MSG (Oct. 3) review in USA Today

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

Available on line at:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/music321.htm

Townshend refuses to fade
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

NEW YORK - It's not easy for a rock star to have a proper midlife crisis.

When you've spent most of your young adulthood wearing flashy clothes,
ogling nubile babes and generally living in the fast lane, how do you
convincingly revert to adolescent behavior?

That has been the challenge faced by the surviving original members of The
Who, who reunited last year - again - for a two-legged tour that wraps up
this week with four performances at Madison Square Garden.

At the first of these gigs on Tuesday, singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete
Townshend and bassist John Entwistle - joined by the relatively youthful
drummer Zac Starkey and keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick - seemed
determined to relive their glory days without embarrassing themselves. The
set's first hour was a virtual homage to the band's 1971 classic-rock opus
Who's Next ; other hits from the '60s and '70s were rendered rigorously and
with unabashed reverence.

Surprisingly, Townshend, not Daltrey, gave the most flamboyant performance.
The Who's songwriter and driving creative force consistently upstaged its
lead singer, delivering searing electric solos and serving up his trademark
windmill arm motions with a level of sustained physical intensity that
suggested he had just swallowed some new form of Viagra designed especially
for lead guitarists.

Daltrey, though in good voice, seemed almost staid by comparison. Dressed
conservatively in a fitted beige sweater and pants, the singer offered
little of his celebrated alpha-male bombast. He hasn't aged as gracefully or
forcefully as, say, Bruce Springsteen, but neither has Daltrey maintained
the shameless bravado that makes frontmen such as Mick Jagger and Steven
Tyler entertaining even when bordering on self-parody. Instead, the man who
sang "Hope I die before I get old" seems to have settled comfortably into
the autumn of his life - a good thing for his significant others, perhaps,
but not necessarily for his fans.

In The Wallflowers' opening set, second-generation rock star Jakob Dylan
projected an endearing mix of warmth and understated cool. The
singer/songwriter and his bandmates veered from muscular versions of
previous hits to material from their excellent third album, Breach, which
arrives in stores Oct. 10. With new songs such as Letters From the Wasteland
and Sleepwalker, Dylan spoke eloquently for h-h-his generation of artists.
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
© Copyright 2000 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm