Re: What's wrong with WAY

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

>My problems were more of a coneptual nature.  Sending The Who our to attack 
>disco was, even then, like using an atom bomb to kill a rabbit.

Heheh.  Funny.


>After you've wrestled with identity and the uses of man and God for a few 
>albums, "The Who survey the 1977 music scene" seems so slight.

That's only one level of meaning.  There's more underneath.


>Plus the surface production sounds so slick, even more so than "Who's 
>Next".  Let's take an okay John song and drown it in strings for no 
>apparent reason.  Let's take what could have been decent if lesser songs 
>like "Sister Disco" and "Guitar and Pen" and undercut them with jazzy 
>guitar flourishes at the end that piss away much of the songs' impact.

It's hard to begrudge them the experience, though.  I have to reiterate a 
recent post where I said I think WAY is Pete's closest approach to 
contemporary composition (as opposed to songwriting).  There's a big jump in 
complexity here, and once he's done this, he's ready to bring out the big 
band.  He's made the jump from a songwriter to a composer, and from there I 
think he can write for any size band/orchestra he wants to, with or without 
lyrics, name your poison, and without really changing his technique.

The experience seemed to affect Roger, too, in that it opened up new 
options.  I'm not sure how much he went for the strings (isn't this the one 
where he damaged the producer?), but when The Who closed up shop, he headed 
off to sing classical for the BBC.  And in the nineties, he's the one who 
decided it's be fun to tour with an orchestra.

Only John seems to have retrenched.  I was interested to read in the 
recently posted interview that he had ambitions in the seventies to write a 
symphony.  We've yet to hear instrumentals from The Ox, even doodles like 
Pete put out on "Another Scoop."


LB




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