Re: Cincinnati

[amck@eden.com (Alan McKendree)]

At 15:53 7/12/97, The Who Mailing List Digest wrote:
>Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 02:09:19 -0500 (CDT)
>From: William Sherman -Visualization <wsherman@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
>Subject: Re:  Cincinnati
>
>> "It's sympathy not tears people need when they're the front page sad news"
>
>That's the exact line I had planned to post to the group as
>evidence that perhaps Pete did comment on Cincinnati.  I had just
>forgotten that it was from Slit Skirts (and since I never even
>bothered to get off my ass and post it, it's no surprise I didn't
>go dig out Chinese Eyes to listen to the full song).

Sounds like you and I are both members of the Procrastinator's Club.  We
should get together for a beer and Who discussion sometime.  I think I have
some time in 2015, if that fits your schedule...:-)

>> Could this be the reason that the lover in the song is now
>> "cooled and stifled"?
>
>Okay, I'm not sure I buy that last bit.

Nor I.  I would certainly be open to counter-arguments (e.g., a simple
statement from Pete consisting of "nope" :-) and wouldn't be too surprised
to find that that suggestion is a load of bollocks.  HowEVer, I was looking
for a way to tie these two things together -- the idea being that, giving
Pete credit for being a great songwriter/lyricist/poet, I couldn't propose
my interpretation without including something along the lines of an
overarching integration of the song.  The alternative would be to claim
that Pete interwove two ideas or themes into the song but kept them totally
separate or unrelated within the song, in which case the song becomes
weaker -- if he's going to keep his two topics unrelated, why not write a
song about, say, a man's fear of a woman's rejection, and resurfacing a
kitchen floor, or changing leadership in China?  My choice in this case
would be to look for a way the topics of the song (which I'm suggesting as
Cincinnati and, broadly, relationship problems) were related and the
simplest and most immediate conclusion that popped to mind was that there
was a causal relationship.  I don't expect Pete to ever confirm it
(although of course it would be cool if he did).  It may even be that
combining these two topics was subconscious on Pete's part (but I currently
doubt it).  I guess the best way to put it is that my premises and
reasoning led me to the surprising (to me) hypothesis that if Pete was
referring to Cincinnati in Slit Skirts then, deliberately or not, he also
wrote about the effect Cincinnati had on his personal relationships.
Whether that hypothesis is true may be unprovable, and it might be proven
false with argumentation, counter-hypotheses etc..

An additional point is that the man in the song has _changed_: "Once she
woke with untamed lover's face between her legs/Now he's cooled and stifled
and it's she who has to beg".  Why has he changed?  If you eliminate
Cincinnati as the cause of that change you're left with a pretty big blank
space as to what _did_ cause it. Did the lover just get older? But that by
itself shouldn't necessarily cause  a waning of passion. Or are we left
with an unknown cause -- the lover just changed "somehow"? Could be, but
again I believe Pete is strong enough as an artist and songwriter not to
set up this question without providing an answer.  In a way what I'm saying
is that the better an artist you believe Pete is, the more you have to
agree with my suggestions about "Slit Skirts".  BWAH HA HA HA HA HA
HA...now THAT even _I_ don't buy.  But I do think that the more you
recognize Pete's talent the more you would have to say that Slit Skirts is
an integrated whole.  Then, whether it's about one or two or six subjects,
and what those subject(s) are, is where the debate lies.

Aaa!  Aaa!  Ow!  I just found another one:

"Jeannie...wouldn't be seen dead in no slit skirt"

Ee-YIKES!  I don't even know what to think about that one yet but it looks
pretty eerie, if I'm right about the C thing.

Alan

"When I'm on stage, it's not like bein' possessed...it's just...*I* *do*
*my* *job*."                 - Pete Townshend