My Generation CD review from Ottowa Citizen

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to The Shout and The Who Boards for pointing
this out:
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/story.asp?id={F01662BA-EBD6-478A-8335-DA38C2F24CED}

Who's laughing now
The rock legends are hot again, thanks to CSI.

Brendan Kelly  
Montreal Gazette 
  
All the talk this fall is about the Rolling Stones,
what with the Forty Licks compilation and the
40th-anniversary tour. But there is another British
supergroup from the 1960s making waves these days as
well. 

The Who is reaching a new generation, thanks to the
hot U.S. cop series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and
its new spin-off, CSI: Miami. The original CSI uses
the great 1978 anthem Who Are You as its theme song,
and it's cool to think that Pete Townshend's furiously
bitter response to punk rock is blasting from TV sets
across North America every Thursday night. (The song
is also the lead track on the just-released album CSI
-- The Soundtrack.) In another odd juxtaposition, the
Who's ferocious Won't Get Fooled Again is the theme
for CSI: Miami. One fan who saw a recent Who concert
in Chicago even told Rolling Stone magazine that, "The
highlight was the song that CSI has on it."

Some CSI fans will have their curiosity piqued by the
power-chord-driven angst of the two songs and will
want to find out more about one of rock's defining
bands. If so, they could do worse than shell out for
the new two-CD reissue of the first Who album, 1965's
The Who Sings My Generation. 

The set is an ear-splitting reminder of just how
exciting the young Who were. One of the odd wrinkles
in the Who mythology is that even most serious fans
believe the band's key work began with Tommy in 1969.
For the early Who, most of us relied solely on the
greatest hits record Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy. 

The group seldom gets the kudos it deserves for
pre-Tommy fare such as the brilliant The Who Sell Out
(1967), which came out the same year as Sgt. Pepper
and has aged better than the Beatles opus. 

The My Generation reissue makes it abundantly clear
the Who hit the studio with almost everything in place
from the get-go. Just listen to the group's first
single, I Can't Explain (one of the many bonus tracks
included in the package), and compare it to the
less-than-stellar first singles from the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones -- Love Me Do and Come On,
respectively. 

In the accompanying booklet, Townshend is quoted as
saying I Can't Explain was penned as a Kinks knockoff,
but the riff turned into one of the most copied guitar
lines of the era (and was also stolen to good effect a
decade later by the Clash on Clash City Rockers). The
song features all the key elements of early Who --
discordant guitar solos, muscular vocals from Roger
Daltrey, impossibly catchy hooks and Keith Moon's
inimitable, all-over-the-map drumming.

For anyone who doubts it -- and it's hard to imagine
there are serious doubters out there -- My Generation
also not-so-subtly makes the case for Moon as rock's
greatest drummer. The late, lamented stickman, who
died of an overdose in 1978, had clearly never thought
of keeping standard 4/4 time. This album showcases
Moon's anarchic style in all its youthful glory,
notably on the punishing surf instrumental The Ox. 

The other striking thing about My Generation is the
sense of fury and frustration that comes crashing out
of the speakers on most of the songs. 

Based on the evidence of the stuttering rage in My
Generation, the acrimonious The Good's Gone ("The good
is gone out of our love") and the hummable divorce
ditty A Legal Matter, Townshend, at 20, was clearly
already a twisted, misanthropic guy. And he was able
to encapsulate that darkness in three-minute rock
wonders. 

Some of the hottest tracks here, though, are the
swinging covers of soul tunes popular in the mid-1960s
London mod scene that spawned the Who, including
steaming takes on James Brown barn-burners I Don't
Mind and Please, Please, Please. 

The Who went on to make more accomplished albums, with
1971's Who's Next still standing as the group's
definitive set (and the album that single-handedly
invented progressive hard rock). My Generation also
isn't the most underrated Who album. That honour goes
to The Who by Numbers from 1975, which was written off
by most fans and critics largely because of the goofy
cartoon cover art from bassist John Entwistle and the
novelty hit Squeeze Box. It happens to be a great
midlife-crisis record, mining the same
nervous-breakdown vein as Bob Dylan's Blood on the
Tracks from the same year. 

But now more than ever, The Who Sings My Generation
sounds like one of the great recordings from the glory
years of British rock. Its raw power still kicks out
the jams with remarkable force 37 years after its
release and impresses with its precocious blend of pop
smarts, punk anger and hopped-up soul. 

Folks love to grumble about the Who because, since
their "retirement" in 1982, they've re-formed an
absurd amount of times to crank out the old hits on
the nostalgia circuit (including yet another tour this
year, marred by the death of Entwistle just days
before it started). The My Generation album is filled
with rocking reasons why the grumblers should cut
these old guys some slack.


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
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