I'm watching VH1 Rock Honors right now. They're honoring The Who. Which is making me remember how freaking awesome a band they are. Sheesh.

I'm psyched cuz Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Flaming Lips, etc are gonna play their stuff. Anyone catch this special? The songs sound SO fresh. Any of them could have been written just today. Well, actually, no one writes stuff that good anymore, so maybe not.

Jack Black: The Beatles never sang a song called BEA-TLES, BEA-TLES!

Heh.

Who fans?

"love reign over me....reign..over me..."

Incubus totally ruining two great Who songs. I Can See For Miles and I Can't Explain. And the drummer is WAY out of his league. I think all of the drummers are going to have a hard time of it though.

The Who rock! Jimmy was discovered by Pete, you know.

Quoted from JimmyMcCullochFan

The Who rock! Jimmy was discovered by Pete, you know.

Which Jimmy are you referring to?  At first I thought you meant Page, but then I noticed you have a reference to Jimmy McCollough in your post.

Okay, I'm assuming you mean McCullough.  Didn't notice what you name was.  Sorry!

And Sandra, the quote from Jack Black ("The Beatles never sang a song called "Bea-tles! Bea-tles!") -- is that a reference to "Who are You?"  And when did he say it?  In a movie, or was he on the VH1 show?

Quoted from Mr. Mustard

Okay, I'm assuming you mean McCullough.  Didn't notice what you name was.  Sorry!

And Sandra, the quote from Jack Black ("The Beatles never sang a song called "Bea-tles! Bea-tles!") -- is that a reference to "Who are You?"  And when did he say it?  In a movie, or was he on the VH1 show?

Yeah, he was referring to Who Are You?. It was from the intro when they had a bunch of famous people talk about why the Who are great. It was interesting seeing what Billy Idol looks like these days. Took me a minute to recognize him!

Roger's voice is still pretty good too, but man, Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam BLEW the audience away. That guy has an amazing voice.

I still think it's odd that they tour under the name The Who with just the two of them, but Roger actually explained it in a nice way.

I love "Won't Get Fooled Again " , i share my Birthday with Roger

Does anyone really think they somehow started punk? I'm not sure about that one, but I get the arguments.

I'm making this a sticky. Not because I started it, but because I think the Who deserves to be stickied. I mean if MUSE is a sticky! Well you get my point. I also merged the two Doors threads. If there are other Who threads, I'll gladly merge them. I just didn't see another.

"The Who Sells Out"- really the first concept album, don't you think? Didn't this one predate Pepper?

It's a controversial topic. But I think Pepper came out slightly before The Who Sell Out. Not sure of the exact dates. Zappa fans always claim he did it first. And maybe so, who knows. Some info:

Perhaps the first examples from rock were the albums of The Ventures. Starting from 1961's Colorful Ventures (each song had a color in the title), the group was known for issuing records throughout the 1960s whose tracks revolved around central themes, including surf music, country, outer space, TV themes, and psychedelic music.[9]

In 1966, several rock releases were arguably concept albums in the sense that they presented a set of thematically-linked songs - and they also instigated other rock artists to consider using the album format in a similar fashion: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds was a masterful musical portrayal of Brian Wilson's state of mind at the time (and a major inspiration to Paul McCartney). Although it has a unified theme in its emotional content, the writers (Brian Wilson and Tony Asher) have said continuously that it was not necessarily intended to be a narrative. However, later in 1966, Brian Wilson had begun work on the Smile album, which was intended as a narrative. The album was scrapped before completion, only to be revived in the 2000s. The Mothers of Invention's sardonic farce about rock music and America as a whole, Freak Out!; and Face to Face by The Kinks, the first collection of Ray Davies's idiosyncratic character studies of ordinary people. However, none of these attracted a wide commercial audience.

This all changed with the Beatles' celebrated album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in June 1967. With the release of Sgt. Pepper, the notion of the concept album came to the forefront of the popular and critical mind, with the earlier prototypes and examples from classic pop and other genres sometimes forgotten. The phrase entered the popular lexicon, and a "concept album" - the term became imbued with the notion of artistic purpose - was inherently considered to be more creative or worthy of attention than a mere collection of new songs. This perception of course related to the intent of the artist rather than the specific content.

In fact, as pointed out by many critics since its original reception, Sgt. Pepper is a concept album only by some definitions of the term. There was, at some stage during the making of the album an attempt to relate the material to firstly the idea of aging, then as an obscure radio play about the life of an ex-army bandsman and his shortcomings. These concepts were lost in the final production. While debate exists over the extent to which Sgt. Pepper qualifies as a true concept album, there is no doubt that its reputation as such helped inspire other artists to produce concept albums of their own, and inspired the public to anticipate them. Lennon and McCartney distanced themselves from the "concept album" tag as applied to that album.[10]

The Who Sell Out followed with its concept of a pirate radio broadcast. Within the record, joke commercials recorded by the band and actual jingles from recently outlawed pirate radio station Wonderful Radio London were interspersed between the songs, ranging from pop songs to hard rock and psychedelic rock, culminating with a mini-opera titled "Rael"

In any case, you can't deny that they're both great albums. With Sgt. Pepper I find I can listen to the songs on their own. Not so much with "Sells Out". So.

Plus they came out within, I think weeks of each other and John always said Pepper wasn't really a concept album. So once again the Who are robbed of credit!! Kind of unfair really.

I think they are probably one of the most underrated bands of the Sixties. You hardly ever see them being mentioned in the classic rock magazines, yet they did so much. Most people know them as the guys who did the CSI theme song.

It's funny you said that because on the Rock Honors show he and Roger were on stage talking about awards and Pete says something like I have about 100 pieces of plastic just from CSI. Wonder if he meant that was pretty much it. Very wrong if that's the case. I think they're too overshadowed by their contemporaries. Besides Townshend's incredible writing ability the musicianship within the band was also so innovative. Not to mention the auto-destruction, mini-pop opera, rock opera, and tons of other things that other bands just take for granted nowadays!

Quoted from Mairi

I think they are probably one of the most underrated bands of the Sixties. You hardly ever see them being mentioned in the classic rock magazines, yet they did so much. Most people know them as the guys who did the CSI theme song.

I've noticed this, too: back in the seventies and eighties, The Who were probably the best known British band of the sixties era after The Beatles and The Stones, and even in the nineties you could hear four or five Who songs being played to death on classic rock radio stations. I'm not sure what happened; maybe radio programmers got tired of "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley" and couldn't find replacements for them; or maybe the CSI connection, whatever it did for The Who's visibility, also made them unhip in the eyes of the rock press. I haven't got a half decent Who collection myself; I'll have to go rummage through a few record shops tomorrow.

By the way, The Who Sell Out was released on December 15, 1967, so it postdates Pepper by about six months.  

To touch on a few points made previously.....

The Who's early style was definitely a fore-runner of punk (and metal, too), with the destruction, rebellion and "Hope I die before I get old" nihilistic mentality.

I liken the Who's place in rock history in comparison to their peers who were perhaps more famous to the 2 biggest American rental car companies -- Hertz and Avis.  (Bear with me for a moment.)  Hertz was always #1, but Avis used that to their advantage in their advertising campaigns, proudly trumpeting that "We try harder" because they were #2.  In rock, the Who is Avis.  Hertz is the Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin. (I'm leaving the Beatles out of this analogy.)  The Who was never going to be 'the biggest band in the world' as long as these groups were in existence, so therefore the Who 'tried harder.'  Townshend practically put himself in the nuthouse with his obsessiveness, particularly when he wrote Lifehouse, that confusing, aborted project that morphed into the Who's Next album.  The Stones and Zeppelin didn't seem to stress so much about their own work, whereas Townshend was ultra-serious about the meaning of the Who's music, how relevant was it, what was the state of rock music, etc.

Speaking of Who's Next, while it's generally considered to be the Who's masterpiece among LPs (and I agree), I tend to see it as being uneven -- and I think this is due to the fact that most of it came from a broken project.  Fairly or not, I always end up comparing this album to what the Stones and Zeppelin were doing circa 71/72 (LZ IV, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street), and the Who falls just short.  The two anthems that bookend the album, Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again, are (deservedly) still staples of rock radio. And while I admire the musical innovation that Townshend was introducing with the synthesizers, and acknowledge that they are truly great rock songs, they don't 'hit' me the way that Four Sticks or Misty Mountain Hop (from Led Zep IV) do, or any number of the less anthemic songs from Exile.  Behind Blue Eyes is my favorite song on the album, and I like Getting in Tune and Love Ain't For Keeping.  Bargain is pretty good, and I used to hate My Wife until I understood the lyrics and appreciated the song's humor.  I like Going Mobile, too.  But Song is Over is too long, too slow, too maudlin.  Whenever I hear it, I want the song to be over.

Anybody have any comments on The Kids are Alright (the documentary movie, not the song)?  This movie made me a Who fan instantly.

Where do you all rank Townshend among guitarists?  Top 10, top 50, overrated?  

Interesting points you have there Mr. Mustard. I certainly agree that the Who really started up that whole "wanton destruction" attitude that came with the punk movement of later. Interesting how they kind of rebelled against the hippie flower image that was so popular in those days.

Speaking of Who's Next, does anyone get really wistful/melancholy when they listen to Baba O'Riley? The lyrics aren't really sad, there's just something about the music and Daltrey's delivery.

Quoted from Mr. Mustard

Anybody have any comments on The Kids are Alright (the documentary movie, not the song)?  This movie made me a Who fan instantly.

Where do you all rank Townshend among guitarists?  Top 10, top 50, overrated?  

TKAA is the definitive rock bio. Made for fans by a mega fan. It's so raw and honest. Don't see so much of that anymore. I can't even count how many times I've watched it. Mainly for the Moon performances. The guy was beyond fascinating and insanely talented and original. But I also love witnessing the sense of humor they all seem to have throughout. Interesting dynamic between the four of them.

I also think the time it was done was the perfect time. They were all there to comment and have input. The Who basically died with Keith Moon, so anything after the fact doesn't really add to what made them so iconic.
But really, the musical performances drove the film. Watching them evolve, watching the milestones. Perfect. I loved the Russell Harty interview they cut throughout the film too. It provided a sort of continuity. Loved how nervous Harty got when he thought Moon was about to out him!

I'd like to see the new bio Amazing Journey. I don't know if it'll add much of anything new, but I definitely want to see it! Anyone see that one yet?

As for Pete's guitar playing. I really don't know where to rank him, but I do think he's somewhat underrated. I mean, those power chords alone...there was some amazing musicianship going on in that band! Maybe Pete got overshadowed a bit.

I think Pete's playing style with the Who was as a "rhythm-lead" guitarist, as opposed to a virtuoso style of playing that characterized Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen and others.  He seemed to be setting up Entwistle and Moon to take lead roles musically (like the bass solos in My Generation, for instance).

Quoted from Mr. Mustard

I think Pete's playing style with the Who was as a "rhythm-lead" guitarist, as opposed to a virtuoso style of playing that characterized Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen and others.  He seemed to be setting up Entwistle and Moon to take lead roles musically (like the bass solos in My Generation, for instance).

He was an ensemble player, I think: he certainly had style and flash, but his playing was in service of the song and didn't merely draw attention to himself or his "virtuosity."  

He is definitely a rhythm guitarist that plays a bit of lead when absolutely necessary. Though I'm not a huge Who fan I think he's the greatest rhythm player I've ever heard.