In our first pandemic relief Dugout Chatter, Townsman chickenfrank proposed the following surprisingly previously unexplored topic for discussion:
One of my cable channels showed Quadrophenia recently. I was pleased to see that it really held up for me as a well-made movie. I played the original album later, and kept having mixed emotions as to whether the whole concept was brilliant or silly. Where does it fit among all their albums in terms of quality? Is it better than Tommy? Does it have too may forgettable songs? Is the remixed movie soundtrack better or worse, and even necessary? Just curious how others react to the 3 different available Quadrophenia products. I have a sneaky feeling this topic might have been beaten to death already on RTH, but too many years ago for me to remember!
This may be well-known around these parts, but Chris Charlesworth is re-running a Crawdaddy piece on his blog that The Who tweeted out this week. He says:
The Who had blazed a trail with their state-of-the-art amplification but as home stereos became more sophisticated in the early seventies their records somehow lacked the clarity of their rivals. To remedy this, for the Who’s Next sessions they bypassed Kit Lambert in favour of the technically more accomplished Glyn Johns, who produced nine tracks of such sparkling clarity that The Who sounded like a new band.
It always bugged me as a kid that Beatles and Led Zep albums just sounded better than The Who albums that were released about the same time. Now I see that the finger is pointed at Kit Lambert. Does anyone know if there are any good remastered versions of the early albums to befound?
“Dad Rock” is a term for all that old ’60s and ’70s music that today’s dads listen to. I’ve seen references to it online, heard my kids mention it, and I’ve even tuned into a radio show called Dad Rock. Understanding the demographic of this site, I think it’s fair to say many of us have Dads that are from the pre-rock era. That’s the case for me, too, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have any rock(ish) records in the family record collection when I was a kid.
My parents were in college when rock and roll emerged, and were graduates when it was only a couple of years old. To them, rock and roll was teen music, utterly beneath them. In the 1950s, the median age for getting married was 20 for women and 23 for men; if you were in your 20s, it’s safe to say you identified as a grown-up.
My dad was an amateur musician and was in charge of entertainment on his army base in Germany, but he never ran into Elvis (who was there at roughly the same time). In 1977, he and my mom were dragged by another couple to go see Elvis on what would be his last tour; they attended ironically and the performance simply confirmed their long-held biases.
But they had been liberal young parents in the ’60s. We had a Pete Seeger record stuck in among the jazz, classical, light opera, and show tunes albums. And they were not completely closed off from the pop culture. Indeed, I think they tried to like rock at some point in the late ’60s or early ’70s, but didn’t get too far.
What rock or pop-rock records did your parents have? Here’s about all we had:
Simon and Garfunkel – the one with Mrs. Robinson (Bookends?)
The Hair soundtrack
Tommy by the Who
I think my dad, despite not really getting rock (I remember one conversation I had with him where he had no clue who Chuck Berry was) respected the Who’s crack at making an opera. He never listened to the album much, but he liked owning it and I believe he went to see the movie version, and possibly the stage show.
Dad turned 80 the other day. We got him tickets to Madame Butterfly.
It’s a simple question: Is there a better, more iconic rock scream than Roger Daltrey‘s wail in “Won’t Get Fooled Again”?
It could be a wordless scream, or just one word like Daltrey’s “yeah!” Maybe it’s a whole line or verse or song belted out with rage or destroyed vocal cords. Perhaps something less old school, like Trent Reznor in “Head Like a Hole” or Billy Corgan‘s rat in a “caaaaaage” in “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”.
Does Robert Plant have anything to bring to the challenge here? To start things off, I submit the “Immigrant Song” wailing as a top contender to the throne.
Has anyone read the excerpts in Rolling Stone from Pete Townshend‘s forthcoming autobiography, Who Am I? Has anyone yet read the book itself? Man, based on the excerpts what a bore! If any rocker could put together a great autobiography I thought it would be Townshend, who’s let us into the deep corridors of his mind through both song and rambling interviews as well as anyone. At least based on the excerpts, however, he writes about his own life with less spark than the well-meaning but pedestrian Who biographer Dave Marsh. Again, based on excerpts alone, it’s as if he took a standard Who biography or Mojo feature and switched the personal pronouns. I expected something more lyrical. Maybe the full book will deliver.
