And then the other reason I can’t put much energy into political thinking is I’m too busy with The Who.
The Who? They doing something? New album? Good-bye tour number 10? Another one die?
No, nothing like that. They’re not doing anything in particular at the moment, that I’m aware. But, I did get The Amazing Journey DVD for Christmas, and now I’m slightly obsessed.
OK, so that was that the trigger, but why? Earlier this year I got the Kids Are Alright DVD, and that didn’t spawn any sort of obsession.
I went to the Jeans’n’Classic concert recently featuring music by the Rolling Stones and The Who, and it was really good, but again, didn’t make the band enter my thoughts any more often than before.
But now, you know, I’m digging out the old albums, other DVDs, the videotapes (!), the books… finding new websites… (And it’s irritating me like heck that I can’t remember anything significant about the one time I saw them live—on goodbye tour number 2.) It’s not like I ever stopped liking The Who, you know, but normally they’re just one among many.
It’s sure not to last, but for now, I’m just going to go with it. The beauty is, I don’t even have all their albums yet, so I have stuff to discover.
I can’t believe I just, just bought “Love Reign O’er Me”. I mean, how great is that song?
And Live at Leeds. Have you heard Live at Leeds? How can any band who jumps around as much as they all do sounds so fantastic, so cohesive, so huge, live? There is no band of the 60s who was better onstage. And this is a case where waiting pays off; far from the mere six songs on the original Live at Leeds, the “expanded and remixed” version now available has the entire concert.
I just don’t know how I’ve lived without all these years. 🙂
I leave you now with Woodstock. See me, feel me. Indeed.
Edit: My clip got legal-ed… Here’s another from the same concert.
Cultureguru's Weblog 
January 30, 2009 at 2:49 pm
If we ever get around to having that RockBank soirée, some of the Who tracks available are Live at Leeds. Which is sort of cool except they change tempo during the songs (i think in My Generation they do that at least 3 times) which, if you’re on drums, as i tend to be, really really screws you up!
Still no couch… 😦
January 30, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Cool! Although if anything like the originals, The Who must be one of the hardest bands to imitate. Entwhistle and Moon — not your traditional basic bass players and drummers. Townsend’s not a bad guitarist, either.
Hardly seems necessary to complicate things further by changing tempos!
(I sympathize with the couch wait. The last delay in our couch delivery really mucked up some of our hosting plans at the time.)
January 30, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Well, when you’re doing it on the easy setting (which i mostly still stick to), you’re not in anyway duplicating the original. For example, i actually find it harder to do bass on easy because they make you “play” only every fourth note, on average, of the actual bass line. Medium is easier on bass because you play more notes and it’s easier to get the feel for the rhythm of the song. It’s like that for all the instruments – easy you have few notes (or beats) to reproduce, medium a few more, but hard is pretty close to the real thing and expert – forget about it. You can see some youtube examples of people doing bits on expert setting – i’ll never get there.
January 30, 2009 at 6:53 pm
And just so you know, i believe we have 4 Who tracks on RockBand – Pinball Wizard, My Generation, Baba O’Reilly and i believe “Who Are You” (either that or “Won’t get Fooled Again” – i know it’s one of the CSI songs!)