Before I get POLLED: the WHO voting and nominations thread (ilm artist poll #25: deadline Friday, September 7)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG1HJdEuCn0

Don't know if I need to sell the virtues of this song on ILM, but it makes a strong showing on my ballot. Beautifully segued into the "Moon at the Bag of Nails" jingle as an extra on the Sellout CD

Somewhat dishearteningly, Entwistle plays exactly what's on Townshend's demo, as does Moon.

All Moon could manage at that point, I guess. The stories of the recording of that album are sad.

The funny thing is, Moon is good-to-great on the 1977 Kilburn live DVD -- WAY better than anything he does on Who Are You. I think it wasn't the physical demands of drumming as much as Moon was frustrated at not being able to come up with exciting new shit for Townshend's songs. Plus, Glyn Johns would try to force Moon out of his cliches by doing things like taking away all his cymbals, adding to the frustration, and probably not doing a lot for Moon's self-confidence.

what was the first Who song you guys ever heard?

I was a kid when "Who Are You" was released. Since I only listened to (American) top-40 radio back then, it was the first time I'd heard of The Who. I thought it was a new band who thought it was clever to name a song after their band, or vice versa.

Harmonix had previously announced that Who's Next would be released as downloadable, playable content for the music video game series Rock Band. However, this never came to fruition, since it was discovered that many of the master tapes to the album were missing

You'd be astonished how many master tapes (and sometimes even the mixdowns) for great records have gone missing over the years.

Yeah Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks was missing forever - they found it when they moved from Virgin to Universal this year.

And on a related note, one I'm reminded of with the recent passing of Neil Armstrong, NASA lost the tape of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Pathetic.

Right, but that one was part of the cover-up.

The Who's version of this, recorded for Lifehouse/Who's Next, was supposed to be included on a reissue...until the multitrack master disintegrated on the reel. No safety copies/mixdowns have yet been located.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cSb1F4aZNc

does anybody else find Tommy kind of a chore to sit through...?

this oughta bum everybody out a bit eh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCqlEtNwUzw

er ffwd to around 11:30 for the Keith Moon solo album segment

does anybody else find Tommy kind of a chore to sit through...?

Parts of it, yeah. Mainly "Underture" and "Welcome."

I do appreciate how conflicted/confused Tommy's narrative arc is - at first he's a victim, then he's like THE COOLEST DUDE EVER, then he's some sort of corporate puppet messiah, and then it turns out his "enlightenment" is a bunch of bullshit and he's really just a fucked up narcissist. or at least that was my interpretation after re-watching the movie version a few days ago

but the album itself feels really aimless in places, just this jumble of musical themes repeated/rearranged in various combinations for over an hour

The Underture is the best part!

on the other hand I find Sally Simpson a bore

I'll say this for the Underture: when it was played for Elvin Jones in a blindfold test he said, "The man is a drummer. Everything he plays, he contains it."

Underture is pretty awesome.

does anyone care for squeeze box? def. the only Who song i can think of that i hate

it's used to great effect in Freaks and Geeks so I give it a pass

Question to those who haven't ventured past Quadrophenia: what about Odds & Sods? Highly recommended, as it's weighted towards the pre-Tommy years. Also, the 1998 reissue has this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Z0sT8PP78
Only Who song written by Pete, but sung by John.

"Squeeze Box" is pretty goofy but i think it just sticks out like a sore thumb because it was one of their biggest pop hits at the peak of their stadium rock period, if it was one of the silly trifles buried on a '60s album nobody would hate it.

Also a pretty silly trifle that appeared on the album known as Townshend's "suicide note". Which makes it kind of jarring.

A Quick One: Smutty joke inflated into mini-opera. One of the most influential songs of the 60s.
Squeeze Box: Smutty joke set to countryish lilt. Save it for the rugby club.

'tommy' has plenty of gorgeous moments but the material as a whole feels really drawn-out and underwritten. i actually kind of like the dreamy overture/underture stuff more than the 'character' songs ('sally simpson,' 'the acid queen,' 'cousin kevin') which all strike me as really labored.

i do like the kind of hushed atmosphere of the original album -- 'tommy' is so universally associated with their revved-up live versions of the songs, broadway revivals, the ken russell movie, etc., that it's easy to forget that it's probably their quietest album!

yeah drawn-out and underwritten is a good description. there's so many instances of repeated chord changes/melodic themes just being slapped together one after the other

i actually think Tommy gets better and better every time i hear it. i always think it's going to last forever if I put it on, only to find that it's just wonderful throughout and definitely has the best Moon action of any album. wonderfuly production too.

feel free to edit that last sentence in your brain so it makes sense.

it's a ROCK OPERA, having recurring motifs and little dips in the action seems like part of the design. like it or not, you have to almost deliberately misunderstand the nature of the album to call it "underwritten" just because it's not one self-contained pop song after another. (xpost)

I know its part of the design I just don't think it works all the way through

methinks the slow repetitive bits just amplify the amazing standout bits.

My first exposure to Tommy was the film, and I heard the soundtrack album months before hearing the Who's version. I was struck by how spare most of the arrangements were; being used to the bombast of the soundtrack, hearing long solo-acoustic interludes was downright shocking (Townshend has said these were Mingus-influenced). The fact that the motifs reoccur never struck me as filler, or that they were stuck for ideas (even if one of those motifs previously appeared, note-for-note, in "Rael"). It all made sense in context. I mean, "Christmas" would still be great without the "See Me, Feel Me" bit; but that part reinforces the narrative.

unrelated: how is it I have never even heard/heard of this Thunderclap Newman album before

Going back to the first Who song I heard, "Tommy" was issued the day after I was born, and my dad bought it the same day I was brought home from the hospital, so it is highly likely that "Tommy" was the first music I ever heard. This is probably why I have such strange feelings of familarity when I listen to the album.

my dads copy of Tommy is one of those ones built for multi disc turntables, but it wasn't very well labeled, which meant for years I was listening to sides A and D first, then B and C, which made the story even more confusing than it already is.

I've told this story before, but one of my best friends was a huge Who-hater — "you couldn't possibly make shit smell worse" was his line about them. It drove him nuts that bands that he loved (Sex Pistols and Ramones) did Who covers. We went to see Richard Thompson in Birmingham — he covered "Substitute" too and my friend was a 'grrrrrgoddammit!" Then we went to see Polvo one night and they played "Sparks"...it went over so well that they played "Sparks" again later in the same set! As we were leaving my friend said "ok I give up, I'm not saying another word about the fucking Who."

<3 this band. I can't really take their albums as wholes anymore except for Sell Out, which is a BEAST (seriously; I had to review things while picking 20 songs but I could sing Sell Out almost entirely from memory). Tommy as an album is pretty unlistenable and I'm surprised there are so many people who can tolerate it.

Tommy is a great teenage kid album, and probably doesn't need to be anything more. It's catchy as hell, seems profound at a certain age, etc. etc. I played the hell out of it when I was a teen, really don't want to hear it now, and that's just fine. Precursor to The Wall maybe? They kind of fill similar niches.

I think Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere, especially in early live versions would be my current pick for their best song, and everything else kind of follows from that. So Who as proto-Sonic Youth I guess...

I can't find the exact quote (I think it's in Victor Bockris' Up-Tight), but John Cale talked about coming back from Wales in 1966 with a bunch of singles, among them "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere" and the Small Faces' "Whatcha Gonna Do About It." He said to Lou Reed, "We've gotta put out a record soon, look at the jump these bands have on us!"

I don't know if VU ever actually caught up :) Anyway, I just played "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" back to back with SY's "She's In A Bad Mood" just to make sure I'm remembering right, and yeah, I'm remembering right. You could really get from the former to the latter while skipping about twenty years of musical developments...

It always bugged me that the Who seem to be written out of that history. I once played "AAA" for a friend who was a huge VU fan. He initially refused to believe it was the Who. He had no idea they ever did anything remotely like that.

more excited about voting in this than in the november elections

^^^ otm

There isn't a chance in hell it'll make it, so let me throw a little respect toward "Free Me" from Daltrey's McVicar soundtrack, which I believe is Daltrey/Townshend/Entwistle/Jones + horns. Screaming awesome rawkness.

I'm not 100% sure that's Townshend on "Free Me" (he's on other songs on the soundtrack), but it's definitely Entwistle and Jones. Not eligible for the poll, though, since it was released as a Daltrey record and not a Who record. Great song, though.

On the subject of solo Daltrey, this deserves a listen or ten:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG_q_qUqupw
His whole first solo record is great, really gives you a different perspective on his vocal approach.

I was curious as to whether Quadrophenia was available on DVD, and it came out exactly two days ago on Criterion.

http://cdn.hometheaterforum.com/c/c3/539x700px-LL-c3579e4b_quadfront.jpeg

Excellent film, needless to say.

Seven ballots so far! Are there more at the door?

my ballot probably won't change much over the next week but i'm probably gonna wait til near the deadline just to have an excuse to listen to lots and lots of Who music