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Re: The Who Aren't Popular Anymore - Who's To Blame?



>Have there been any radio, T.V., or print ads for the remastered albums?  I 
>don't recall seeing or hearing any.  I'm not talking about ads for 
>individual albums, I mean ads promoting The Who's entire back catalogue.  
>Again, this might be be- cause ad spending like that is not in MCA's "Who 
>budget."

No, but I don't notice them for other classic rock groups, either.  I never 
hear when Led Zeppelin or Beatles albums are remastered.  Basically, I'd say 
most people don't care about remixes or remasters.  They might buy a new cd 
for the bonus tracks, but it's only the rabid fringe that gets in a lather 
about minor changes in mix or sound.


>>Would never have happened with The Who's Sessions.  The clerks in the 
>>store could never have stood to listen to it that long.
>
>Fang.....I mean.....keets,

Yikes!  You don't think it's contagious, do you?  :\


>that's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it?  While The Who's BBC Sessions 
>wasn't the upgrade of the boot I thought it was going to be, it still 
>wasn't horribly bad.  I know a number of non-Who freaks who bought it & 
>were pleased.  No complaints about the sound from them.  And these are 
>people who buy dozens & dozens of other artists' CD's in the course of a 
>year.

I didn't say it was bad.  It just has too much of an edge to it.  How long 
does it stay in your cd player?  Do you play it a lot in your car?  Can you 
play it continuously without your family or friends complaining?  Try that 
same experiment with Pete solo, say, EMPTY GLASS.  I'm willing to bet 
they'll listen to that one three or four times.

As an aside, what kind of upgrade were you expecting?  Was all this material 
booted before the official cd came out?


>We can blame Pete, we can blame Bill Curbishly, we can blame MCA, we can 
>blame Jon "Antichrist" Astley, we can blame commercial radio, etc., etc., 
>etc. But what's the real reason?

Dissonant music.  Beethoven is always going to sell better than Stravinski.


>My theory:  The Who's reputation & stature was critically damaged by the 
>1983 breakup & subsequent "reunion" tours.  Rock fans began laughing at The 
>Who. The same rock fans who work in the record industry or in radio.  
>People with decision-making power.

I dunno that they laugh.  There still seems to be a lot of respect out 
there.  Awe, even.


>And I believe that the 1989 tour drove away thousands of existing or 
>potential Who fans.  They were playing football arenas on that tour!  
>Sixty-thousand seat venues! What happened?

They went on tour once in every seven years.  The public memory only extends 
for two.  The fact that they attracted that much of an audience after seven 
years of inactivity is what's amazing.


>Well, we thought that was the only Who we could get anymore.  Bloated, 
>pissy-Pete-mood Who.  Many fans said, "Fuck that.  That's not The Who I 
>want."

A whole new generation grew up in fourteen years, who had no idea who The 
Who was.  And numbers of fans fell off the other end, from whatever 
attrition.


>Then the QUAD tour in 1996 further added to the damage.  Many people by 
>that point saw The Who as a comical caricature of their former glory.  
>People just gave up.

Comical?  I don't think so.  The QUAD tour was a killer tour, and I think it 
attracted the attention that made the 2000 tour successful.  I also liked 
the '89 rendition of TOMMY.  The opera need the extra instruments to make 
them grand enough to carry the concepts.  The older live recordings sound 
downright primitive in comparison.


>And we wondered why the 2000 tour didn't sell more tickets.  Even all the 
>reports & reviews about it being a "stripped-down" Who didn't help.  Too 
>many former fans had jumped ship.

Or died, maybe.  Otherwise, I'd say they're still checking in now.  Notice 
Kevin Mc, for one, who's only just noticed that The Who are back as a 
touring band.

But there are a lot of folks in the population now that were too young to 
remember The Who as an active band.  The main part of the fan base seems to 
be 40-year-olds.  Thirty-year-olds would have been 11 when The Who hung it 
up back in '82, and 20-year-olds would have been barely born.  It takes more 
than just an announcement about "stipped down Who" to attract new fans.

That being the case, the 2000 tour did very well.  Most venues pretty much 
sold out on minimum publicity.  There was only a token album, and no 
expensive video on MTV.  It seemed they mostly went with Internet and radio 
promotions.  They did get excellent coverage on our local classic rock 
radio, but that was about it.


>Now we're finally seeing the result of the past 20 years or so:  mediocre 
>CD sales & mediocre interest in a band that negatively disrupted a large 
>portion of its fan-base.
>
>Just think if the 2000 tour could be substituted for the 1989 tour.....

Same result.  It's the years, not the style.


keets

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