It’s good times again for Van Halen

Wolfgang, who, by the way, looks a lot more like his mom, Valerie Bertinelli, than his dad, hasn’t yet seemed 100 percent comfortable to be playing the role of arena-packing metal god. But he can play the bass enough to impress his father, uncle Alex and wacky pseudo-guardian Dapper Dave, so it works. Even if it didn’t, the hits keep on coming, one sounding better and more long-overdue than the last.

One thing that helps is that Eddie is in top form, as is Alex, who takes a nightly solo. The show reaches its height when Eddie tears into the fantastic “Little Guitars” from the 1982 album “Diver Down,” and that momentum leads into the oft-sampled, never-matched opening riff of “Jamie’s Crying.”

The only time Diamond Dave feels it necessary to talk for any extended period of time comes when he strides onto the stage alone with just an acoustic guitar in hand. While finger-picking a 12-bar-blues progression, he speaks lovingly of his days growing up in Pasadena, Calif., in the 1970s, where he and his friends wasted the days away smoking bad pot, figuring out women and praying to black-light demigods Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.

It’s a nostalgic set-up to one of Roth’s most personality-rich songs, “Ice Cream Man,” and when the rest of the band re-emerges to kick it up about 100 notches, leaving Roth to swing the guitar around his head like nunchucks, it wasn’t difficult to remember just how good — or how fun — these guys can be.

A power-charged reading of “Panama” is followed by the inevitable 10-minutes-plus solo by Eddie, and he doesn’t disappoint, cramming the best pieces of his album solos, “Eruption” and “Cathedral,” into a sampling of tonal and technical experimentation that recalls Mozart — for whom his son is named — plus Zappa, Django Reinhardt, Segovia and maybe every other great guitarist who’s ever lived.

Once the band has ripped through “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” encores “1984” and “Jump” and the house lights go up, capping a two-hour journey into the past and maybe — hopefully — the future, even the casual VH fan has to wonder, as the band asked in their “Diver Down” album-opening cover tune, “Where have all the good times gone?”

Twenty-two years later, the real Van Halen provides a resounding answer: It just doesn’t matter anymore.

MORE FROM MUSIC

Music Section Front

ABBA, Genesis among new rock hall inductees French rocker Hallyday wakes from coma Obamas join stars for Christmas benefit concert Toby Keith stands by war before peace concert Billboard names Swift, West best artists ’N Sync’s ‘No Strings’ decade’s No. 1 album TV special on surprise star Susan Boyle debuts Newsweek: The best albums of the decade French rocker Hallyday undergoes surgery Review: Solid Brown CD can’t escape scandal Music Section Front   Add Music headlines to your news reader: