Closing your post with "This will be my last Who show" was intended irony, no?

(By the way, there was nothing dignified about the ways Keith and John died.)

--- Barry Schlom
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: josh chasin [mailto:jchasin@nyc.rr.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 8:07 PM
> To: myself
> Subject: The World's Greatest Who Cover Band
> 
> 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.