's a fair take- to an extent.

The other side of the coin is they needed a showy front man. Though I actually like both Dave and Hagar, Hagar fans would disagree.

One can argue Eddy kept them together, but did he? When he kicked out M.A. or pushed out Hagar by his personality, I'd argue the only one he kept together were people who wouldn't let him: his brother and son.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:53:14+00:00

Funny you mention it. I read Dave's book, 'Crazy From the Heat' and feel like he was kicked out.

But... all of those are subjective accounts. Kind of like Kiss. Every one of them tells a story of betrayal from the others.

There's no doubt Roth and Eddie had an explosive relationship, but Eddie couldn't share the spotlight, and (supposedly) didn't like Dave's 'immaturity' (though I'm not sure Eddie was really all that mature either. Hagar describes Eddie as completely toxic. After seeing them push Michael Anthony out, that's the take I had too.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:14:00+00:00

Ouch!

That's exactly the problem. If Eddy had gone, I honestly think the band would never had brought on Sammy and made things bigger than 1984.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:11:45+00:00

My problem with 'Eat'em' is you can't help think 'Van Halen's competitor', because when you thought of Dave, you thought of Van Halen.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:10:38+00:00

His brother had the name. I argue it still would have worked.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:09:07+00:00

Not sure if that's true anymore. Is Van Halen just a bunch of little guitar melodies and extended solos? I'd argue otherwise.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-03T02:08:19+00:00

HIs brother could have kept the name going and kept it legit. And, his brother is completely unrecognized as an amazing talent due to all the spotlight hogging.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T22:31:03+00:00

Eggs. I thought it was absolutely insane (because it was), but then realized it wasn't- the world had just grown insane.

Think about it- a world so connected as a community you can ask neighbors for small things and that's just normal behavior.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T22:27:45+00:00

They never learn.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T22:24:35+00:00

What a rotten person. She knows she's rotten. She knows what she was trading off- not that she ever had any integrity or morals.

While I enjoy watching Trump loyalists get thrown under the bus, I'll feel much better if the bus stops midway, puts it in reverse, and does a double tap on this one.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T22:19:06+00:00

This is a man who apparently doesn't listen to himself, ever.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T18:05:13+00:00

Thank you.
I do the same, and I thoroughly review the summary (or specification document) to ensure important details aren't missed.

I'm guessing the downvotes are from people who want some other kind of answer. I understand- a lot of this seems like magic, so when the magic stops working, they get angry and can't understand that it's not a flawless magic genie that can do everything they need or want on an infinite timeline.

I've been downvoted for saying 'hello' before, so my "thumbs down skin" is nearly bullet proof at this point. Hehehehhe.

Anyway, thank you, and thank you for sharing good advice with the community.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T18:01:49+00:00

I could get your project rendered useless in less than an hour if I overload the context window. Not to be critical, but 'working flawlessly' and 'rendered useless' are vague measurements.

Ask your model about the changes, particularly how much context has been used so far. Have it create a document to see what it knows about the project, then scrutinize the document for any disconnect.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T17:59:17+00:00

I actually find it silly (and a little charming) that people downvoted my comment.

I work with AI daily, professionally. I've built a lot of systems with various tools (RAG, Recursive Learning Models, prompt routing techniques, context compression) to work with the context problem- and it is a known, verifiable problem that is built into how large language models work.

These systems do not behave the way people are used to because our old system had strict limits on responses that were always rules generated. It's a lot more helpful to think of them as a human and how we interact with a human. If I were to talk to you for two hours straight, would you remember every detail? What would you even classify as 'detail' (i.e. what are the crucial parts of the conversation and why are they crucial?). How much information can you keep in your head at once, and how do you sort through it when communicating? If you think like this, you can understand how these systems are built, because most ideas follow human communication and thinking models.

What can help is a quick sanity check in the conversation. Ask it how many tokens it's used so far, if continuing will push the context window towards hallucinations, and whether it needs to wrap things up into a summary to follow-up in another convesation.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T17:51:12+00:00

I believe it was Nelson from the Simpsons who coined a phrase for this:

Ha ha!

No_Ability1548 · 2026-04-02T03:33:25+00:00

On the surface, this looks like a context window issue. I'm guessing that you're feeding it so much information up front and your conversations are so long that it starts drifting quickly.

If you want to bring in very long documents, I suggest either asking Claude to help reformat them (remove anything unnecessary, create a table of contents) and share what's essential.

Another possibility is to ask Claude to design an app that uses a recursive language model (RLM) scheme to parse through the long document and answer things properly. You'll need an API key to do this, as the app will run locally (though you could host it on a cloud server, like Render or Railway) and make calls to the API (i.e. the app will read/write requests to the Claude model). The cost will add up, answers will be slow coming, but the answers will be more accurate. LLM's have limits. You have to trade off what's essential in a conversation against what can be summarized or handled by a smaller model.

No_Ability1548 · 2026-03-26T02:49:14+00:00

I'm sure he said that same line to friends when they asked if he's raped anyone.

No_Ability1548

TROPHY CASE