Van Halen 1983-02-05 Montevideo, Uruguay (SBD)

Here is an uncirculated soundboard recording, capturing the Van Halen concert in Montevideo during the South American leg of their Diver Down tour in 1983 (No Problem tour). This is the one and only night Van Halen played at El Cilindro Municipal (Municipal Cylinder). This recording is another from the collection of VH’s then-front-of-house sound engineer, Roy.

This show may not be completely new to a lot of fans, since there has been a recording of a local radio broadcast that has circulated for many decades. This new uncirculated soundboard recording is a completely different source, with much improved audio quality, and features the previously unheard encore missing from the broadcast recording (Bottoms Up, You Really Got Me, Happy Trails). Due to the tape flip however, this new source is missing a small segment that is present on the old source, specifically Secrets and the drum solo intro to Everybody Wants Some. Oddly, both sources start at the same point during the middle break of Romeo Delight. While unconfirmed, to me this could suggest that Roy was once again running his two tape decks consecutively, starting each at the same time, and was overseeing the recording that was to later be used for the broadcast. The copies of the broadcast source that circulate suffer from many issues such as occasional quality changes, muffle, dropouts, stereo shifts, speed issues, and pops, most of which are probably due to what goes around being from degraded bootleg copies several generations down. Luckily, thanks to Roy, that old broadcast source is ‘mostly’ obsolete now.

This show in Montevideo sees the very first live performance of Dancing In The Street, plus for the first time since 1981, So This Is Love and Summertime Blues make a return to the setlist. These three songs would be part of the setlist for the remainder of the South American tour.

Just as it had been played since Van Halen’s early years, Summertime Blues features a special outro jam, which includes a tease of Black Sabbath’s Symptom Of The Universe. It’s also worth noting that Dance The Night Away ends with Eddie quickly playing a unique riff that seems to be a tease of Keep It Dark from Genesis, and he places more attention on it when doing it again at the start of the jam section during Somebody Get Me A Doctor.

Once again, Roy used two 90 minute tapes to record this show, allowing him to capture most of the show without many major cuts. As mentioned earlier, the only significant cut was during the tape flip at the end of Cathedral, which caused Roy to miss Secrets and the drum solo intro to Everybody Wants Some. The only other minor cut worth mentioning is the quick tape flip during Ed’s guitar solo.

Track Listing:

01 Romeo Delight (cut) [0:00]
02 Unchained [1:33]
03 Drum Solo [5:31]
04 The Full Bug [8:37]
05 Runnin’ With The Devil [12:26]
06 Dave Talks [16:26]
07 Jamie’s Cryin’ [17:59]
08 Little Guitars [21:31]
09 Bass Solo [26:35]
10 Where Have All The Good Times Gone! [31:10]
11 Dancing In The Street [34:08]
12 Little Dreamer [36:57]
13 So This Is Love? [40:38]
14 God Bless The Child [44:38]
15 Cathedral [45:33]
16 Everybody Wants Some!! [47:08]
17 Dance The Night Away [51:56]
18 Somebody Get Me A Doctor / I’m So Glad [55:02]
19 Summertime Blues [1:05:40]
20 Montevideo Jam [1:11:20]
21 Ice Cream Man [1:14:44]
22 Heartbreak Hotel [1:17:36]
23 Intruder [1:20:09]
24 Pretty Woman [1:22:23]
25 Guitar Solo [1:25:35]
26 Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love [1:35:57]
27 Bottoms Up! [1:43:26]
28 You Really Got Me [1:47:29]
29 Happy Trails [1:50:18]
30 You Really Got Me (Reprise) [1:52:00]

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