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Re: WN vs QUAD




>>You're the first person I've come across who thinks Keith is a better
>>drummer on Quad.  I happen to be a drummer myself, and I find Keith's
>>performance on Quad ordinary and plain in comparison.  Where are the
>>accented cymbal crashes, the attempts (and generally succeeding) of using
>>quintuplets without going off the beat?  What Moon did on Quad sounds like
>>a drummer who could've done the same thing with one hand tied behind his
>>back for the WN sessions.  BTW "chilly perfection" best suits Quad.  That
>album
>>has always sounded cold and dark (the album cover doesn't help) to me,
>>strong contrast to a brighter sounding WN.  To a majority of people WN is
>>the end all to be all of Who albums, Quad is the sentimental fav among the
>>die hards.

  Concerning Keith's drumming on Quadrephenia, I've long wondered whether a
combination of two things at that point in The Who's career led to Keith's
decline...1) age catching up with drinking and/or heavier and heavier
drinking, and 2) his move, in 1972-73 to a substantially larger drum kit.

  When I saw The Who at the end of 1971, Keith was still in fine form,
playing his trademark double-bass, triple-tom set. When I next saw them at
the end of 1973, on the first U.S. stop of their Quad tour, Keith was
almost hidden behind a second layer of deep tom-toms, and he wasn't playing
as well.

  It also happened to be the night he passed out. Nevermind that a stomach
full of monkey tranquilizers might make you play sluggishly, I've always
thought a personality like Keith's would need to interact with an audience.
Hidden behind two tiers of tom-toms, he was somewhat cut off from that
audience. I don't know. It's a thought.

  And I was somewhat disappointed, too, by Quadrephenia the l.p. I remember
being really stunned by "Tommy" when it came out. "Live At Leeds" was
frosting on the cake, and "Who's Next" was very good, but I thought The
band was beginning to show its age. Quadrephenia struck me, at the time, as
being so overproduced as to be unenjoyable. Simply put, it was not The Who
I grew up with. Since then, I've learned to love it for what it is, but at
the time, I was kind of let down.

  As far as a "sentimental fav among the die hards", my vote still goes to
their first album. Maybe you had to have been there in 1965-66 and
experienced the week-to-week goings on in pop music to appreciate that
album for what it meant at the time. I don't know. It's a thought.