News and Diary From Pete

[L. Bird]

http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/display.cfm?id=356&zone=diary

>21 July 2006
Day to breathe....mountain air.

A brief respite, day off in Geneva, I should really fly home for the day so 
I can mix more of the album, but I have now completed six tracks, and have 
pretty much everything roughed out. I am very behind schedule, I wanted to 
deliver on June 28. I’ve commissioned a working mobile studio I can use in 
France on some of the tour days off, designed by Darren Westbrook (the 
genius who did my home studio you can see in some of my studio videos). So I 
am able to mix between shows on this European tour as I am based in France 
for the next few weeks.

The shows are all pretty great. I am playing well and everyone is in the 
groove, Zak seems suddenly a bit tired, but maybe that’s because he’s young 
and in love – or something! At his worst, Zak is brilliant, on some of our 
early shows on this tour he played better than I’ve ever heard him. Rabbit 
and Pino have pulled out some extraordinary moments too, and Simon’s Casbah 
Club are truly hotting up the crowds for us. Roger didn’t wear his granny 
glasses last night, an looked younger for so doing, but claims he was blind. 
He didn’t see that beautiful Swiss girl who raised her T-Shirt and…… only 
joking.

The In The Attic series is good fun to do. Rachel and I are really enjoying 
it. Rachel wore a designer nappy last night she called ‘Bloomers’. They call 
it fashion. Humph. I promise you she looks better in her bra and knickers. I 
love getting to play new material, and acoustic stuff, on her show – and 
that has helped me to be braver about doing new things in my acoustic spot 
with The Who. I did Greyhound Girl the other day. I also played the long 
version of Endless Wire in Berlin, both songs were featured first on In The 
Attic. Last night Mikey played his song Rolling that was just wonderful. And 
Rachel did a really classy version of Ghost In Your Room.

For the U.S tour we are going to sharpen up the format of the In The Attic 
show to make it more focussed. It will still be a guerrilla-style webcast 
show, but we are working on plans to retain the informality but possibly 
move the ITA stage away from The Who and into more of its own space. We plan 
a much more down-to-earth Live presentation as well – getting back to the 
old style glue & string.

You may be able to tell that my focus is shifting a little on Who webcasting 
too. Seems to me we have given a lot away, and maybe that is not so clever. 
Roger seems to think when I provide bandwidth for the Who website, and for 
Live streaming, he is being exploited in some way and wants a piece of the 
future ‘profit’. Don’t think there is much chance of profit when it is all 
aimed at charity. But, the success story is that nearly three million 
minutes of footage has been watched, and about 650,000 of those has been In 
The Attic. It’s been a great adventure on this European leg of the tour.

Good to see Wire & Glass doing well on iTunes. Feedback from our creaking 
fans on the music is pretty good too, not that I give a f**k. If people 
don’t like it they can go back to old Who classics or buy CDs by new bands. 
I’m just relieved to at last have written new songs out there that Roger 
sings. It seems we have completely dropped it from our current Live set list 
– blame the run of Rock Festivals we are playing, but I’m ready to play it 
solo if necessary. Watch In The Attic for previews.

For the two or three twats who think The Boy Who Heard Music novella 
was/is‘pretentious’ (it is available elsewhere on this website to read at 
leisure) remember it is a vital part of my process to involve fans in my 
unfolding ideas. If you continue to scold me, sneer at me and punish me for 
being creative – and requiring your involvement – you are forgetting you got 
the novella for free. This has been a chess game. And I think we are all 
winning.

Watch this space to see how I intend to make you all pay……..




http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/display.cfm?id=357&zone=pr

>21 July 2006
Astounding Statistics


If you have been visiting our companion website www.thewholive.tv you may 
have added to these incredible statistics.

Since the Hyde Park concert we have recorded close to three million minutes 
of viewing download. That is fifty thousand hours. Nearly eleven thousand 
hours of that was taken up by people viewing In The Attic. The rest was 
mainly people logging on to watch the Who's London Hyde Park concert which 
we put up free in its entirety. Our LIVE subscription for In The Attic and 
Who Live show excerpts continues to run at between twenty and thirty-five 
thousand unique viewers each night

I urge you to continue to enjoy the free Who footage while it lasts - I am 
footing the bill for this provision entirely alone, as I have the who 
website at www.thewho.com for the past six years. Plans are hatching to 
transfer this website to its own base so that Roger Daltrey can have more 
input.

Free webcasts of the Who on the U.S. tour will be few and far between as we 
have decided not to go for a large corporate sponsorship deal for this. I am 
currently negotiating with Roger Daltrey to continue including live clips of 
the Who in In The Attic, but these will be pre-recorded in future, not Live.

Any Live webcasting of Who shows in future will be Pay For View, and the 
profits will go to charity as originally envisaged. However, there will be 
no free Live Who streaming after the last show of the European tour - so 
make the most of it.

Your generous benefactor - Pete Townshend

ps: internet journalists who think these stats may be hyped can get copies 
of the figures by application to our webmaster.