Once upon a time, my sole aspiration and life goal was to be a "rock star." Correction. Once upon a time, my sole aspiration and life goal was to be one of The Beatles. Strangely enough, that didn't work out as planned. But from the time I was around thirteen to about forty-three twenty-five, it's all I thought about doing. The problem was, unlike The Beatles, I didn't have all that much talent or ambition. I think it was all about the screaming girls. Despite this, I loved music, especially recording music. In hindsite, I was probably more of a frustrated producer/engineer wannabe than an actual musician.
Pete Townshend recording at home in 1971
Like two of my biggest musical heroes (other than the Fab Four) as a kid, Pete Townshend and Prince, I liked home recording, trying to play every instrument myself. Of course, Prince would release entire albums where basically he was the only person on them. I thought that was so cool. Using a four-track recorder, not too much unlike the one Bruce Springsteen used to record the classic Nebraska album, I spent much time, imagining I was in my own little Paisley Park, creating, if truth be known, total crap. But I had fun. I recently stumbled across something I recorded way back in the summer of 1987 that didn't make me cringe too badly when I listened to it again. Actually, my first thought was I almost pulled off playing the drums on this one. Here I am doing one of the few Prince songs an unskilled white boy could even come close to pulling off, one of my favorites, "Christopher Tracy's Parade." Forgive me in advance for the pain this may cause, but I just had to unleash it upon an unwitting blogosphere:
Dylan's 1959 Echo Harmonica, played during his high school days, this model chosen because it shared a name with his then girlfriend (source)
The song was written following his first trip to England in December, 1962, upon what he thought to be the completion of his second album. The song is a tribute to a former girlfriend, Echo Helstrom who Dylan knew before leaving for New York.
While in London, Dylan met several figures in the local folk scene, including English folksinger Martin Carthy. "I ran into some people in England who really knew those [traditional English] songs," Dylan recalled in 1984. "Martin Carthy, another guy named [Bob] Davenport. Martin Carthy's incredible. I learned a lot of stuff from Martin." Carthy exposed Dylan to a repertoire of traditional English ballads, including Carthy's own arrangement of "Scarborough Fair," which Dylan drew upon for aspects of the melody and lyrics of "Girl from the North Country," including the line from the refrain "Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine."
This song ("Eyesight to the Blind") was originally written by Sonny Boy Williamson (the second artist to record under that name) and was released in February 1951. Pete picked up the song from Mose Allison's 1959 cover version. Early drafts of "Tommy" also included Mose's "Young Man Blues" and "One Room Country Shack." In most early song lists, this song came immediately before "The Acid Queen." A version with an alternate vocal surfaced in the U.K. in 1972 and was included on the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs CD (from thewho.net).
The movie Tommy (1975) was one of those movies (along with Blazing Saddles (1974), Jaws (1975), The Towering Inferno (1974), Earthquake (1974), and Phantom of the Paradise (1974), etc.) that I would have seen for the first time after my family finally got HBO in the late '70s. Those movies were really the first R-rated type ones I'd really ever seen (I would have been 11 or 12), so they each made big impressions (good and bad). Many of those movies were disturbing to me and showed up somehow in a nightmare or bad dream. Tommy was such a film.
And is it just me, or does Clapton's "Forever Man" sound just a tad bit like "Eyesight to the Blind"?
The first part of the title comes from Meher Baba, who was Pete Townshend's spiritual guru. The second part comes from Terry Riley, an experimental musician Townshend admired. Many of the keyboard riffs and sound effects on Who's Next were a result of Riley's influence. The title is not mentioned in the lyrics, so consequently some people know it as "Teenage Wasteland." This is the first song on Who's Next, the most successful album of The Who's career.
"Baba O' Riley" began as part of Townshend's Lifehouse project, which is a film script he wrote. It was one of the first times a synthesizer was used to form the rhythm of a song. The synthesizer part was played from tape at their concerts because it was too difficult to reproduce live. In concert, Roger Daltrey almost always plays the violin jig at the end of the song on harmonica.
This is the great version of it from the excellent documentary The Kids Are All Right (1979). Blognor Regis says: "The Kids Are Alright gig was at Shepperton Studios on the 25th May, 1978. It was their only gig of the year. Moon the Loon would die on 7th of September":
Pete Townshend has a blog. And of all things, it's a blogspot blog. He actually has two, one being more of the random thought kind, and the other focusing on an autobiography he is in the process of writing. I find this hard to believe. But it's true. He doesn't appear to have a site meter, Technorati account, or anything, so I doubt he'll ever see I've linked to his blog in this post. It would be interesting to know what thoughts, if any, he might have about this blog's name. I'm a huge fan of Townshend and The Who. The walls of my room during high school were covered with pictures of "St. Pete" I'd cut out of Musician, Creem, Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, etc., etc. I guess the thought of a childhood idol, and one time "conscience of rock and roll," communicating via something as mundane and everyday as a blogspot.com blog to be sort of surreal. Although it is very cool he and I have this in common!
As some proof of my fandom, I present this:
In the picture are some things that were called record albums and cassette tapes. Note that I have bought All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes on vinyl, cassette, and compact disc. It has meant that much to me. Also, I have a Who Came First album. Maybe that isn't a big deal to you, but when I bought that back in 1983 (in Galveston), it was not an easy album to find! For that matter, neither was Rough Mix. There wasn't an Amazon or eBay back in those days.
But the point of this post (and the way I stumbled upon Townshend's blog), are his recent comments about Britney Spears I discovered via a link at Drudge. In a post titled "Britney and a Purple Dress," Mr. Townshend says:
"Dedicated Man In A Purple Dress to Britney in Long Beach. I said, 'Let's not be too quick to judge'. Roger said 'Britney? Britney who?' Like, Roger! Pullease...... read the paper.
Just heard she's gone back into rehab. Pray for the babe. This is a tough business when you have a down period - she sometimes has over one hundred cars following her, every one with a camera geek in it."
Townshend's sentiments are echoed by SamuraiFrog at Electronic Cerebrectomy. While I'm not sure I completely agree with SamuraiFrog's argument that "we've destroyed Britney Spears" (I would like to believe the whole head-shaving thing is just a big publicity stunt designed to keep her in the public eye), I do admire the fact he has taken a higher road, and not done that which is easy - kicking a person when they (apparently) are down.
She has to get better (if she is in fact "sick") soon, so she can go back to making videos like my all time favorite (I lovethe song, too!):
The song was written by Townshend during his stay in California for drug rehabilitation, and it may have been submitted for The Who's 1982 album, It's Hard.
There's lots of negativity about this film already, but I think it looks like it might have some potential. I doubt it could be any worse than most of the recent comic book movies such as this, this, this or this.
When idiotic things like X-Men: The Last Stand (I've not seen it, but I don't have to to know it is tediously lame, loud, and stupid) become the biggest Memorial Day holiday opener ever, you can't blame the people who keep cranking them out from cranking them out.
So Ghost Rider is Nicolas Cage's entry into the superhero genre. Cage is an interesting actor, and he has had several interesting roles. He's also been in some of my favorite movies. To this day, I can't help but think about
when I see him in his movies now. When his career began, it looked like he was going to be strictly a quirky character actor, in parts such as
or
"What do you faggots want?"
Cage is so good as an actor and likeable as a person that his presence raises the quality of something mediocre, like National Treasure (the thinly veiled attempt to capitalize on the Da Vinci Code craze of a couple of years ago). In fact, in light of the film version of The Da Vinci Code being released (it would have been a much better movie had I not already known every nuance of the plot), National Treasure suddenly looks like a muchbetter film! That's irony!! I thought it was a good, fast-paced movie to begin with. Very rarely is it dull, unlike The Da Vinci Code. And it looks like National Treasure 2 is being made...
Pete Townshend has words of wisdom about iPod use and hearing loss. With analog technology, users of the old Sony Walkmans and other cassette playing hand-helds would notice a distortion of the sound if the volume was turned up too high. With digital devices, such as the iPod, this distortion doesn't really occur. So it's very easy to listen to them with the volume turned up way too loud. If you love music, make sure you can still hear it when you're old and gray. Also, be sure not to appear on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and allow Keith Moon to overload the explosive powder in the pyrotechnics. Eardrums go boom!
Once upon a time, my sole aspiration and life goal was to be a "rock star." Correction. Once upon a time, my sole aspiration and life goal was to be one of The Beatles. Strangely enough, that didn't work out as planned. But from the time I was around thirteen to about 
