Re: How I bit the bullet

["Paul J. Meisch" <pmeisch1@midsouth.rr.com>]

I was a late Who-comer. Grew up thinking the Beatles were the only band in
the world.  Then discovered Rush, Floyd, Zeppelin, Doors.  Wasn't until high
school that some of my friends turned me onto the video of Kid's Are Alright
and that was all it took.  I recognized the energy, the showmanship, and the
genious of their work on the spot and have gobbled up everything Who ever
since.  Now, every band is a comparison, and I've noticed hints of The Who
in almost every band I've liked ever since.  My mates and I will always have
that in common now.   I could fill volumes with all of our Who exploits
since then, all of them pleasant.  At the young age of 33, we're still a
bunch of Wholigans whenever we drag ourselves from our remote jobs back to
the homefront.  Well, I go on.  Anyway, The Who is and always be the band of
my youthful memories now, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Don't Let Go the Coat!
                                    Warm Regards!
                                        Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Rene Bos <renebos@prodigy.net>
To: TheWho@igtc.com <TheWho@igtc.com>
Date: Monday, December 07, 1998 11:19 PM
Subject: How I bit the bullet


>Hello again,
>
>just occurred to me; an interesting query would be on how everybody was
>first introduced / struck by The Who.
>
>On the Peter Hammill (PH) list -or rather the fanzine Pilgrims- this is
>known as "How I bit the bullet", and some years back I wrote my own
"bullet"
>for this mag. which I put on my homepages and append just as example
below -
>bewarned, three Who mentionings only! but it gives a flavour of what I mean
>I guess.
>So how did you guys/girls "hit The Who bullet"?
>(I'll work on my own Who-one tommorrow).
>
>cheers, Rene
>
>***** My old "Hammill" bullet written for the PH fanzine Pilgrims in 1992
>****
>HOW I BIT THE BULLET (twice), by Rene Bos
>Starting from my early teens, my musical interests developed rapidly from
>glam rock acts like Slade, to the Who - whose Quadrophenia I still value
>highly - and then to symphonic rock, particularly Yes (Tales!) and Camel,
>and Jazz Rock. At 15, I thought I owned quite a large collection of albums,
>but I was extremely impressed when I saw the collection of my friend's
>brother: about 5 times as large, including virtually every LP I had. During
>that time, '77, I often went to the local library where one could also rent
>LP's, and there I saw an album by a group whose name I'd remembered (how
can
>you forget!) from going through my friends' brothers' collection. It was
>"Still Life" by Van Der Graaf Generator.
>
>The neat cover and the "Escherian" font made me decide to try it out.
>Although I didn't particularly like the first song -certainly not that odd
>break "Away ..."- the thing that struck me was the singers' VOICE - Peter
>Hammill; Peter Who?
>However, only after "Still Life" started, my attention had been fully
drawn!
>Not only this remarkable voice, but the singing was part of intriguing
>music, both simple and complex, with many changes in tempo, sound and
>atmosphere (like, if you will, Yes), yet being a real song, like, if you
>will, Pete Townshend could write. By the end of "La Rossa" I knew I'd buy
>the record. Side two started off nicely, but I found "My Room" too long,
too
>quiet and too monotonous (I don't think so now!). Yet, this was more than
>balanced by the other song of side two. I bought the album, and from the
>library I rented two other LP's, Godbluff and World Record, which -though
>not as good as Still life- I also liked and bought. I remember also renting
>one or two other (older) VdGG albums and PH solo albums, but I did not like
>them at all, I guess because these were less "symphonic" and even much
>further away from Yes and Camel as in fact Still life/Godbluff/World Record
>already were. Slightly later, The Quiet Zone was released and I immediately
>liked that one and during 1977-78 I listened to this and Still Life quite a
>lot (often omitting the first song of both side 1 and 2 of the latter!).
Yet
>my favourites at that time remained Quadro by The Who and Tales by Yes!.
>
>After I'd bought Vital, which I'd found highly disappointing, my interest
in
>PH/VdGG slowly diminished. In 1980 I went to University in Enschede and my
>musical interests were broadened (e.g. Siouxi, Sibelius, Joy Division, Kate
>Bush, Brel, Cohen, Nick Drake and later Nick Cave and Foetus (only Nail!),
>not in the least by the presence of a very large library run by students
>(lots of items on your want list will be in this library!). It wasn't until
>sunday 8 april 1984 that I really became a PH addict: for the first time I
>went to see PH perform live, in the Royal Theatre Carre, Amsterdam. I had
>actually caught a flue (I'm the one you can hear coughing quite a lot on
the
>recording of this concert), but I went nevertheless, because I already had
>the ticket in advance (I'd payed for it, so I went; I'm Dutch!). To be
>short, I'd never experienced such an intensive event, the band giving us
all
>it's got, and then of course this voice!! No LP/CD/recording has ever done
>justice to the real PH voice!!!!
>The week after april 8th I was sick. The next week, I rented/taped all the
>VdGG/PH I could get hold of, and of course recorded the, almost completely
>broadcasted, Carre show (why didn't those guys who made the bootleg A
>Stranger Still track down a much better recording, mine is qualitatively
>virtually similar to that of e.g. Room Temperature). Since I ran across an
>ad in OOR from someone (where are you Maurice?) who sold tapes of PH, I
also
>started to collect tapes and other stuff and tried to complete my vinyl
>collection. It took me till 1986 to track down the last one, "The future
>now", in Seattle (!). Being no longer a student (with lots of spare time)
or
>a Ph-D student (with slowly diminishing spare time), but "Careering" at
>"Shell"-laboratories in Amsterdam, I've become slightly less a PH fanatic
as
>a few years ago; but both "Usher" as well as "Fireships" almost made me bit
>the bullet for the third time.
>
>Rene Bos (written in 1992 for Pilgrims)
>
>http://www.xs4all.nl/~renebos My Home Page
>
>
>
>