No Longer Kids -- But Still All Right

Last night, Amy and I experienced a slice of rock-and-roll heaven when we took the shuttle bus up to the Hollywood Bowl and spent a couple of hours with The Who. It was simply one of the best concerts I've ever attended.

True, there's a certain amount of spectacle appeal to watching an over-sixty Pete Townshend still windmilling his guitar and doing the occasional scissor-kick; or the similarly-aged Roger Daltrey whirling his mic cord like a nunchaku and, yes, giving that primal scream near the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again." (I wondered how he could sing that song for 30+ years and still have vocal cords left.) But that wasn't what brought the crowd to its feet again and again; it was the consumate skill of two men who have been doing what they do about as well as it can be done, and have been doing it long enough to draw on a reservoir of experience and wisdom.

One doubts that a younger Townshend could -- without a scrap of sarcasm -- explain how the title music of television shows had become comforting to him, and then sing an ode to Mike Post, composer of the theme to Hill Street Blues and innumerable other shows. (He threw in a tossed-off reference to CSI -- apt since they performed, at various times during the show, the themes to all three CSI series.)

This show was different from those in the last couple of decades, because as posted below The Who came out with a new album, THE ENDLESS WIRE, last week, and they performed a good chunk of the songs from it -- including the (what else) mini-opera from would have been Side 2 had it been an LP. The new songs sounded great, but several in the crowd were less than receptive to them -- during one of them, a boor near me shouted out, "Play some music!"

Those who came expecting a live version of one of The Who's innumerable greatest hits album did not come away disappointed. They started with one of their earliest hits -- the proto-punk sandpaper guitar riffs of "Can't Explain" -- and worked their way through lots of songs from "My Generation" (oh, the irony!) through "You Better You Bet" and "Eminence Front." (About the only disappointment for me was no songs from QUADROPHRENIA. They had some terrific video backgrounds on screens (a medley from TOMMY was accompanied by scenes of a silver ball flying through the air and gliding through the skylines of New York, Seattle, LA, and other cities), particularly for the new songs.

Some of the most memorable moments for me, however, were the songs from the new album that just involved Pete accompanying Roger on accoustic guitar. The other band members (which included Ringo's son Zack Starkey on drums, and Pete's brother Simon Townshend on guitar and backing vocals -- not to mention their keyboard tech, who stepped in at the last moment to play the boards when the official player had to tend to his sick wife) left the stage; and the entire huge Bowl stage shrunk down to spotlight two old mates who had survived the decades, doing what they did best -- standing side by side, and making wonderful music together.

The Endless Wire

When the last studio album by The Who came out, vinyl records still dominated music stores, with their gigantic vistas of jacket art; CDs were an audiophile's plaything (if they were yet sold); and DVDs were unheard of -- Laserdiscs were the high-end video of the future.

Now The Who's album "Endless Wire" is being sold either as an ITunes download, or as a CD with a live-performance DVD inserted. Both download and DVD feature a science-fiction like cover with a man made of pixel-like forms climbing a staircase, with birds on one side and pixel-boxes on the other. And with both, the cover art is tiny.

As for the music: Well, it's pretty damn good. There's nothing with the pop hooks that make songs like "Squeezebox," "5:15," "Who Are You," or "Baba O'Reilly" songs that play on radios and TV throughout the decades; but they're at least as good as the non-hit songs on the albums where those songs appeared.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing The Who tomorrow at the Hollywood Bowl.