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Re: I Am Concorde

I agree about the softness of PT solo work, but it worked with Empty Glass, Chinese Eyes and White City, and after all the success of Tommy on Broadway, PT might be thinking he had returned to stardom and did an conceptual album without any care of consequences.
What happened? Lack of a careful listening by a reputed producer? Arrogance?
That PD with dialogues was tragical, simply because they disturb the whole thing, they suck...
But Now and Then isn't gay, come on! That's not true, absolutely! (I'm a gay, for a moment, the sky is falling... :-/)
It is soft, for sure. It is jazzy, but gay?! (I'm not a gay! I'm not a gay! Oh, gosh, am I?)
And the high treble voice singing "now and then you see a soul and you fall in love, you can't do a thing about it" acts as a melody in counterpoint playing by a piano - I think it is inventive and beautiful, but gay, you are blasting, you chauvinist boy (did you remind of Erasure, or something, when you listen the song for the first time?)

Tom



From: "Schrade, Scott" <sschrade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: thewho@xxxxxxxx
To: "'thewho@xxxxxxxx'" <thewho@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: I Am Concorde
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 08:36:57 -0400

> I was wondering if Now and then had been chosen as the single for PD,
> instead of English boy, and PD had been issued only music since the
> beginning, the course of events could be taken another completely
> different way, less defective.


There may have been slightly more sales if PD had been released as "music
only"....only, but I don't think there would have been any drastic change
of events in terms of sales.

Even just music-wise, PD is a very light & uneven album.  It's been proven
time & again that the general record-buying public doesn't have that much
of an appetite for soft Pete Townshend solo songs.

"Well, what about 'Let My Love Open the Door,' Schrade, you stupid fuck?"

True, LMLOTD (!) *is* soft.  And sappy.  But it's miles beyond "Now & Then"
in its melody & hook.  It's simply a much better song.

So, softness alone won't doom a Pete Townshend solo song; look at "Slit
Skirts." "Now & Then" just isn't as catchy as LMLOTD. I know that sounds
trite, but it's true. It's just not that good of a song. It sounds ex-
tremely sappy (more so than others), it sounds forced, it sounds like adult
contemporary musak,.....it sounds gay, quite frankly. (Here I'm using the
term "gay" only for its negative, wimpy-like connotations, real or imagined.
I'm not condemning anything or anyone. "Rough Boys" could be described as
gay, too, but no one would ever call it wimpy.)

Pete Townshend would need a major, super-duper, breakout, smash hit nowadays
to get some decent album sales from the general public. And that's just
not the way he writes. Sure, he's not a stranger to writing the odd moder-
ate hit, but his songwriting just doesn't lend itself to smash, No.1 songs -
songs which cross generation gaps & become HUGE hits.

PYSCHODERELICT did what it did & no finagling would've affected it that
much.


- SCHRADE in Akron

Religion is the science of former times, dried out & turned to dogma;
it is only the husk of an outdated scientific explanation.
	- Roger Martin du Gard

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