A Half-Who Play Super Bowl XLIV Half Time!
Just 15 minutes to squeeze in a lifetime of work. The Who, or what`s left of them, have a chance to bring their music back in the limelight, when they perform for the halftime at Super Bowl XLIV. Pete Townshend and Roger
Daltry are still with us, but the original drummer Keith Moon died in 1978, and the bassist John Entwistle left us in 2002.
So what do The Who have in mind? “We`re kinda doing a mashup,” Pete Townsend says. “A bit of Baba O`Riley, a bit of Pinball Wizard, a bit of the close of Tommy, a bit of Who Are You, and a bit of Won`t Get Fooled Again.” (The Wall Street Journal)
Well, and this is impressive, Bruce Springsteen got 98.7 million viewers last year. This was the second most watched program in television history. Number one is the series finale of Mash in 1983, with 106 million viewers. That`s a little surprising? I thought it was Who Shot JR? Oh well…
Millions will be recording the Bowl and will replay The Who`s performance over and over again. That includes me. I am playing the Tommy epic Rock-Opera this morning in order to get warmed up for the Bowl. I have lots of friends who are big Who fans, who are gettin` excited right about now…Their glory days are gone (not my friends), but…Fiddle about, Fiddle about…Braggin` Rights: Saw Tommy in its entirety live in Houston, Texas (1969)….TGIF...A history of Bowl half-times.
Woodstock Was A Peaceful Pied-Piper Of Change!
Jon Pareles` piece in the New York Times (Sunday, August 9th, Arts & Leisure) on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, “A Moment Of Muddy Grace,” helped in summarizing the importance of this event. The Longhairs or Hippies, if you prefer, were more isolated, more scattered in local sub-cultural pockets, before that time. Woodstock legitimized the ‘counterculture,’ and maybe even commercialized it an iota. When the movie came out, and especially when it reached the more remote sectors of the nation, it acted like a distant ancestor of the internet, in terms of penetrating the social fabric of America. In Dallas we welcomed the film as a ‘Pied Piper of Change’ in a forest of wolves. The uptightness was lifted, if but for only a fleeting moment. “Well there aint no cure for the summertime blues!”
For me the true legacy of the ‘Hippies’ is Woodstock *(not the Manson Family). That 300,000 young people could assemble for three days straight, celebrating a potpourri (medley) of Peace, Love, & Music exclusively, is a miracle *(biblical, just as Jerry Garcia says in the movie). Woodstock allowed these ideas to endure, not perish from the memory of all Americans. This was a permanent change to America, and still maifests itself today, yet with a morsel of metamorphosis, factoring in natural adaptations in technology. You may want to reflect on the meaning of Woodstock for yourself? & if you can`t see Joe Cocker in his tie-dye shirt waxin` on “I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends,” as the epoch shatterin` performance of the `60s decade, then take a slow boat back to China, GOONFACE! “Following you, I climb the mountain. Let`s Go To The Hop.”