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| From | "josh chasin" <jchasin@nyc.rr.com> |
| Subject | The World's Greatest Who Cover Band |
| Date | Wed, 26 May 2004 23:06:32 -0400 |
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This past Saturday night I saw an interesting Who cover band. They go by the name of the Who. They played Madison Square Garden. They have much of the Who's act down-- including the Daltry and Townsend gestures-- but alas, the Who's musical dynamic was very much about a non-traditional, almost flip-flopping of the roles of the guitarist and the bass player. This combo's bass player was either not inclined or not up to the task, and the dynamic was totally different-- they missed being the Who by a mile and came off as a band playing Who songs (and/or TV commercial jingles), which just happened to contain Daltrey and Townsend. And sounding like a shell of their former selves-- and I'm talking about the former selves of 3 years ago, not 1976.
I could tell you what they played, but if you've seen the Who at any time in the last 25 years, you already know, The big surprise-- outside of the overt flakking of Then and Now, their tenth(!) best-of, by playing one of its two new "and now" songs (and really, that was no surprise)-- was their playing "Won't Get Fooled Again" to close the set proper, as opposed to the encores. I nearly wet myself from the shock.
Of course to most of the folks in attendance, none of this mattered. It was sufficiently familiar, no matter how lackluster, for them to actually believe they'd seen the Who, which I guess is what good cover bands can do.
On the subject of hawking your entire damn catalog to the highest commercial bidder-- even if you are the first band to vomit in the bar-- here's the deal. They're your songs, do what you will with them. Only,you no longer get to come to my town and play them and expect them to mean a damn to me anymore, because now they're just jingles. You don't get to have it both ways.
Townsend's windmills, and Daltrey's mic twirling (and admittedly Daltrey looked good) are guaranteed to bring a cheer from the crowd-- on cue-- but these are now empty gestures that fall somewhere between cliché, and Vegas shtick on the order of Charlie Callas's noises.
Highlights? The usual two-- "Drowned" and "5:15." Everything else was a just so story, guaranteed by familiarity to pull the kids young and old out of their seats, regardless of merit-- of whether they were played "just so" or not. "Me hear 'Baba O'Reilly, me pound fist in air!" The response is robotic. But hey, the hypnotized never lie, do ya?
I hear they're working on a new album, Who's Left. Hope I die before I get old, indeed. Two of them, at least, had the dignity to do so.
This will be my last Who show.
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