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London Arena - 13th November



At last, I attended my first Who concert last night.  It was great, of
course, if imperfect.

Pete was in a foul mood all night - telling the audience to f*** off
repeatedly, and attacking his guitar as if it was some hated symbol of his
current bad mood.  For most of the show, his jams were pretty awful - they
just didn't work.  They didn't go in the direction that you're ears wanted
to hear.  Whenever he would start going off into ear-scraping tangents, the
audience (and Roger's face) said "oh no, not again".  Pete knew he was
playing badly, which aggravated his anger and made him just play more
aggressively and ultimately worse.  I just kept thinking "for god's sake
Pete, just smash your guitar and get your frustration out".

The reasons for Pete's bad mood weren't clear.  It could be related to the
coming winter - he mentioned this time of year, back in London, reminded him
when he used to get drunk just to get through the winter.  It could be his
distaste for the London Arena - built in the middle of the yuppie-infested
Docklands; he mentioned that he was in "the butthole of London (and we're a
butthole group)".  In his diary yesterday he hints at his tiredness and that
he may play crap, but doesn't give any real reasons.  I think it may be to
do with "where he is now": a year or so ago the plan was to tour US and UK,
and by the time they're back in London, they'll have some new songs to play.
Well, this is London, but the songs remain the same.

I think Roger and John were excellent - it was if they were trying to make
up for Pete's mistakes.  JAE's bass solo on 5:15 was incredible - the
highlight of the show - and even longer than normal.  When introducing My
Wife, JAE also told us to "f*** off" - in a manner which mocked Pete.

Pete played a solo, acoustic Drowned half-way through the set.  For some
reason, this was flawless.  In fact, the best I've ever heard - he even
worked in some other Quad themes, which were met with great applause.

We didn't see any more brilliant guitar work until right at the end though,
with the extremely long My Generation.  This went off in totally new
directions.  At one point RD ad-libbed some words, including a mention to
"lies about you" - as in LAL's MG.  Pete played just great; it was if he was
making up for earlier.  At another point, Pete's riff made me think of the
song "Let's Get Pretentious" - I almost thought Roger was going to start
singing it.

Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand was a great half-surprise in an otherwise
routine and bland set list.  It was strange that they didn't play Magic Bus
at the end; this may have been dropped because MG went on for so long.  It
was shame when the concert ended - it was if Pete had only just started
getting going.

-MB