the who and gender

[Trish Pottersmith <trish.pottersmith@Colorado.EDU>]

Marshall et al,

Great comments.

I suspect there are more women on this list than we think.  All
we can really tell is who posts most frequently.

When I was growing up, I listened mostly to pop music - The Beatles, am
radio, etc.  At some point in high school ('75 or so) I discovered actual
rock and roll - the guitar bans like Zeppelin, Mott the Hoople and eventually
The Who.  None of my other female friends were into it, but when I turned 
a few of them on to the Who, they were hooked.  I remember looking around at
a Who concert and thinking I was going to drown in a sea of testosterone.
But I think, as someone else has also said, that was part of the attraction
for me.  It gave me and a few of my friends the opportunity to just let 
go and express something very powerful.  I'll never forget the first time I 
heard "Baba" live - throwing my fist in the air with all these guys 
shouting "IT'S ONNNLLLYYY TEEEEEENAGE WASTE-LAND".  I thought, jeez, what is it 
about this music?  At that moment I felt totally at one with the crowd, 
regardless of the fact I was the only woman I could see (for miles.)
The who music through WN appeals to some basic human emotion that we 
frequently identify with adolescence.  I think that women 
were less likely to get exposed to the Who for all the reasons we've 
mentioned, but that the basic attraction is beyond any generalizations you 
can make about gender.  Or, I am secretly a 15 year old boy!

In the later years, I kept up with Pete because as my life was changing, so
was his.  Pete's music has always expressed struggles with fundamental 
aspects of life.  It's so...honest.  I've always liked the Who fans I've met 
because many of them tended to be that way too.  Honest about the
pain we all going through.  In the 80's I really got into being a collector
of Who stuff - rarities, bootlegs, etc.  But I realized I was getting too 
caught up and that hero worship was not what I wanted to be into.  That 
I didn't need to hang on so tight...the music would always be there 
when I needed it.  When I saw the '89 tour, it was the first concert I 
ever went to totally sober. I had this kind of epiphany.  I was looking 
at Pete and realizing that we were both just humans.  At that moment, I 
felt totally at one with the crowd AND with Pete.  We all have so much 
in common - we're given different talents to express ourselves.  He's just 
more famous than the some of the rest of us.

Well, so much for my spiritual ramblings.  But this is the stuff I find
really interesting.  I'm not that good anymore at the particulars of this
cd vs that.  (A few months ago, wfang asked me what bootleg cd's I had and
I didn't even realize there WERE bootleg cds.  All I had was vinyl.  Face it,
I'm out of it these days.)  I appreciate the opportunity to occasionally 
participate.  

Trish
trish.pottersmith@colorado.edu