Sammy Hagar's Gotta Eat

I think I've said this before, but I'm an obsessive music fan. I follow the careers of bands and individual musicians with the same level of interest normal people usually reserve for sports teams and athletes. Because of this, I have a special place in my amount of Music Crazy for the idea of super groups. These are bands that are formed when some already well-established musicians pool their talents and try to come up with something new and different. Or try to get suckers like me to get worked up about seeing all of their names on the same album cover so we'll buy another CD that sounds remarkably like what they did in their other bands.

I came of age in the 80s, and the first super group I ever heard of was a band called HSAS. They only released one album, "Through the Fire," (today's Album of the Day by the way), back in 1984. Sammy Hagar was the singer, Neal Schon of Journey played guitar. The other two guys, Kenny Aaronson and Michael Shrieve were two guys I'd never heard of, so I had to take it on faith that Sammy and Neal considered them worthy enough to be in their band. KQRS, which was the only socially-acceptable radio station at my high school, had put two or three of their songs into heavy rotation that summer, and even cribbed a few seconds of another song for their station promos for a couple of years after.

I liked Sammy's music, and Neal Schon was the first musician I was a fan of, the first guy that had the kind of talent to make me notice him more than the other guys in his band. I nearly wore through the cassette that summer, and it served me well for years go come as the psyche-up music I'd listen to on my Walkman while traveling to away games for high school soccer. Years later, I paid some $40 to buy the CD as an import from Amazon, only to see the album get rereleased in America a couple years later. I didn't even care, because I'd had it in my library two years longer. And I just checked - it's not available on iTunes.

The reason I'm digging this out today, besides that it's AWESOME, is that tomorrow is the release day of yet another Sammy Hagar-fronted super group: Chickenfoot. Sammy on vocals again. Joe Satriani of Joe-Satriani-is-a-guitar-monster fame on guitar, Michael Anthony from Van Halen on bass, and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on drums. All of these guys are incredible at what they do. I've been looking forward to this album now for well over a year, following its development on Podcasts and websites and interviews. The last time I was in Best Buy and saw Chickenfoot signs hung throughout the store gave me a little thrill. I will be buying this right after school tomorrow, and will listen to it for most of the weekend.

And yet, I'm already thinking that as great as I'm anticipating it will be, it's going to have a hard time living up to how much I loved Through the Fire. I'm not sure if you can love any music as much as the music you loved at sixteen. I guess time will tell, because you can bet I'll be following up to this post before too long....