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Re: IH > WAY, A Farce




>You don't like Waiting for a Friend?  Sonny Rollins is playing sax man!!  :) 
>It reminds me of the "decent Stones era", which of course it's an outtake 
>for Goats Head Soup.  I love this album, Slave, No Use In Crying, Neighbors, 
>Tops, Heaven, Little T&A and the above are great to me.  Compare this album 
>to Undercover and you wonder where the band received their frontal 
>lobotomys.  

Ian:

I'm not going to argue that The Stones got worse after TY. I DO think that
GHS was their last great album, and I can see why they left WFAF off of it.
Rollins notwithstanding, I don't think it's a very good song.

>>No, that was someone else. I never said anything about One Life.
>
>I know, but I didn't see you knock it either.  That song gets under my skin. 

I'm sort of neutral on that song. I don't care one way or the other.

>That's two cylinders and two drunks mind you.  And IMHO those two drunks did 
>ok.  

OK isn't good enough for The Who. My point was that they did better on IH.

>In Pete's mind he was handing the torch over to the punk bands, giving up 
>perhaps but he must've seen something in a 20 year old musician which 
>mirrored his own life at that age.  I'll say this about Had Enough, listen 
>to Roger's voice.  It still contains the passion, the feelings of anger that 
>Pete wanted expressed in his songs.  On IH and yes FD, Roger doesn't have 
>it.  If Roger sang Cry if You Want in 1978, it would've been 10 times more 
>powerful.  

Uh...Pete didn't write Had Enough. He DID write I've Had Enough, though, and
that's a great song.
Rog's voice is a bit hoarse on Had Enough...it was a sign that things were
changing. I think that if they'd been interested in putting out a great
album, they would have rerecorded the vocal. This is an indication of what
was wrong with the band...Rog and John were only interested in being Rock
Stars, and Pete wasn't interested...and Keith wasn't in shape. For IT'S
HARD, they had something to prove and were very interested in putting out
their best.

>But compare those standards to IH.  How???  It's Hard (the song) would've 
>been better as Popular.  I've Known No War is good but Roger doesn't sing 
>with passion.  One At a Time as I've said before is ruined thanks to CBS.  
>Eminence Front is a song that is trying to hark back to Who's Next but 
>falls short.  Cry If You Want is probably the best song on the album, but 
>compare it to the WAY (the song).  WAY was the last WHO album where Pete 
>still had the home run. 

I DO like It's Hard as it is. I do hear some passion in Rog's voice when he
screams: "Waaaarrrr/I've never known war..." but I will grant you that the
song is a bit complex for him...he is always better when the songs are less
complicated.
I thought that Eminence Front was the most modern-sounding song on the
album, not anything harking back.
OK, WAY is a stronger song than anything on IH. Granted. But overall, IH is
more powerful AS AN ALBUM than WAY.

>Actually I think Glyn Johns did the best he could with IH.  But the band 
>was sterile in sound, as they showed on the '82 tour.  Who's Next certainly 
>isn't sterile, it's the Who at their best, because the Who were peaking at 
>the right time.   WBN certainly isn't sterile and that's another Glyn Johns 
>production.  It was the band.

It's been called "almost too sterile" by higher-placed men than I. I do see
what they mean, though...it sounds so perfect; is this The Who? I don't
think they're at their peak (that would be QUAD), and WBN suffers from the
same antiseptic sound as the other Johns productions. Wait until you hear
the remix. I think you will grant me at least that WN sounds more alive now.


                   Cheers                   ML

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."  L. Long