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Not Pete Atkin >> Off-topic >> Who are you?
(Message started by: Leslie Moss on Today at 11:38)

Title: Who are you?
Post by Leslie Moss on Today at 11:38
With no attempt to make a Pete connection (other perhaps than the modal age of the audience) has anyone caught The Who's current tour? Gill and I saw them at Wembley Arena on Tuesday night and they were awesomely good. Two hours on stage (including a 25 minute "encore" comprising the best bits of Tommy) for fifty quid (Genesis were charging £110 minimum price a week or so earlier).

I don't know what Peter Townsend and Roger Daltrey are on to give them such energy but I sure would like some! I was half-expecting a sort of self-tribute band - note-perfect but soulless - but on the contrary they blew their support band The Charlatans off the stage with their power, energy and enthusiasm. Their new (to me unfamiliar) stuff was also brilliant - they've clearly not lost their writing strength (just like another pair I could mention).

Ears still ringing 24 hours later (is this age or do the amps go up to eleven these days?).

Leslie

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Murray McGlew on 29.06.07 at 08:45
I'm extremely jealous. The Who have been my favourite rock band for decades, but I've never seen them live. Having said that, I don't listen to much loud rock these days in a belated effort to keep what's left of my hearing for as long as possible. I remember all too well how my ears felt after an AC/DC gig in 1976.

I think the Who may be including Australia in this tour, but they will probably limit themselves to the east coast which will leave me with an expensive decision to make. In fact I've already made it. I'll play Live at Leeds on the stereo and keep my debt at servicable (just) levels. Of course various people I know will see them and tell me how great it was, and I'll wish I'd gone.

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Leslie Moss on 29.06.07 at 12:29
Freudian slip - "Peter Townsend" instead of Pete Townsend - must be getting old!

Leslie

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by S J Birkill on 29.06.07 at 13:00
...or Townshend, Leslie?  :)

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Richard Bleksley on 29.06.07 at 14:16
Ah, the memories! In the dim and distant past when I was a teenager the Who were one of my favourite bands (only we called them "groups" in those days), and it's nice to hear they can still hack it, even though I find it hard to imagine them minus both Moon and Entwhistle.

I saw them only the once, but I still vividly remember two things in particular.

1) As Leslie says, value for money. This was the Tommy tour, and the set consisted of the whole of Tommy plus about half-a-dozen numbers as a sort of starter course. And no interval. Non-stop for over two hours!

2) NOISE!! The venue was the Fairfield Hall in Croydon, and we arrived a few minutes late. The music was audible right down in the foyer, and entering the auditorium was like walking into a brick wall of sound. Easily the loudest music I ever heard (must have been louder, much louder, than UB40); in fact I heard years later that the Tommy tour has a reputation of being the loudest music ever heard on the planet. I can well believe it. No wonder Pete Townshend suffers from deafness...

I think the Who's amps must have always gone up to eleven, Leslie.

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Leslie Moss on 29.06.07 at 17:39

on 06/29/07 at 13:00:33, S J Birkill wrote :
...or Townshend, Leslie?  :)


You know, I never even spotted that!

BTW The drummer was Richard Starkey's sprog. Rather more accomplished than his dad.

Leslie

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Pete Atkin on 29.06.07 at 22:59
" Rather more accomplished than his dad."

Sorry, Leslie, I really cannot sit still for that one.  It's a bit of a hoary old chestnut which in my view simply does not stand up to examination.  I think Ringo was always the most underestimated musician of the four, and his contribution to the uniqueness of the Beatles' sound was, in my view, huge.  I don't think it's too much to say that Sgt Pepper is his record more than any of the others', that his part in its overall sound is greater than any of the other three individuals'.  This was brought home to me watching those current bands re-recoring all the Pepper songs in Abbey Road 2 for Radio 2:  it was precisely the drumming that none of them could get.   And it won't do to say that he was just a hick who got lucky - his way of laying behind the beat without giving up a smidgeon of drive was, dammit, unique, and anyone doing it today immediately opens themselves to accusations of trying to sound like Ringo.  And it won't do, either, to say he was not "a good musician", i.e. that he couldn't read music, etc.  That would leave Lennon and McCartney in limbo too.  I really can't imagine what 'more accomplishment' would have meant in the context.   Sorry - bit of a hobbyhorse.

As for the Who, I thought they were sensationally good at Live8, but pretty poor on the telly from Glasto - but that was probably mainly the result of  usual problems with telly sound at big gigs, combined with the frequent tendency of singers to over-sing through huge PAs in front of huge audiences (not that it can't be done well, as Live8 proved - unless you were Bono, and, heaven preserve us, the Hedge who had clearly never even bothered to figure out the chords to Blackbird.)  

When my friend Colin first saw the cover of The Who Live At Leeds, he said "I thought they came from London."  

Boom boom

Pete

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by BogusTrumper on 30.06.07 at 21:40

on 06/29/07 at 22:59:55, Pete Atkin wrote :
 I think Ringo was always the most underestimated musician of the four, and his contribution to the uniqueness of the Beatles' sound was, in my view, huge.  

Pete


Glad to know I am not the only one, although there is no way I could have explained it as well as Pete  :D

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Murray McGlew on 07.04.09 at 10:32
Thought I'd revive an old thread to report a happy ending. The Who have just finished an Australian tour, and included Perth where I caught them on Saturday night.

It had crossed my mind that I was too old for a stadium rock show, but my family convinced me that my old self owed it to my young self to be there, and I'm glad I was.

They were everything I hoped they would be. Leslie's original post says it all really. No sign that they had played it all a thousand times before and that it was the last gig of a tour, and in a small city far from anywhere. They just went for it. Brilliant.

Murray.

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by JT on 26.04.09 at 15:40
Who am I? Am I merely a collection of atoms arranged in a convenient way, or am I a conciousness inside the aforementioned collection of atoms... :huh:

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by Ian Chippett on 26.04.09 at 19:44
JT wrote:

<<Who am I? Am I merely a collection of atoms arranged in a convenient way, or am I a conciousness inside the aforementioned collection of atoms...  >>

Convenient for whom (or Who)? Anyway, welcome aboard the World's Most Erudite Mailing List.

Ian C

Title: Re: Who are you?
Post by JT on 28.04.09 at 07:01
Being only 14, my train of thought had stopped roughly there, so I shall satisfy myself, if nobody else, with this answer; it is certainly convenient to me.



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