Re: Pop Who

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

>Whodathoughtit?  A shit piece of writing in Rolling Stone starts an
>interesting discussion ;-)

A few whimsical comments and off we go!  :)


>An all-pop Who tour (Meaty Beaty 2001?) would be boring.

Yeah, the style would likely bore everybody to tears for a whole two hour 
show.  That period didn't seem to produce anything of note.  You can catch 
stuff like "Teen Angel" and "Chapel of Love" on the oldies stations, but it 
was bubble gum music then and it still sounds that way now.  The outrageous 
thing is to hear The Who do it and sound perfectly authentic.  They could 
have been really successful at it, you know, had a great two year run, and 
then fallen back into obscurity.


>The most compelling thing about Who concerts to me has always been the 
>energy, drama, and jamming that are the antithesis of "pop" performance.  
>The progressive and bluesy numbers provide the best structures to hang 
>these types of performances on.  But then again maybe its just semantics we 
>are really talking about.

>It seems to me that "pop" performances are defined by sticking to the music 
>on the page or on the original recording.  This is because "pop" relies 
>more on the song and less on the performance of the musicians.

Definitely we're into semantics here.  Pete seems to consider his entire 
output "pop" art (as opposed to "classical," maybe?), while I tend to 
consider him a serious composer with the ability to cross the line into, not 
classical, but serious contemporary composition.  It's may be "pop" when 
it's a five-piece, but when you add the horns and some jazz riffs, it's 
something else entirely.  DST pretty much blew me away.


keets

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