I think this is a POLL of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison: THE WHO RESULTS THREAD (ilm artist poll #25)

New book by original drummer Doug Sandom, with a foreword by Pete (which is part of the preview on Amazon).

New film on managers Kit Lambert & Chris Stamp, so far getting raves at Sundance.

Just heard "I Can't Reach You" on a web radio station — so, so good. Checked to see where it landed in this poll and #12 is too low.

out on the road today i saw a bullseye sticker on a red scooter

There's a lengthy recorded message from Townshend at the beginning of this Dave Marsh panel. He says they're friends--so he's joking around like friends do, or else he actually kind of hates Marsh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXu0alWqjOA

Something VegemiteGrrl inquired about above: Townshend's 1971 review of Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy for Rolling Stone. I found it on the Rolling Stone site--they don't identify it as such, but it is--then when I went back, it was behind a paywall. So I went icongnito and put it on a Google Doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-_XAr43Q4GB7YKz3GitV868DOGzdTokiRWIgZvRu6TI/edit?usp=sharing

:D

I think Pete and Dave are genuinely friends, but Dave never let that get in the way of, say, calling out some of Pete's bullshit politics. In early 2002, Townshend posted the following on his website:

"Dave Marsh took me to task in Before I Get Old - his book about the Who - for doing a commercial in 1967 for the U.S. Aerospace Programme during the Vietnam War. Maybe I was naïve. But recent events make me wonder who was right or wrong. ... I am grateful for American military might."

I sent a link to that post to Dave, who wrote a column about it (and I can't for the life of me remember the site...it wasn't Addicted to Noise), pointing out the numerous problems with Pete's "reasoning." It ultimately led to Pete removing the message board and many blog posts from his site. So yeah, there's been some bumps in the road, but they're still friends.

The ad in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1VR-QnIw3Y

Marsh wrote in his column:

As my colleague John Swenson said when he read my book, "If I'd heard that spot in 1967, I'd never have become a fan of the Who." The teenage boys who loved the Who took such things personally in 1967. Not only because we didn't want to get drafted, but because we didn't want to kill. It was way different for Townshend, who did not live in a country with military conscription and whose father had been part of the heroic Royal Air Force (albeit in the band) in World War II. Still, my wife was involved with anti-Vietnam demonstrations at the London School of Economics in '67, so the atrocities of Vietnam weren't unknown in Pete's neighborhood.

In Before I Get Old, Marsh wrote that Townshend was "mortified" that he'd ever done such a thing, and how it was fortunate that the ads weren't widely aired.

Interesting, thanks.