RE: This *IS* a social crisis...

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

> It was a
> generation standing up and telling the older generation that things had to
> change.  No more civility at all costs.  No more just accepting.

People forget. It's almost impossible to express to younger people how
incredibly oppressive '50's culture was. I think the best way to describe it
is to look at The Beatles arriving in America in 1964. Everyone but the
young people were up in arms decrying them and their destructive potential.
Why? Because their hair was about an inch longer than men's hair was
supposed to be. AN INCH LONGER! That's a taste of how insanely uptight the
'50's were.

> >It really should have been called "Pete Townshend's Tommy"
> instead of "The
> Who's
> >Tommy."
>
> Has anyone on the list actually seen the production???
> I'd be very interested in hearing a review.

I saw it twice on Broadway and loved it. Pete took the story of Tommy and
reworked it into his own story. The ending was the only real flaw but I
think it was meant to be an explanation for why he broke up The Who and
retired from rock. Of course purists would rather stick icepicks in their
ears than hear it but I have no problem at all with multiple takes on Tommy
and am fully ready to judge it by Broadway musical terms. By those standards
it succeeded admirably.

>I thought it was the
> consumer that
> drove demand!!!!  When did critics get such bloated egos to think
> that they
> should be driving what we want to listen to??????

It's not demand critics control, it's more like rock's R&D they control. If
a band wants to be thought of as "cutting-edge" they now have to stay within
the established critical boundaries. If they get outside those boundaries,
there's no way back. They're tainted. Before this you might have had a
Backstreet Boys begin toying with the grunge sound or Radiohead type music
and pulling this new sound into the mainstream and onto your local radio.
The Backstreet Boys could go from being a silly little boy band to a major
force. This is precisely what happened with The Beatles. The reverse could
happen with Radiohead adapting part of their sound to the pop of The
Backstreet Boys while keeping enough strangeness to be intriguing. This is
what happened with Dylan in 1965. But now the music critics control the
definitional lines so you're either a cult band or a corporate band and
never the twain shall meet. But as a look at the past will quickly show,
it's when the commercial and the cultists meet that music changes for the
better.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm
        (and no pop-ups!)