It's Hard, and WBN reissues

["Danehy-Oakes, Dan'l (djdaneh)" <DJDANEH@pbsrv09.isp.PacBell.COM>]

Chris wrote:

>On an unrelated subject, is it just me, or are the songs on
>It*s Hard not nearly as bad as the Who tries to make them
>(unfortunately succeeding)?

It's not just you -- except maybe for the last part.  Viewing
IT'S HARD and what the band was trying to do, they did it and
did it well.  It's a goodbye message, and it's meant as one,
from all three of them (plus Kenny) to their fans, "a few last
words before we go."  In a sense, IT'S HARD is the follow-up
album for WBN, the next "personal" album, only instead of being
"personal" about Pete it's "personal" about the fans.

"Athena," "Eminence Front," "Cry if you Want" and "It's Hard"
still sound great to me.  "A Man is a Man," I have to agree
with Chris, could have been done better, but it's a great
bit of songwriting.  And John's material just rocks.

The problem with (most of) the people who didn't like the album
is that they were still whining -- and as near as I can tell they
still are -- for the "old days."  Fuck it, the old days is gone,
and ain't coming back.  The "old days" was the '60s/early '70s,
and that kind of music wasn't relevant in '82 -- Reagan and
Thatcher were in office, rock was clearly *not* going to change
the world, and drugs had turned out to fuck you up pretty badly
(sorry to our in-house pothead; I have nothing against the stuff
myself, I've used it -- and other things.  I've also pretty well
fucked myself over with codeine [I kid you not} on a couple of
occasions:  pot, in reasonable quantities, is less harmful than
booze; the rest of 'em are fuckin dangerous.)

* * * *

Meanwhile, about the WBN reissue -- am I the only one who has
trouble believing that there's *nothing* to put on it?  Check
out the quote after the signature -- it's a clue.

 --dan'l


"Take two hundred and seventy six -- you know, this used to be fun!"