Pete's essay

[thewho rocks <leb905@yahoo.com>]

A few more comments on Pete's latest missive:

>So many reviews of this tour have enthused about the venom, the anger,
the vengeance, the musical excellence (and of course Roger's physical
preservation) that I thought maybe I was the only one who had doubts. 

The reviews HAVE been awfully rosy.  TED know they're not perfect, and
I'm sure they'd like to hear some reviews that actually analyzed the
music and the performance like they were being taken seriously.  Of
course, there are a couple of different things going on.  One is that
it's The Who, and most everbody has pre-formed opinions of the music. 
It's already established as good, and the performances have had a nice
spark, so therefore reviewers feel they should hand out a good review. 
Another thing is what's implicit in the the article I quoted in the
last post, that rock as a genre is in bad shape these days.  It's great
to have one of the big, hard-hitting groups out and about, letting
people know how it SHOULD sound.  Let's not discourage them, please. ;)


As far as Pete getting honest feedback, likely he's right about not
really wanting to know.  He's joking to an extent, but it's clearly a
case where you can't please everybody.  Otherwise he's only inviting
more grousing about his choice of guitar. ;) It does look like he reads
the reviews for feedback, and it'd be stupid not to evaluate things
that are pointed out as weak or dull and boring or whatever, but still
it's TED's choice whether to change what they're doing.  

 
>The extended, 'sentimental' new Kids Are Alright does indeed undermine
the original song (which is really about the singer avoiding getting
married, not about how cool his inevitable progeny are). But I will not
apologise for loving my kids. If the NME critic has any balls at all,
and any sperm, he will come to know how it feels to love one's kids and
be prepared to bore all comers with the fact.

Anybody have comments on this?  I HAVE thought that many of these
renditions were overly sentimental and thus sort of ho-hum, but the
Dallas version had quite a bite to it.  I have read some comments from
other that parts of it cut very deep, and that people were touched by
it, but others don't seem to have cared for it.  Too S&G for The Who? 


>The Boy Who Heard Music gathers together strands of Lifehouse,
Psychoderelict, and some incidents of revelation from my childhood. It
is therefore a creative autobiography in some ways - 

Is this the title of the next album, do you suppose?  The next Broadway
play?  The next film?  The next rock opera?  Or did Pete give up on
writing the book and now he's going to set the whole thing to music
instead?

;)
LB



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