Rolling Stone review of Oceanic Concerts

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@yahoo.com>]

Avaiilable on line at:
http://www.rollingstone.com/recordings/review.asp?aid=2043443&afl=mnew

RS rating: 3 and a half stars
Reader rating: 4 stars

In his complex and often confounding career, Pete
Townshend has proved himself a master of apparently
contradictory impulses. Around 1980, while regularly
leading the Who through bruisingly loud expressions of
adolescent fury in massive sports arenas, he staged a
pair of intimate and contemplative acoustic concerts
for fellow disciples of Persian guru Meher Baba at his
suburban London recording studio. On this delicate and
lovely live album, Townshend gently renders a diverse
but pointed selection of Who standards ("The Seeker,"
"Bargain," "Drowned," even the comical "Tattoo"), solo
tunes ("Let My Love Open the Door," the sexy "A Little
Is Enough") and hymns ("O'Parvardigar," Baba's words
set to Townshend's music) in his thin, vulnerable
tenor, washing them clean of anger and arrogance to
illuminate their spiritual underpinnings. Young
American piano and harp (and that's not slang for
harmonica here) player Raphael Rudd provides
handsome-going-on-frilly accompaniment and performs
his own instrumental compositions, which fill about
half the album and give it a mild and inoffensive aura
of New Age preciousness. With flashes of Townshend's
unguarded religiosity that are hard to reconcile with
the bitter blast of his best rock, The Oceanic
Concerts couldn't be further from the teenage
wasteland - or closer to the artist's soul.

IRA ROBBINS 
(RS 888 - January 31, 2001)


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/