'Lambert And Stamp'

Managing The Mighty 'Oo

If you've ever wondered what Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were doing when they were running their 16mm cameras on The Who in the 1960s, this is the documentary that gives you that footage. It's a rockumentary that looks back in longing towards the early days of The Who, and... well, 1965 sure looks like a long way back.



What's Good About It

There's some footage that definitely hasn't been seen before as well as really sociographic stuff of the Swinging 60s London. Lots of interesting footage of the audience as well as street scenes. The interviews with Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey add a good deal of nuance to the story, telling it from their point of view. It does go into grea detail about Chris Stamp, the surviving member of the managing duo while explaining the bizarre motive behind the big search that took them to discovering The Who.

The interviews with people like Richard Barnes and Irish Jack also adds greatly to the narrative as they recall the context in which decisions and plans were being made. The Who through the eyes of Lambert and Stamp's camera look incredibly fresh and explains the beautifully documented rise of the band which was shown to us in 'The Kids Are Alright'. In some ays it's more of a film's film about The Who.

Throughout it all, Chris Stamp tells most of the telling moments of his side of the story, which is a rambling funny yarn.

What's Bad About It

Unfortunately it's really not great camera work for the old footage. It's strictly for fans and aficionados. I can't imagine this film makes much sense if you already didn't know a whole lot about The Who.

What's Interesting About It

Lots, really. In most part, it's a fitting epitaph to an era where music could communicate big ideas and things really mattered in the world of rock music. It's a long lost world since then, so getting a whiff  of the heady days of rock music's ascension is pretty cool.

Not only is it unlikely that music will ever matter so much again, it is also unlikely that cultural projects should be formed in such a cauldron of ideas and willing participation and cooperation from unlikely people.

The Lamberts

The documentary only manages to scratch the surface, but there is a book on the three generation of Lamberts out there which includes the chronicle the Lambert family and how third generation Kit managed to launch The Who and drown in drugs. George Lambert was the Australian painter whose works hangs in the NGA as well as the War Memorial. Constance Lambert, the father of Kit was a conductor of note, while Kit became this kind of degenerate aristocrat right out of Brideshead Revisited. Kit Lambert was very much like Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder and any number of upper class misfits Evely Waugh portrayed so well in his work.

The great cultural heritage of the upper class England filters down to The Who through Kit Lambert, and it is via his own sense of egalitarian devil-may-care attitude that puts the classical music and its forms through the back door into The Who's music. If you go digging into The Who's early catalogue, you see shades of baroque and classical composition scattered through songs as diverse as 'So Sad About Us', 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'A Quick One While He's Away', with chord
substitutions and suspensions of 2nd and 4th.

This stuff wasn't readily available without recorded music, but also a curator of decent understanding such as Kit Lambert who grew up living and breathing this material. It would be a shame if in future generations, the only understanding of The Who is reductionist image of London yobbos smashing their instruments on stage. There was a lot more to it, and most thankfully to Kit Lambert who made sure they were there.

The Stamp Brothers

In other tellings of the rise of The Who, it's never really discussed how much Terence Stamp floated Chris Stamp to be able to do his thing. It's singularly cool that the guy we know from playing the Limey and General Zod had a hand in launching The Who on an unsuspecting world.

There is also the delightful story of how Terence Stamp got his brother to get a job in the showbiz, which involves a scary photo of a young gang member Chris Stamp standing with Ronnie Kray of the Kray twins infamy. The fabric of London of the 1960s peeks right through the combination of characters, with the Kray Twins as underworld bosses on the one hand, with Terence Stamp the star actor, his brother Chris the budding impresario, Kit Lambert as the upper class toff who hacked the class system to get his way, and the amazing rock music being played.
it's a fascinating view.

Chris Stamp's best moment in the film is when he recalls the denouement of the partnership and management of The Who, which was negotiated the day after Keith Moon was buried. The lawyers for The Who argued Lambert and Stamp were mismanaging The Who. Stamp recalls he indicated to the surrounding location, Shepparton Studios, saying, "you guys now own Shepparton Studios. You tell me this is mismanagement?"

Stamp proves to be the better man by taking the separation on the chin. It's fascinating seeing how the men have mended their differences since.

Pete Townshend's Ennui

I was - for a very long time - a big Pete Townshend fan. I probably still am a fan of his music, but I got put off by his autobiography and biography which appeared a few years ago. What got me really browned off was the fact that he spent most of his career trying to divest himself from The Who. If you're a fan, it's hard to take the kind of carping that Townshend unleashes in the two biographies. How can you hate the thing that takes you to the top? How can somebody be so miserable being so successful doing what people love? Pete Townshend essentially claims that he just wanted to be a jazz guitarist like Barney Kessel and not the windmilling rock icon he became. Yes, it strains credulity, but that is where he left us after the two biographies appeared.

All the same, there are a few telling moments in this film, where he explains The Who was a construct to which he was a party, but what the audience thought they saw as the band was actually a mirror. The things the audience might see and hear in the music is not him, it is what he thinks of us, and so we have never glimpsed the man in the music or the myth. Besides which, all this belies the origins of 'Quadrophenia', which relied on the identity of the band members being incorporated into the narrative.

Of course the upside is that Pete Townshend claims the reason he could never walk away from The Who was because he was working with geniuses in John Entwistle and Keith Moon. It's a laudatory admission he doesn't have to make.

Roger Daltrey Was The Boss

Another thing that becomes clear in the history of The Who is that Daltrey was the inadvertent spokesperson for the band because of many complicating factors. Townshend remained the spokesperson for the work, but Daltrey had the job of representing the band to the management. As the years pile on, and as The Who go on their slow farewell with their "Who Turns 50" campaign, it is becoming more evident how Roger Daltrey kept the band going when the others would have walked away; and how it came down to him to take a sober stocktake of the band's business fortunes.

The conversation that takes pace between Townshend and Daltrey reveals a lot of nuanced reconciliation between the men. Townshend acknowledges Daltrey got the short end of the stick when it came to dealing with Lambert and Stamp. It leaves the lingering impression that there was a lot more to Roger Daltrey than just the singer and frontman. Now that Townshend has retreated from his position as the band's artistic light, it has fallen to Daltrey to keep the operation going.

It's a touching moment when the two men discuss Keith Moon. They both agree there was something deeply wrong with Moon. Townshend admits that he ignored that possibility while it was Roger who constantly tried to make things better for Keith who was a manic depressive. Pete admits that Roger was the one who had the compassion Pete so often talked about.

"Hope I Die Before I Get Old"

I've been wondering about Pete Townshend's claim that it wasn't about him, it was about us the audience. It seems rather unlikely. I think it really coms down to Pete's inability to live up to his most famous line, "Hope I die before I get old" from 'My Generation'. It's a great line, but the men who really did live to the line were Keith Moon and Kit Lambert. He has written about the anguish of that moment of Lambert's passing in the song 'Somebody Saved Me', which leads me to believe that he has indeed struggled with the legacy of the line.

There's a lot of self-flagellation in Pete Townshend's post-Who work which also betray his sense of struggling with something. When it really gets down to it, I think Pete Townshend formulated the notion that it wasn't about him, it was about the audience in order not to implicate himself in the line. After all, if the line represented the audience and not him, then it is easier for him to explain just why he didn't die before he got old.

It's also ironic seeing this film after the death of David Bowie, who as a young person was a Mod, and followed The Who. That David Bowie should pass before Pete Townshend would surely weigh upon his mind.

'Brighton Rock'

Running Up In Front Of The Hundred Faces

I laughed so much I thought maybe I've become psychopathic. This is a great tribute film masquerading as a Grahame Greene adaptation. I knew the film was set in 1964 as opposed to its original period, and people have been wondering why it had to be, just to accommodate the youth riots. The quick and dirty answer is that this film has less to do with recreating Grahame Greene's novel so much as retracing 'Quadrophenia'. It's blatant, but knowing it helps you really enjoy this film. I know I did.

If you don't know or like 'Quadrophenia', this film is likely to fall on blind eyes, so to speak.

What's Good About It

There's plenty to like in this film. It looks like they made this film out of off-cuts from Quadrophenia in parts and then it segues into its own thing just beautifully. The cinematography, the production design, the editing, are all lovingly rendered. The performances are great and there's really never a dull moment as you watch Pinkie the psychopath cause havoc.

Also, the moment pictured above, where Pinkie on his stolen scooter with Phil Davis' Spicer in tow, finds itself leading the mod's scooters is priceless. Phil Davis of course was in 'Quadrophenia' playing Chalky. There is also a shot of the hotel steps which is the same angle as the one in 'Quadrophenia'. It was so close, I expected Sting - or somebody who looked like Sting - to come bounding out dressed as a Bell Boy. It didn't happen, but my heart quickened in anticipation. It's that kind of film. If you know and love Quadrophenia, then 'Brighton Rock' is a must-see film.

What's Bad About It

I think that for a film that works so hard to work in the riots and the Quadrophenia look, it might have y'know, slotted a Who song in there somewhere.

What's Interesting About it

Alas, I should have done a movie double with 'Quadrophenia'. Oh well... For instance, the landscape relationship apparently doesn't make sense, but only if you don't know 'Quadrophenia'. The reviewer above complains most bitterly that Dover makes an appearance for no good reason. Well, in 'Quadrophenia', Jimmy the personality-afflicted mod rides the lambretta he stole from Sting's character, right up to Beachy Head where he destroys the scooter in a gesture of identity suicide. So in this film, the psychopathic Pinkie takes his young wife Rose up to Beachy Head on a stolen lambretta to urge her to suicide. While I've never been to Brighton, I know the Brighton Beach in that movie fairly well. Once the riot breaks out, I kept expecting to catch glimpses of action that matched 'Quadrophenia'. The shot where some youths break a shop window shot from inside, clearly is in reference to the earlier picture.

There's Crazy And Then there's Psychopathy

What really pops out about both films is the apparent hands-off attitude to insanity. In 'Quadrophenia', it is quite possible Jimmy has gone schizophrenic because of his drugs, but it's never made explicit as an explanation. In 'Brighton Rock', it's never quite explained how or why Pinkie comes into the world, but it is clear that from the beginning, there is something deeply wrong with this character. Indeed, Pinkie is at once a total misfit from the get-go. He's a young hoodlum, raised by a hoodlum, who witnesses the death of his father figure, as well as getting facially disfigured.

Psychological problems always make for good drama, and in a sense this is why drama queens we meet in real life might be people harbouring a personality disorder or an outright insanity of some kind. One other thing that can be said for certain is that having crazy characters means he writer does not have to delineate a motivation that we find logical. In other words, you don't know what they're going to do next because if there's only crazy logic to it, then it means it's not going to be rational.

Still, the film works very carefully as to why Pinkie does certain things. The father figure in the photo is dressed in a war time parka, so he puts it on on the important day. He steals a lambretta scooter, which combined with the war time parka makes him look the part of the mod. Clearly it's a gag. It's totally crazy-reasoning for the character that somehow lands Pinkie at the head of the mod crowd, who are in  one sense the expression of the dysfunction in British society; but the film works very hard to get him there. Now, the deeper question to ask is whether the craziness of the rioting youths and the hoodlum violence of Pinkie and his gangster life are interchangeably equivalent in English culture.

Is Pinkie violent because he's just born that way? Or is it a social problem of England that manifests itself as both the senseless youth riots and the psychopathic killer that is Pinkie? And that question might be the reason why the film makers decided to update Brighton Rock to the era of the riots. The cathrsis of death at Beachy Head in 'Brighton Rock' is not only evoking 'Quadrophenia', it is symbalically raising the issue of why there are such people. Is society headed over the cliff with Pinkie?

In light of the recent riots in the UK, it does make you wonder if there's a lot more crazy out there than we thought.

Teenage Wasteland, It's Only Teenage Wasteland

Pete Townshend made a million out of singing about how awkward being an adolescent can be. Indeed, the phrase "teeange wasteland" sums up so much of the angst and inadequacy of feeling these characters growing up and coming of age in the 1960s.  There's a little alleyway in Brighton that has turned into a shrine because of the sex scene that was shot for 'Quadrophenia'. It's all part of the emotional terrain that is worked hard in 'Brighton Rock', for both Pinkie and Rose are awkward adolescents who have only ventured into adulthood with the minimum of emotional equipment. The kiss in the rain is particularly awkward and strange, and it harks back to the awkward sex in the alley from the earlier film.

One of the unstated issues in the film is the inadequacy of both Pinkie and Rose in their inability to express their inner turmoil. Rose thinks she has made a connection with Pinkie, simply because he tells her they have a connection. She nary searches her own feelings before she's decided that she is going with him to the ends of the world. Pinkie doesn't even know how he feels because he's too traumatised and he's a psychopath. His stated reasons for doing things are ironically at odds with what he really seems to want. This dynamic of two inadequate people groping for a relationship finds a connection with the abortive sexual encounter in the alleyway in 'Quadrophenia'. Phil Daniels' Jimmy thinks he's the problem while he worships Steph, and it turns out Steph can only be described as a feckless girl with personality problems of her own. Rose and Jimmy are both yearning for the other person without knowing who the other person is, and in both films they finish up not knowing.

Is Pinkie Evil?

The world that is presented in 'Brighton Rock' is tangibly limited and the horizon for its characters are nowhere near as wide as the ocean. They swim in a small pond of a community, and are largely incapable of change. The gritty social realism in the film is enough to make you recoil in horror, just looking at the council building flat or the ugly backstreets. The England of 1964 is nowhere near as glamorous as the swinging 60s ought to feel. It is in this cosseted world that Pinkie has grown into being, perhaps like a tumour.

On the face of it, there's no arguing the fact that Pinkie is evil. But it's also pretty clear that Pinkie is a psychopath. It brings up the point whether criminality is a function of society and mental illness. Pinkie is at once a belligerently hostile young man who earns his angry young man epithet easily, but he's also incredibly recessive for his obvious moral weaknesses. Similarly, Rose is only socially normative to the degree that Catholic guilt has shaped her into a cowering woman, but we find in her alliance with Pinkie against Ida that her morality doesn't run all that deep. It falls upon deaf ears that she could be charged with being an accomplice. They're both far more crazy than they are criminal, although their criminality does cause problems for them; it's almost as if it is a side issue. They're rebels without a cause and without a clue.

It might seem like the same old depressing film making to some but this film does offer up some interesting insights into the socius of 1964 England. I guess my best advice is that you take in 'Quadrophenia' before you sit down to watch this film.

Quadraphenia

Can You See The Real Marketing Ploy?

I keep buying this damn product in its many incarnations.

• There's the double LP -Check.


• The double CD - Check.


• The Soundtrack version on double LP - Check


• The Soundtrack version on double CD - Check


• The Original Movie DVD - Check


• The new version of the movie DVD 2 disc set - Check.


• The concert DVD of the 1990s Who stage show of this album - Check.

And so it goes. Can't even remember the number of times I went to see it at the Valhalla cinema in the 1980s.

The entry on the original album is here. Nothing much I didn't know but this was funny:

During the 'Behind The Laughter' episode of The Simpsons, the cover of the Krustophenia record is a parody of Quadrophenia.

Anyway... Naturally, the Film has its own page.

At the time of its original release, the film was received mostly negatively by critics and was panned for its large amounts of sex, violence, profanity and drug use, which were then still fairly uncommon in film. It did acquire a large word-of-mouth reputation amongst teenagers too young to go and see it. Today it is considered a cult classic and is recognised as a realistic reflection of youth culture in the 1960s. Many have praised Phil Daniels' intense performance. The film currently holds a 100% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sounds about right. What prompted this search of course is because I bought the 2 disc set and watched the second extras disc to find the thing was shot in 1:1.85 and not anamorphic. The production stills show Arriflex SR cameras, which doesn't negate the possibility it was shot on anamorphic, but it seems far more likely it was 1:1.85. Indeed, the director tells us so in one of the interviews. The transfer does seem to be anamorphic 16:9.

It's a bloody brilliant film, which together with 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'Tommy' prove that the creative vision of The Who extended favorably well beyond their own domain of Rock. I remember mounting a lone defense of this film at AFTRS back in the day.

A quick look at Franc Roddam's page reveals that he hasn't been spectacularly successful as a director since.

In 1977 he made his name by producing and directing a controversial, searing docu-drama called Dummy, which was watched by 14 million viewers. It told the sad, sordid story of Sandra, a deaf and mute girl who descended into prostitution and degradation on the streets of Bradford. She was portrayed by Geraldine James in a performance that won her the Prix Italia and established her reputation as a talented actress.

Roddam directed Quadrophenia in 1979, loosely based on The Who's 1973 album of the same name. It told the story of Jimmy, a teenager who was involved in the early 1960s mod phenomenon. There was a burgeoning mod revival at the time, partially inspired by the film. The film has developed a cult status, but unlike his near contemporaries Ridley Scott and Alan Parker, Roddam did not establish himself in the United States. His first Hollywood film The Bride was a commercial flop, and his work since has been sporadic. Roddam is credited with creating the series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet reflecting his roots in North East England, and devising the format for the television game show Masterchef.

As one of my colleagues told me once-upon-a-long-time-ago, it's better to be a has-been than a never-been. At least he will always have 'Quadrophenia' to his name.

My Generation

At The Barbers

So I'm sitting there waiting on the sofa at the barber's and the music channel Max is playing video clips. Suddenly, it's the Who with 'My Generation' blaring out of the screen. A kid who must have been about 8 started singing along to my amazement. He knew the words, right down to "Hope I die before I get old."

Which generation are you talking about kid? I thought.I mean, it's not like Pete and Roger were able to live up to that adage.

An old geezer greying at the temples and beard was sitting across from me and his foot started tapping, his fingers started rapping the leather, and pretty soon, without much of an expression, he's grooving to Keith Moon's fills and Entwistle's bass. He looked like a Babyboomer for sure The irresistible force that is rock, right there in front of us. It all had me smiling.

Of course, I'm gen-X, so The Who shouldn't be my band, but they are. Just who's generation are we talking about again? Anyway, it figures that it's always 'my' generation for whoever identifies with the song. It's 'my' generation for whoever wants it, and it's 'my' generation for whoever plain dig the band. It's never their generation if they don't get *it*.

The  actual video was a cut-up of The Who's carer from various periods. I could see all the familiar footage from Kilburn and 'The Kids Are Alright'. Then, at the climax of the song, it became a montage of The Who smashing their equipment.

"Wow, said the boy. They're smashing their guitars!"

The barber who is an Englishman let out a laugh. Business is good for him, he's opened a second store recently.

I told the kid they used to do it all the time.

"Everyone?"

"No, just those guys."

Pretty soon, it gave way to Madonna and everything went back to banality-as-usual. You could just feel everybody in the barbershop losing interest in the screen in an instant.  ...but I think the auto-destructive act was capturing the kid's imagination already. The future is bright.

The Who To Come Back Down Under

Pleiades Mailbag Presents!

I can't explain the eternal appeal of this band, even after they've lost their rhythm section to rock'n'roll deaths - heck I still love them - and they just keep going. They're also one of the bands that I do blog about when news comes my way, so here it is. The Who are touring Australia to kick off the Melbourne Grand Prix amongst other things.

While they’re yet to announce a series of tour dates, British rock ‘n roll legends The Who have been confirmed as the special musical performance for the 2009 Melbourne Grand Prix.

Led by Roger Daltrey and Peter Townshend, the “My Generation” rockers will take the pole position at the famous car race, which last year saw New York City make-up rockers KISS closing proceedings. According to the band’s website, Townsend says he’s “hoping to see an even bigger crowd” at Albert Park next year.

“Few bands can lay claim to being among rock royalty, but British rock gods the Who must surely feature on any list of the best bands of all-time,” said Zara Lawless, Acting CEO of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation. “Last year, an estimated 65,000 people stuck around after the big race to see a full, two-hour concert extravaganza from KISS. If you thought that was big, I urge you to get along to next year’s Grand Prix to be part of an event that people will talk about for years to come.”

Dates for the 2009 FORMULA 1™ ING Australian Grand Prix are Thursday 26 – Sunday 29 March. Tickets will be available to the general public on Monday 3 November.

Don't know if I'd spend up big to be there when the city of Melbourne is going to be filled with Grand Prix tourists.

In conjunction with news about that tour, Pleiades also sent in this interesting article about the time The Who toured NZ in 1968.
This bit caught my eye for some reason:

"After the first show, in the intermission, Bob Pridden said 'I'm going to take their stuff off the stage seeing they're not coming back."

"I went 'What? What do you mean they're not coming back?'. I thought they were in the dressing room but as it turned out, they'd got a cab with Wiggy and gone back to the motel. I went back and they were all sitting on the floor, having a beer and talking about blowing the rest of the tour out.

"They were saying 'F*** it! Let's get out of here". So I was trying to explain that if they got up and walked out, they had to look at the fact they they were probably going to end up in a situation where these promoters weren't going to pay them. I think The Who were only getting about a thousand pounds a show!

"I said 'you've gone through all this shit, you've put up with the Australian end of it, and you've got one more day to go. You've got another show to do in Auckland and another day to go in Wellington and then it's over. At least if you do it, nobody can take your money away from you and let me tell you, you've earned it."

"So they came back and did the eight o'clock show and took the attitude that they were just gonna have a bit of fun with it, and that's what they did."

The Australian leg of the tour was infamous. The Australian press hounded them for their bad behaviour in the utmost Australian-Wowser way, and the band got more defensive as they fielded dumber and dumber questions from the hostile Australian press. I acually own a promotional poster from that tour. Anyway, the rest of it is a classic bit of Who-Lore so it's recommended reading. As they once sang, long live rock!

Thanks to Pleiades who sent in the link.

Movie Doubles

How Many More Times Can You Buy The Same Piece Of Music?

As it turns out, one more time than I previously thought. Look, it was a silly idea, so much so that my partner sneered "You have so many versions of the same songs," as she rolled her eyes and I forked out yet another lot of money for the DVD above. For 30bucks, you sort of go "well honey, it's $10 per disc and I'll probably never see them live..."
Life is full of bad rationalisations. :)

As the years go on, I find it deeply ironic that I was a Japanese kid who grew up in Sydney in the 1980s that happened to like a band that constantly sang about white working class English kids growing up in Post WWII England. Theoretically, I should have had very little in common with the substance of their corpus. Even the kid who introduced me to them back in Year 10 probably doesn't listen to them much now, let alone go out and buy 3 disc-set DVDs. It's life. People move on; I'm the abnormal one who seems stuck on this stuff. What can you do?

The discs are NTSC and 4:3 so really, the picture quality is some what lacking. That's about the first and last disappointment. It's 3 discs, but mostly from 2 different post-Kenny Jones era of The Who. That's right, there is such a thing as a "post-Kenny Jones era" of the Who. A number of drummers have sat in for The Who since the death of Keith Moon, and the most maligned would have been Kenny Jones. Honestly he's actually quite good when you listen to him on 'Face Daces' and 'It's Hard'; it's just that he's decidedly not Keith Moon. With the distance of time, it's quite forgivable. In fact I really like his work on songs like 'You Better You Bet' and 'Another Tricky Day. Kenny was no slouch.

The Tommy disc in the set comes from the 1989 reunion tour in which Simon Phillips (of '801 Live' fame) sat in on drums. This tour yielded the 'Join Together' double live album. The 'Quadrophenia' disc comes from a mid-90s incarnation of The Who featuring Zak Starkey on drums. Yep, that's Ringo's boy who got his first drum kit from Keith Moon - who, amazingly duplicates the entire corpus of Keith Moon's pinnacle work, live. You could say I bought this disc just to see what this incarnation of The Who was like at playing 'Quadrophenia' live, and in all honestly, it's a lot better than I thought.

The third disc consists of them banging out the classic hits 'My Generation' 'Substitute', then a rave up on Won't Get Fooled Again'. Painfully predictable, obstinately obligatory, enduring, endearing and incredibly tired. It's never as good as the version on 'The Kids Are Alright'. Even the most recent studio album featured a bonus live disc with them winding their way through this stuff. Hell is yet another bonus recording of 'Won't Get Fooled Again', but hey, I never, never, never, ever say no.

So 'Quadrophenia', What Gives?
A little bit of historical perspective here... Of all the Who studio albums with Moon on drums, the most difficult to reproduce live for The Who was Quadrophenia. They tried to tour with these songs with taped backings, much as they had done with 'Who's Next', but the tape machines kept breaking down and the frustrated band eventually abandoned the prospect of playing a 'Quadrophenia' show after only a handful of outings. By 1975, the Who stripped down their arrangements back to basics and 'Who By Numbers' is a very stark album in comparison to the preceding two majestic recordings.

Thus, playing 'Quadrophenia' live is one heck of a technical challenge, much more so than 'Tommy'. When you see this DVD, you see just why. Apart from the core 3 members, there are 12 other musicians listed in the credits. PJ Proby and Billy Idol appear as guest vocalists, Pete's younger brother Simon handles the Electric Guitar work, and 3 guys get credits as keyboard players, with a horn section and a percussionist to boot.

Quick impressions: Simon's a daggy player. His guitar playing is really disappointing; so much so I felt "I coulda done better!" - which is not what you want to feel watching it. Zak Starkey on the other hand amazes from start to finish. Every drum fill, every roll, every Moon nuance from the original album is recreated lovingly in his playing. It's actually quite mind-boggling, but there it is, he's like a reincarnation of the man himself.

The music flies along much like the album. The video vignettes explaining the story seem a little redundant if you know the album, but the show was prepared for a largely ignorant American audience so you have to just take it in and ignore the bits you know. After all this time, it seems unlikely there would be Who fans anywhere on the planet that didn't understand their Mod roots, but there you go.

Tommy Can You Sell Me More?
The Tommy disc is less rewarding, partly because these performances are familiar from the 'Join Together' album. As great as Simon Phillips is, he actually doesn't mesh well with The Who. His fills are his own and his feel actually makes the music feel more 'up and down'. Where Zak Starkey recreates the natural ebb and flow, and the swing in Moon's work, Phillips' playing sounds more clinical and uninvolved. Where you expect Moon's fills, you get expert Phillips fills instead and it's quite alienating. The horn section in the 1989 incarnation actually adds a swinging funky feel than the Memphis/R&B feel that John Entwistle had arranged.

Once again, somebody else handles the bulk of the electric guitar work. Steve Bolton is a boring guitar player. He is efficient, clinical and really uninspiring - the opposite qualities to what I find in Pete's own playing. Of all the people they could have hired, why this guy? It's that bland.
I don't know which rock they found him under but it's a good thing he didn't stay. Where Simon Townshend is 'no great shakes', Steve Bolton is 'vanilla'. Well, I don't like my Who songs in vanilla.

I remember being so grateful that any incarnation of The Who were touring back in '89-'90 but over the years, I've come to dislike the 'Join Together' album. It sounded tight and modern for its time, but it hasn't survived the years. The really great live set after 'Who's Last' (It sure wasn't) is actually the 2000 Royal Albert Hall fund-raiser concert. The Tommy disc is therefore a documentation of that era more than anything else.

This all got me to think about how much of The Who's stuff is out there yet to get?
There's 'the Vegas Job' DVD out there yet and I think there's some other DVD doing the rounds. Then there's the boxed set of remastered recordings. I still haven't got 'Who Are You' on CD - I held off on that a while back, and now it's nigh impossible to spot at JB Hi-Fi. I might have to Amazon that one in.
Life goes on. I guess I just keep buying this stuff.

My Song Of The Week

Who Are You

This is it!
My little cover version of The Who's classic song about middle-age grief. Come and hear me massacre a fan favorite right here.
Can you hear the people complaining? Yeah, I'm sort of with them.

Photoshop Girls


This interesting video came thru the e-mail:

Pretty good work there, considering the source material. :)