Re: Tommy Soundtrack review

[AnEnglishBoy <campbell@fix.net>]

Tommy, "The Movie",  Sucks (I almost never use that term)

Period!

The "Tommy" Play sucks.

The album and the live performance by TheWho->
are the ***only*** things that matter.

Period!

AnEnglishBoy!~

========

Brian Cady wrote:


> >From Pop Matters at:
> http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/soundtracks/ost-tommy.html
>
> Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
> Tommy
> (Polydor)
> by Kevin Mathews
> PopMatters Music and Comics Critic
>
> Who would have imagined that for its fourth album, The Who -- a band
> responsible for such furious outbursts of teenage angst, alienation and
> rebellion with glorious sixties anthems like "My Generation", "I'm a Boy",
> "I Can't Explain", and "Substitute" -- would deliver a ROCK OPERA?
>
> But it paid off and how! Thanks to the phenomenal success of Tommy, The Who
> became the biggest rock group in the world and would remain so for most of
> the seventies. The problem with Pete Townshend, the originator of Tommy, was
> his restless creativity and his unbridled ambition. Tommy, despite its
> conceptual and narrative difficulties (inherent in all so-called concept
> rock albums), worked because of the power of the music and the incredible
> synergy amongst Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon.
> Once Townshend decided to bring Tommy to a different level, these flaws
> would become obvious.
>
> The 1975 movie version of Tommy, directed by Ken Russell, an enigmatic
> visionary in his own right, earned a mixed reception right off the bat as
> Russell's crazed imagination brought bizarre life to its characters. The
> film soundtrack would inevitably raise comparisons with the original
> material and that was a losing proposition, any way you looked at it.
>
> The main problem was that as an opera (or even a musical), the original
> recordings of Tommy failed miserably. It was never meant to be pompous or
> bombastic. With lean economy, The Who managed to convey bare-boned concepts
> and emotional context within the confines of a rock band (i.e.
> guitars-bass-drums) and the odd added instrumentation for colouring.
>
> However, in order for the music to work on screen, Russell and Townshend
> felt it necessary to make Tommy sound bigger in scale. Well, they did,
> filling in perceived gaps which transformed what was innovative
> powerpop/fledging rock music in 1969 into turgid mid-seventies prog rock,
> the kind the punk rockers would rail against not long after this movie was
> released.
>
> Worse still, as many cast members were not pop singers by any stretch of the
> imagination -- Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson for example -- the decision to
> allow these actors to "sing" their own parts was mystifying. And whilst
> Ann-Margaret (as Tommy's mother) managed to hold her own in the vocal
> department, the result was an almost unlistenable din. Furthermore, the
> existing music was adapted, extended and repeated to such an extent as to
> totally extinguish the fire of the original work.
>
> There are the saving graces of Tina Turner's soulful "Acid Queen" and Elton
> John's impish "Pinball Wizard" to brighten the corners slightly but by and
> large, this is an abysmal failure. The Tommy movie soundtrack was a travesty
> 26 years ago and this re-mastered re-issue has not changed this state of
> affairs one bit.
>
> Even worse, who would have imagined that 20 years later, Tommy would be
> reincarnated as a Broadway musical?
>
> My final words on the subject -- go and get the real Tommy album instead.