PTs MP3s & tight progress

[Jeff House <jjthandmeh@juno.com>]

ML wrote (about Pete's MP3s) "Hell, ALL of this stuff is smoking! It's all
you could ask for (unless like me you now want to ask for more) and Pete is
to be congratulated for providing this stuff."

They are a great addition to my collection.  I suspect that we will hear
more when the UK tour commences.  What's left from the set list?  Bargain,
Lets See Action, My Generation and Naked Eye would be nice.

keets wrote "The early concert was uneven, with obvious mistakes, but very
engaging.  In retrospect, it seems the most charming and artistic of the
shows, much more relaxed and blusey than the later efforts, with lots of
variation in style between the songs.  I believe I mentioned that by the
time they got to the third leg they sounded like a freight train.  Tampa and
Atlanta were relentless.  ICE started off with a steady, pounding beat and
they continued like that right on to the end.  They still made errors, but
recovery was so smooth that nobody could quite pin them down.  I think most
people referred to these shows as "tight," and they were, but I thought they
were less interesting."

I am with you on your impressions of the Boston show.  I attribute part of
my impression to how excited I was.  "Less interesting"?  Again, how much of
that was due to your mindset?  I was in a very different frame of mind at
MSG.  I was mellower, more analytical, but my mind was more open to the
*improvisation* and tightness that was the BIG difference between Boston &
MSG for me.

To quote John Palumbo (of Crack the Sky):  "You want 'live' to hear people
fuck up, right?"  Organic live performances led to more mistakes early on in
this show and more improvisation later.  The Boston show felt riskier to me.
They went out with little rehearsal and some sound problems to be worked
out, so that added to the risk of  not being able to execute the basics.

A good comparison of the before vs after, and tight vs sloppy can be heard
by listening to 'Relay' from Chicago and San Diego.  I like to think there
is always a melodic and rhythmic center at any give moment.  Various member
of the band will carry these lines at different times, sometimes the center
is implied.  Usually it is explicit.  When either line is dropped, forgotten
or otherwise lost it gets sloppy.  The Chicago 'Relay' is sloppy in spots. 
The SD version is tight all the way through.  By keeping these lines held
tight, the band can now go off into improvisation and jamming without fear
of falling into chaos.

The 'tight' playing with improv carries a different type of risk.  That is
the risk that the improvising leads into an area where the other musicians
get lost - hence chaos.  Great improvisers like Hendrix and Moon fell into
that from time to time.  Especially when they improvise the rhythmic or
melodic center of the music.

What is most interesting to me about this thought line is where they can
take their performances in the next few months in the UK.  More 'freight
train' improv?  Try some little-rehearsed songs that might be sloppy?  I
hope we get good reviews and some PT MP3s to answer those questions.  As
always, the Who's music is about what Jeff House wants, right?

Jeff