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Lifehouse failure; fan involvement; TKAA DVD



Well, I read the Who's Next liner notes last night. It has two nice 
pieces by Pete and John Atkins about Lifehouse and its collapse and 
how it became Who's Next.

Jeff said earlier:

>Use the Lifehouse idea of interaction with the audience to work
>out the bugs in the new material.  A series of gigs in London
>(maybe @ SBE) where the new stuff is played and then the audience
>is encouraged to give the band feedback on the material.

It seems to me that that wasn't exactly what the audience was meant 
to do for Lifehouse. Pete wanted a couple things from the LH crowd: 
1. Provide biographical data to feed into synthesizers to create 
songs, and 2. Be interesting enough to become characters in sub-plots 
in the LH movie. I don't think the plan was just to audition new 
post-Tommy songs for an audience and ask for feedback: "How do you 
like that song? What do you think of that guitar solo? Should we add 
a synthesizer or some horns? What should we write about?"

(That doesn't mean that there's not some value in "road-testing" new songs.)

Let's leave the fans out of the creative artistic process (Kevin in 
VT: Great ranting!). Anyone who thinks they can tell Pete how to 
write should be making their own album.

>I think part of the picture you're not taking into account is that "then" we
>were all a lot younger, and more prone to yell "Magic Bus" (actually I never
>did, but if I had it would have been "I'm Free!"). So assuming that most (at
>least) of us have grown and matured, we now get more out of the music than
>the gut-level rush and perhaps would rather hear more thoughtful music.

Mark,

I thought I did make the point that people like "us" would get more 
out of the music than the "handful of unruly sub-teenagers Frank 
[Dunlop of the Young Vic] invited off the street" (quoting Pete) in 
'71 or the "PLAY MAGIC BUS" types.

>then ['71] they [The Who] almost had nothing to lose but now they're 
>playing for important reasons. To elevate their legacy, to motivate 
>the reluctant potential fan.

I don't agree with that. In my mind, making a follow-up to Tommy was 
quite important to Pete and the band, hardly a "nothing to lose" 
situation.

>Thats actually good news maybe someone else will buy the rights to it and
>fix the terrible sound on the current release.  I think we should write
>Criterion a petition about our request and demand for a better version of
>this crucial film [TKAA].
>drew b w

Drew,

While you're at it, tell them to fix "A Quick One."

Jim

Top Ten Signs Bill Clinton Doesn't Give A Damn:
#1. Sits in the back of Al Gore's journalism class screaming, "Loser!"
http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/topten/lists/20010223.shtml