Monday I had my fanboy experience. $390 per seat. My wife and I.
Hartford Civic Center. I shall try to convey the experience.

3:30 Driving on I-91 north, I called the tour guide's cell and begged to bring my Wolfgang in a backpack type gig bag to possibly get signed. Guide says "no, venue won't allow". I'm all bummed.
My buddy, JJ, who frequently gets Aerosmith autographs at similar events and has brought guitars to concerts told me I could bring it anyway, but I'm not going to. I'm disappointed and start thinking that I just wasted $780 on a scam "all access" pass that doesn't allow cameras and that my chances of meeting the band are probably nil. I'm starting to get pissed.

3:45 Park at a nice garage and get a great spot (slip the attendant a fin and get a front spot with easy exit). We leave the garage thinking the "will call" desk will be at an easy to reach Civic Center entrance, but they are doing massive construction on the place and all sidewalks are closed. We circumnavigate the Civic Center looking for the entrance and finally find it at 3:55 (having been warned to be there at 4:00 sharp, so there is a little bit of nerves going on here).

4:15 Tour guide finally shows up after we've stood around watching the other losers who have purchased way too expensive tickets.

4:45 Finally make it through the line to get our laminates and get the tour started. We were last in line because of the mad scramble to form a line by the tour guide and show ID's. I hate to wait but have a good amount of patience. They had already divided the group of about 60 into separate tour groups (we're, of course, in the latter).

5:00 They bring us up to the executive lounge (where people with hockey box seats for the old Hartford Whalers have a prive bar and buffet area) and we have free Bud Light and a finger food buffet.
Stuff that you buy at the frozen food section of B.J.'s or Sam's.

It was nice, don't let me start making fun of everything, but at this point I'm thinking I made a mistake. They have goody bags with hats and shirt for us. The hats are nice, although sort of Truck Stop like. The shirts are pretty lame. White with a VH eagle logo in black only and the back has the logo for the company conducting the tour (I Love All Access). We can see down onto the stage from the box seats and see the other group touring the stage area, in the pit. We wait around.

5:30 They hand out our tickets in envelopes. I'm hoping for good seats, everyone has now been promised the first 5 rows. I open up the envelope and BAMMMMMM! Section 2 (middle), Row A (front), Seats
5 and 6 (out of 14). Front row center! Now THAT is worth it. Best seats I've ever had. Everyone else is comparing spots and hypothesizing where they are in relation to the stage. My wife and I just hang out and smile.

5:45 There is mucho confusion among the tour guides and while they are about to bring us on the backstage tour they quickly change and bring us the front of the stage. This is the where the day gets better. While we're walking down toward the stage, Eddie is walking parallel to us. We get to the front of the stage and he emerges, alone, on stage right in front of us (we've all packed up against the barriers as seating assignment doesn't matter yet, but we've checked and sure enough we are just off center on Eddie's side). He starts talking to us asking "what they hell are you people doing here, what am I doing here". He slurs his words and is either drunk or drunk and high. He wears camo pants and a camo shirt and boots held together with duct tape with a big hole in the toe. He has a Wolfgang sunburst quilt top special with sustainiac in the neck pickup spot. He starts tweaking his dials and messing around with some effects and complaining about how sore he is from taking a night off. He just noodles and messes around and talks to the tech's and the sound guy. He also talks to us. I am standing there in awe. Alex and Mike come out and similarly tweak. There is more back and forth. The band recognizes some of the people there, one woman is there for her sixth show. Eddie doesn't sign anything, telling a person who asks that if he starts signing he has to sign everyone's stuff. Wolfgang comes out with his guitar on and hangs out a little bit. He looks sort of sad and bored and out of place. He never plays. That made me a little sad to see. The band is ready to warm up together after much noodling (sounded a lot like my band practices). They played "It's About Time" (without vocals as Sammy was never there, saving his voice, we were told). They played "Jump", obviously to test out the sequenced parts.

Mike and Eddie joked around with the lyrics, changing the words. I couldn't quite make out/or remember what was exactly said, but seemed funny. They played two more songs (Run Around and Unchained as I recall). Eddie messed with his Sustainiac a lot. His sound was okay, but not great. It wasn't processed to all hell (no Eventide that I could tell) but it was his modern sound of the 5150 amps. His pedalboard was surrounded by this black plastic stuff, so I couldn't see the contents. He used this big eye bolt screwed into the body of the guitar and with a mountain climbers clip thing held the black and yellow guitar cable away from himself. He was pretty well anchored to his spot on stage (where I stood in front of him) the whole night, because this elaborate cable thing still caused him constant problems. After they were done playing Mike signed a ton of stuff included my wife's laminate (I stood behind her and yelled "sign the blonde's".....I pimped my wife out).

6:15 We're back at the executive bar area thing and they have raffle (we each got a raffle ticket in our envelope). Lori and I won a hooded black Van Halen sweat shirt ($85 value, but a size L which is a little small for me) and a girls red sleeveless T-shirt in red with the black and white stripes.

6:30 There is some time and they offer those who had not had the backstage tour to a quick one. About 10 of us take it. It was pretty cool. After the boring stuff of touring essentially a hockey rink, we go behind the stage and to the side and see Mike's back line area and Sammy's guitar area and amp. They we go to the pit.
We get EVH picks. We see the opening act setup and do their sound check (the band is Silvertide, from Philly, and they all need to eat a cheeseburger or two).

7:00 We go back to the executive lounge only to be told that the tour is over and we are on our own. Lori and I go to the merchandise stands to try and exchange the sweatshirt. I see a baseball jersey ($125!) that I like, but they insist all sales are final and no exchanges can be made. Bummer. I buy a $35 shirt with the black Wolfgang on it (same as the inside cover of the Best of album). I always like to have a nice shirt from each show, and since the free one was lame, I bought one, even though it didn't have show dates on it or the year printed on it. It was the one I liked best.

7:30 We're in our seats and Silvertide does their very best to rock out. I have to say that I liked them a whole lot. They were sort of hippy/Led Zeppelin wannabes in their look, and they played straight ahead rock with cool guitar solo's and mucho attitude.
They were as skinny as any heroin user has ever been. My wife says "these kids need to eat a cheeseburger or two." I was really into their show. Nobody else seemed to be. Many of the people on the five star thing were sitting down or absent. I thought this was kind of rude. These guys were busting their asses and sounding damn good, although the songs weren't memorable, they were good rock and roll. I guess their album comes out in September and if I see it I might pick it up just because I respect a band trying that hard, sounding that good when they have not audience at all. They finished their half hour set and got the biggest ovation when they mentioned Van Halen was up next.

8:30 - 11:00 (time is irrelevant) Van Halen comes on and I am in utter ecstasy. There is a camera man in the area between the rail and the stage and this is a bit of hassle at times and the stick-up- his butt security wanker kept making passes between we in the front row and the rail, yelling "give me an aisle way, I need an aisle way!" He'd do this every time someone leaned on the railing.

I am simply loving the show and mostly ignoring these distractions. I keep looking over at my wife with a big goofy grin on my face. I can't believe I am this close to my hero. I screamed my throat sore and then some more. I jumped up and down. I flashed the 5150 double I-LUV-U hand sign (the kind that forms a symbolic vagina) dozens of times, I pumped my fists. I didn't care how dorky I looked. I was one with my dorkdom. The performance was not up to par, to be honest. Eddie messed up a bunch, the band was off at times, Sammy only sang choruses now and then, preferring to have the crowd sing them for him, and the sound quality was pretty mushy (I wore ear plugs for most of the show, figuring I'd save my hearing for future shows, but did take them out for the solo and a few other songs just so I could hear it unabated). One of the highlights, for me, was Mike singing Somebody Get Me a Doctor. I swear they should just be a three piece with Mike singing. His pipes are great. The energy level was there in spades (probably my perspective is slanted by my seat and enthusiasm) and they really sold the show well even though the performance of the music was subpar. Eddie's solo was much less structured then when I've seen him before and he was often just messing around, not unlike sound check. I really think he was stoned. BTW he wore the same camo pants and worn out boots as he did at sound check and played shirtless. When he sat down on the front of the stage for 316, he was right in front of me and handed me his cigarette (which I smoked, passed around a little bit, then got back and kept.....I AM fanboy, now I can save the saliva and have Eddie cloned....BTW, Eddie smokes menthols). Wolfgang came out and played 316 which I heard would happen. He still looked sad to me. Eddie's "Valerie" tattoo also made me a little sad (my wife later told me the same thing). It seemed forced when he held up Wolfgang's arm and said "The Future!" Especially since Eddie slurred the words. Poor Wolfie. I had heard about this solo thing, and it is almost lame to me that he does it every show. Let's see.

The show is a blur. I had so much fun. My wife took pictures with her camera phone which seemed to be okay with security (everyone was doing it) but they stopped the lady behind us who was using a real digital camera. We've been so busy that she hasn't figured out how to download (or email) the pictures to the computer yet. I will soon and post them. Lori got Sammy to sign the same laminate during the tail end of the show. That was cool. Two signatures and a cigarette butt.

It was a great experience. I'm still on cloud nine. For me, it was way worth it. I probably won't bother to do it again this way, but as a one time deal. Yes. I needed that.