A Bow For The New Revolution
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” ― Dylan Thomas
I have been the “guest DJ” on the music newsletter Ecléctico this week, which focuses on a song every post, and as the name conjures, they post an eclectic array of great music. My task was to list five songs that were available on both bandcamp and music streaming services (which eliminates a hell of a lot of catalog considering most older bands are NOT on bandcamp)…five pieces of music that really speak to me. Today’s track is from the band The Cheater Slicks, the godfathers of modern-day garage rock. You can check out my selections here: Ecléctico….and sign up to get their regular feed of great, inspiring music.
I have mentioned it before, but it is pertinent for this week: when I was 12 years old, my parents did not let me go see The Who and The Clash when they played at the Oakland Stadium on October 23, 1982. It was supposedly The Who’s final tour and ironically, while they are still touring today, it ended up being the Clash’s swan song instead. The Who were my favorite band. They had been since I was 10 (and I had heard them coming blasting out of my brother’s room long before). Those specially priced 2LP sets of their first records? The Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy comp of singles? That was the soundtrack of my elementary school years. The Clash were a newer obsession, with the release of Combat Rock being my portal to their world leading quickly to consuming all of their earlier records.
But the night that The Who and The Clash played the Bay Area was also a school night, and I was not allowed to go. It is one of the few choices my parents made during a generally wonderful upbringing that still bugs me to this day.
And so last night, 40 years to the week that I missed the concert of my dreams, I drove the family out to Sacramento to see The Who on their Hit Back tour. My old friend Brian Kehew, who engineered the first Muffs record that I coproduced with Rob Cavallo almost 30 years ago, is The Who’s keyboard player and was kind enough to get us tickets. I got to go to the box office and say, proudly…that I was on The Who’s list and what I was handed were 8th row center floor seats and backstage access. And while there was an accompanying note explaining how the band was not meeting with friends before or after the show, to stay safe during Covid times, it was pretty damn cool to go backstage with the kids and get some sodas before the show started.
This was not the first time the kids and I had seen The Who. We went seven years ago, on Pete Townshend’s 70th birthday, when the kids were 5 and 3. They had already been to dozens of concerts, but this was their first stadium show. And while The Who did not disappoint, especially because I had strategically continually played the first five songs of their never-changing tour set in the car, by the time it was mid-show, the kids were understandably tired by hour two. They wanted to see their favorite song, Pinball Wizard…but they sadly were just pooped to make it to that later part of the show.
The post-Covid The Who Strikes Back tour features a different setlist…and an orchestra for the first and third parts. And what is best: they begin the show with the Overture from Tommy and follow through with five other songs from the famous rock opera…including Pinball Wizard. Kaya was standing next to me, with a big grin on her face, singing every word…as excited as I was when they launched into the opera’s final number We’re Not Going To Take It:
Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are not moving around as crazily on stage anymore, but they know how to put on a fantastic show: Roger still knows how to throw a mic around, and Pete can still deliver guitar riffs like no one else.
Last night was the first time the kids had ever heard Won’t Get Fooled Again, which features one of the most famous rock screams of all time (we prepped them for it) and Roger from Oz delivered BIG. All the way home we wondered how he doesn’t rip his vocal cords apart, beating them up night after night, year after year.
This morning started SLLOOWWWWLLLYYY…the late night had taken its toll on all of us. But I feel like I did my parental duty: taking my family to see The Who on a school night. We shall see how it plays out in their life fabric, which is being woven every day.
LOOK OUT FOR THE NEXT POST WHICH WILL FEATURE THE GREATEST HORROR FILMS FROM 1972 (50 Halloweens ago)
This is such a sad sad piece. Mental illness is a destroyer; it is heartbreaking to see the hole Andy Partridge is in.
Gagosian Takes on Closely Watched Photographer Deana Lawson
It is a big deal when one of (if not THEE) biggest gallery in the world takes you on. Deana Lawson’s photography is very much ready for the biggest stage: her portraits speak such masterful stories. Like this one:
Can a Musical Reminder Banish Bad Dreams?
Haven’t we known this all the time!? I mean…..doesn’t everyone have a set of records that they would play all night long if possible? From the article: “Sounds played during sleep may reduce the frequency of nightmares and promote positive emotions that can help lead to a better slumber.”
Found: BBC show about a pair of metal detecting chums called "Detectorists"
It is nice to see one of my all time favorite TV shows getting some recognition in America. The best part about the show? Once you finish the three seasons (that aired a while ago) you will find out that there is a special stand alone episode that they are completing NOW! Seriously: the best show.
Richard Harris’s personal documents reveal the man behind the headlines
“Richard Harris’s reputation for hell raising has a tendency to eclipse his illustrious career. But personal documents from the late actor’s life are now being made public, and ought to complicate the otherwise one-dimensional portrait of the man.”
November Graveyard
By Sylvia Plath
The scene stands stubborn: skinflint trees
Hoard last year's leaves, won't mourn, wear sackcloth, or turn
To elegiac dryads, and dour grass
Guards the hard-hearted emerald of its grassiness
However the grandiloquent mind may scorn
Such poverty. No dead men's cries
Flower forget-me-nots between the stones
Paving this grave ground. Here's honest rot
To unpick the heart, pare bone
Free of the fictive vein. When one stark skeleton
Bulks real, all saints' tongues fall quiet:
Flies watch no resurrections in the sun.
At the essential landscape stare, stare
Till your eyes foist a vision dazzling on the wind:
Whatever lost ghosts flare,
Damned, howling in their shrouds across the moor
Rave on the leash of the starving mind
Which peoples the bare room, the blank, untenanted air.
