"Who Day" in Boston

["Jeff House" <whocasa@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A very intense day.

Great fun was had starting Thursday evening with the Simon T show at The 
House of Blues.  This place is very small and was nearly full with 
approximately 75 people in attendance.  I do like Simon's songs very much.  
This was the first that I had heard them.  I met a good number of other fans 
and shook Simon and Zak's hands.  Pino was also in attendance.

We hosted a little get together in the early afternoon on Friday.  Mrs Buck 
put out a great batch of food for some of the hardcores who came from afar 
for the show.  We moved to the Tweeter parking lot in the late afternoon to 
tailgate, met up with some more fans.  Drank, jammed, chatted, munched.  
This was all great fun.  The drinking in the parking lot by all made it 
clear that this would be a wild night.  It was, as far as the crowd was 
concerned.

Mrs Buck made our way into the ampitheater for the last 2 songs of Plant's 
first set.  His voice sounded great, his band seemed pretty bland to me.  
He's worth seeing because he really does sound great.

I was pretty apprehensive between Plant and The Who.  I just did not know 
what to expect from my emotions.  They made it through the 1st 3 numbers 
sounding much like The Who of earlier this year and I thought that every 
little thing was gonna be alright.  Well, "Who Are You" brought my optimism 
to a crashing halt.  John's absence was a huge hole in this number.  It was 
chilling.

The middle of the set had some high points (Relay jam, ICSFM, LOR) and some 
awful lows (Another Tricky Day just is not working).  Pete and Roger et al 
were certainly giving it their all.  They were playing their hearts out.

5:15 is very awkward IMHO, they just don't seem to know what to do in the 
break where John used to make us feel the thunder.  Again, Pete pulled out 
all the stops for his solo.  Fantastic!
They were firing on all cylinders from MG through the end.  MG is now a 
boiled down, faster and more furious version of the jams they've been using 
in this over the 2000 and early 2002 shows.  It is vicious and nasty.  
Gorgeous!

WGFA was also ferocious and was immediately followed by the photos of John 
across the big screens.  It was wrenching to go from such a killer version 
of WGFA to seeing those photos of John.  I thought I might strain my neck.  
It was that abrupt.

They came back out for the encore right after the photos ended and went into 
Pinball Wizard.  Decent version, but Pete hasn't quite worked out the 
transition from PW to Amazing Journey.  The AJ/Sparks combo is the highlight 
of the show, fill in your own adjectives for this ;)

SMFM was a decent closer with mucho crowd participation and a fuck up by 
Pete at the end.

I was drained.  Mrs Buck (who saw her only previous Who show in 1980) was 
"blown away".
There was a rumor (now confirmed to be true) in the parking lot that The Who 
will return to Boston at the end of September.  This is good news to me.

I saw a drunken woman's shaven naughty bits in the parking lot (she was a 
stranger).

When I arrived home (around 1:30am) there was a "Mike" on the phone from 
Florida, who wanted to know how the show went.  It was a perfectly surreal 
ending to a surreal day.  Thanks Mike :D

Jeff



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