HOB Friday Review

[Brian Cady <cadyb@home.com>]

Well, I'm back in Atlanta after my trip to The City of Big Shoulders.  Here's my
experience:

THE LINE BY THE LOOP

I arrived at the line outside The House Of Blues at 12:30pm Friday to meet Traci
whose guest I was to be for this show.  I thought she and her brother were going
to get in line about noon.  However, they had decided the night before that they
were too excited to sleep and drove in from Muncie to get in line at 5am.  They
were the 13th and 14th voucher people in line (The McMullins were first in line
having gotten there at 10pm Thursday night).  Traci and her brother Eric were
wonderful to me and it was great to talk to young people so excited by The Who's
music.  Maybe it will never die.
There were old and young people, jocks and hippies, women in all different
styles and even little kids.  But as in some strange alternate Who universe
everyone knew what "Dogs Part 2" was and conversations would have lines from
"How Many Friends" dropped in.  When the HOB security was late in opening the
door the crowd starting singing, "there's more at the door, there's more at the
door!"  Finally they let us in and after a quick pat down and bag check by
security (will any DAT's make it through this?) we race down to the floor.

EDDIE

It's a nice long wait on the packed floor.  Waitresses who looked like the chick
in "The Fifth Element" kept forcing their way into the crowd with opened 12
packs of Lite.  As thirsty as I was I knew I couldn't drink it.  What if I had
to pee?  I couldn't leave and return.  Somehow I found myself surrounded by the
Who version of frat boys.  Obnoxious but tolerable.  But worse was yet to come.

Eddie and C Average finally came on and did a set mixing Pearl Jam songs with
80's favorites like Driven To Tears and Love Goes To Building on Fire.  It's my
first time to see him and he's pretty good.  You can tell he's performed enough
to put his songs across to an audience.  The bass guitarist, oddly also named
John, looks like he just got off his day job leading a Maoist cadre and the
drummer looks just like David Prowse in A Clockwork Orange.  I'm sure all the
girls love Eddie's look but to someone of the 70's generation he strangely
resembles Jim Stafford (of "Spiders and Snakes") in a yellow wig.

TINNITUS CURED?

Another long wait (as any wait right before The Who come on always is) ends as
the curtains part and The Who trot out and launch into I Can't Explain.  It's
very loud but something is wrong with Pete and John.  John looks like he's not
feeling well and something is seriously bothering Pete who seems quite unhappy
to be on stage.  Uh oh, thinks I, what's going on?  As they speed into
Substitute I begin to notice that Pete is wincing a little when he hits chords. 
My suspicions are confirmed when in a break before Anyway Anyhow Anywhere an
(asshole) fan behind me lets out one of those two finger ear piercing whistles
and as he does, Pete's eyes shut tight as a look of pain crosses his face. 
Tinnitus cured, huh?  He moves back to his amp and sticks an earplug (no wire)
into his right ear.  Jumping ahead, when I hear Pete on WXTR the next day he
makes a special request of the audience for Saturday's show.  No whistling!

FIGHT IN THE LIFEHOUSE

Anyway Anyhow Anywhere I miss entirely because right then is when this drunk
asshole decides to leap-slam on me in his effort to crawl over people to get to
the front of the stage.  I brace myself and push him back.  He falls over and I
nearly do as well.  He tries again and visions of getting knifed are going
through my head. Eric, Traci's brother gets a bouncer who grabs this guy under
the arms, hoists him up and carts him away.
Settling down I return my attention to The Who.  It's much the same.  Loud yes,
but no talking to the audience, no windmills, just standard hits like a limp
1982 show.  Pinball Wizard, My Wife (now John is beginning to wake up) and Baba
O'Riley that seems to bore Pete to death.  Then they surprise us by launching
into Pure and Easy.  Just a few days ago I'd thought that was the one song they
should put back into the songlist.  The tune goes along fairly lackadaisically
until Pete's "there once was a note listen".  Suddenly Pete wakes up, exploding
the words and slamming the chords into his guitar.  The Who have arrived!

...A LITTLE SOFTER NOW

Getting In Tune follows and as with Pure and Easy, it works so well on stage
that you had to ask, why did they ever drop this from the live shows?  Around
this point Pete does his first banter.  He and Roger are both drinking Coke out
of the can but John is drinking from one of those steel-jacketed coffee
thermoses which is handed to him by a personal assistant.  Pete spies this and
cries out "John's brought a picnic thermos!" (grumbling) "I haven't got a picnic
thermos. Where's my picnic thermos?" Roger immediately chimes in, "yeah, where's
my picnic thermos?" Pete then recalls John's former habit of bottles attached to
his microphone (all this talk about John's drinking habits! Hmmm...)  And says
something to the effect that he's embarrassed to bend down to drink from them (I
suppose because the audience would see his bald spot).  John is laughing and you
can tell the band is finally loosening up. After You Better You Bet, Pete
switches to acoustic and we're back to the Bridge show except that John isn't
dropping his electric Buzzard for anybody. Behind Blue Eyes is first and Pete
comes to the front of the stage just as the loud part of the song is supposed to
come in, raises his hand like he's about to do a crashing chord, then lightly
strums it which really throws the crowd.  Then Tattoo, Mary Anne With The Shaky
Hands (no excuses made for it for this show) and I'm a Boy revived!

...A LITTLE BIT LOUDER NOW

With the ingestion of many Lite beers, the crowd is feeling a little frisky and
a chant goes up for "Sally Simpson" (out in the line we'd been talking of
requesting only the most obscure songs).  Roger and Pete are having a little
talk in the back (there would be many of them during the show) and ignore the
chant, but John walks to the mic and says "well, if you want to hear something
obscure" and picks out the opening notes of Boris The Spider.  Pete straps on
his electric and they launch into it.  No stomping the stage 'tho.  Pity.  Next
comes Eminence Front.  John switches from a red Buzzard to a black one and, as
he has through the entire show, cranks the volume up higher. Now the bass pulse
to Eminence is so powerful that the floor is vibrating whenever he touches the
lowest string!
And the surprises keep on coming.  Pete announces The Who's first ever
performance of After The Fire saying that it was a song he wrote for Roger which
he gave to him after they met in a restaurant.  Unfortunately Pete, now on
acoustic, doesn't get to play much as something goes wrong with the guitar.  He
takes a new one from his assistant, throwing the old one at him, and precedes to
strap on a capo.  Then he can't get in the right key so he goes over to Rabbit
to try to figure out the key and by then the song is over.

DEUS EX MACHINA

5:15 starts and if you thought they were good before, they are on fire now. 
Pete back on electric is trading riffs with John, back and forth, then running
all over him.  Just when it seems Pete has seized the song, Roger calls for the
thunder and Pete leaves the field to John who even more than the 96-97 tour
really gets into the solo, plucking small single notes, teasing the audience
before his fingers disappear into a blur.  The audience is staring
open-mouthed.  The solo ends and instead of simply resuming the song, Pete
explodes, wailing, feeding back, blistering the instrument.  No one can believe
it!  It's like being down front at Leeds!
As far as I'm concerned they could have quit right there and it would have been
worth everything. But there's much more to come.  First Who Are You, flawlessly
performed and again Pete sits down to play the jazz guitar solo.  Then to thank
the crowd, whom Pete says he knows have gone to so much trouble to be there ("It
was worth it!" yells the guy next to me, summing up everyone's feeling) they
launch into Magic Bus or in this case, Funky Bus.  At least it gives John
something to do rather than just plunk an A note.  Great remark: when Pete sings
"you can't have it!" he follows it, looking right at Roger, "what, are you
fucking deaf?!" Roger cracks up.  Then Pete switches guitars mid-tune, turns
around and starts playing Magic Bus from Live at Leeds almost note for note!  It
only lasts about 20 or 30 seconds before he takes the melody in a new direction,
but it is exhilarating. That old warhorse Won't Get Fooled Again is trotted out
next and put through its paces with a buncha windmills, an odd moment where
Roger does a George Michael buttshake and a beautiful scream and they're off the
stage.

AFTERS

The Who return (did you ever doubt it?) as we enter the third hour of this
show.  Roger straps on an acoustic and starts into The Kids Are Alright.  At
first no sound comes out of his mouth and he explains that his voice must still
be up in the rafters after that scream.  Yes Roger is beginning to sound like
Rod Stewart but his reading of the song is so much richer than it was when he
was younger that anyone could forgive the roughness of his sound.