Tuesday, I went to see So You Think You Can Dance Canada—live, at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton. The friends and I were expecting that it would be us (the cougars?) and thousands of screaming teenage girls, but it was  remarkably diverse audience. Lots of little kids, older people — all ages, really. And though it definitely skewed female, it wasn’t really so hard to “spot the dude”.

Show itself was a lot of fun. They redid many of the favorite dances from the season, broken up with some video montages from the show, some introductions by the dancers themselves (there was no MC). Now, some numbers didn’t come off quite as well as they did on TV; you could see the strain more, somehow. But other performances looked even better, more impressive, in person. My faves Vincent and Lisa were particularly awe-inspiring, but I was also newly impressed with Danny in his solo, Izaak and Caitlan’s acquitted themselves very well in their “Breaking dishes” number, and the second half was particularly packed with favorites—the mirror number (Lisa and Miles), the angel number (Nico and Arassay), Nico and Natalli’s quick step.

And these are pretty people! We had good seats—not right in the floor area, where views may have been blocked, but close enough to see well. Still, I did bring the binoculars, and did whip them out at times, maybe particularly when “Canada’s favorite dancer” was in the spotlight. (Lady beside me also had binoculars, and I became amused at our nearly synchronized moves to raise them at each “Nico time”.) Very nice. Very fit–everyone very fit. (I should really get off the computer and work out.)

Next evening, I headed out to the Galaxy cinema for a showing of The Who Live at the Isle of Wight. Given my recent obsession (somewhat abated, but not exactly gone), I felt I couldn’t miss this one, presented in honour of the film’s release on DVD Blu-Ray.

Unlike the packed Copps Coliseum, very small crowd for this one—not that it really mattered.

I have excerpts from this concert on some of my DVDs, but I’d never seen the whole thing. It’s from a 1970 show, and features a similar line-up to the Live at Leeds album: Starts off with “Heaven and Hell” (which I somehow hadn’t realized featured John on lead vocals); includes “Can’t Explain”, “My Generation,” “Magic Bus”; and includes ones of those awesome “remixed live” things that they did then, this one built off the little-known song “Water” [or “Wa-da”, as they say in Philadelphia, as Daltrey deadpanned].

And, as on Leeds, a run-through of Tommy, though not in its entirety.

I felt very Who fan-ish through the first song and a bit, as I couldn’t stop thinking, “It’s just not loud enough. We’re losing all the harmonics!” Then, indeed, the sounds became much louder and fuller—clearly, the thing had started on the wrong sound setting. From that point on, it did sound very good.

It looked… Well, the camera-work was weird. All these little close-ups. Pete’s head. Moon’s back. Entwistle’s fingers. You’re left kind of craving an oveview, a panorama. I was thinking maybe that was the limitations of 1970’s film techology, but this review suggests it was just bad camerawork. And he’s right that we did see too much of the audience. Though it was somewhat amusing how they cut to drinkin’, tokin’ audience members during the “Hey you getting drunk / Hey you smokin’ mother nature” parts of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

Overall, very worth seeing on the big screen, especially since I don’t have a Blu-Ray, nor even a big-screen TV.

Finally, some fashion notes.

Audience—glasses were really unattractive in the early 70s. All of them. Just, unattractive.

Entwistle was wearing that wacked “skeleton” outfit of his. (You can just see it in the shadows of the picture above—I couldn’t locate a bigger photo.) This is possibly the concert where he wore that for the first time, discovering just before that it was so tight, he couldn’t sit down in it.

Pete’s in a white jumpsuit that looks very comfortable but isn’t particularly flattering.

Moon is also in white, but you can’t see too many details behind those drums. He is the funnest person ever to watch drumming, though. And a nice tribute to him at the end of the film.

And, of course, Daltrey’s the eye candy. He’s wearing these very low-rise, boot-cut beige pants that I was thinking would totally be in fashion now (or at least five minutes ago). But the psychedelic jacket with all the long, long fringes? Couldn’t be more early 70s! Still, I developed an appreciation for it during all those close-ups, as apart from being completely unbuttoned the whole time, it was also cropped short, nicely framing an expanse of… waist.  Very nice, very fit.

Off to lift some weights now…