Pete Townshend Windmill Contest

The Who are giving away a Strat signed by Pete Townshend to the person who submits the best 30 second video of them doing a Pete Townshend windmill (that was BOWLING...). Contest details here.

The contest ended Sunday and I had been getting emails about it for a few weeks but blew them all off.

I kind of wish I had entered, as there are many lame entries and I could have been a contender! But there are a few great ones too. I like the ones below, especially the guy who drew blood. I think there should be a rule for this that if you don't draw blood, you are disqualified.

When I was 13 or 14, I was doing windmills in my room (playing to either Who Are You or live Won't Get Fooled Again from the Kids Are Alright soundtrack) and my hand hit the glass light fixture cover on the ceiling. It came crashing down and shattered everywhere. My mom ran in and said what happened, are you hurt? I said No and looked at my hand, which was covered with blood. I wish I had a video of THAT!

Here is the man himself, from a recent tour. Note how he almost certainly has wounded himself doing this. When Townshend does the windmills, his nails go flying. He bleeds. It's real, not some bullshit stage move. Dig it:


There were tons of lame submissions. Here are a few cool ones:

I like how this guy even put the number on the guitar and even looks like a young Pete (and he bleeds too):


This guys has all the moves down and likely hurt himself. Good man.


Love how this guy used a real gig. Band doesn't sound too smoking but I dig how he is throwing windmills all over the place in LA Woman!

DVD Review - The Who at Kilburn 1977

The Who at Kilburn is actually a double DVD with two concerts. One DVD has the Who live in 1969 at the London Coliseum and the other is the advertised 1977 gig filmed on a soundstage for the movie The Kids Are Alright but scrapped by the band due to the performance quality.

Both of these concerts are amazing and are a must have for any fan of the Who. Let’s start with the 1969 show. This is actually the second DVD and is cited as ‘bonus material’ on the box. I think that highly undersells what you get with this set. Yeah, the film quality is not that great – it’s similar to the footage of Young Man Blues in The Kids Are Alright movie. It’s dark and since the concert was never intended to be released on film, there are moments of blackness on the stage and funky camera angles.

The first song looks kind of like a fan video on YouTube. Then the other cameras kick in and we have multiple angles and close ups. But who the hell cares? This DVD captures the Who on the cusp of their prime. The band had only been performing Tommy live for a few months. They are broke, young and hungry. They are not yet mega-stars and indeed it was just before this period where drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle were going to quit the band and join Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in their new supergroup.

Put simply, the 1969 show is The Who at their very best. Moon is in full tilt, twirling his sticks and generally putting on the most incredible show. I have never seen anyone play drums like that before or since. Pete is in the white boiler suit playing the Gibson SG, Daltry in the fringe jacket, etc. If you like Live At Leeds, the 1969 DVD is basically that album on film.

Note that to see the whole of Tommy and A Quick One you need to access the bonus features on this DVD. There are a lot of camera and audio gaps, so it looks like the directors wanted to keep Tommy as a whole out of the main DVD program. A bit confusing, but if you get annoyed that Tommy picks up near its completion in the main concert, just access the bonus features!

In general, the Tommy stuff is out of control and other high points are Young Man Blues, and a totally heavy Happy Jack. And a final note – the band’s vocal harmonies are prevalent and very tight in this period.

Then we also get the 1977 Kilburn show, which is really the focus of the DVD.

This is the same band 8 years later, but are they really the same? They are now rich and famous. Punk is in full force and the Who are seen by some in this new movement as dinosaurs of the same ilk as Yes and ELP. The band has nothing left to prove but is still trying to remain relevant.

Compounding this problem is that Keith Moon, a central power in the Who's live show, is a shadow of his former self. The last 14 months, he has been in California, partying and not playing drums. He is overweight and is lacking the confidence on display in the 1969 show.

Sure enough, the first thing Daltry says onstage is that the band hasn't played in more than a year so he's not sure what is going to happen.

Having said all of this, I don't think the band disappoints. Yeah, there are a few train wreck moments where Moon comes in at the wrong place, and one spot where Pete gets totally lost. But it's great to see the band this raw and this human.

I actually feel like Moon is more on the ball in this show than he is at the show filmed six months later that was used in The Kids movie (Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again). On this latter show, Townshend is certainly more on the ball. He is smiling and clowning during the songs in the Kids film.

In the Kilburn film, he is surly. He does not look happy to be onstage and there is a classic moment where he goes back to turn his amps up and a roadie interferes. Pete throws a tantrum and shoves his Hi-Watt amps backwards off the speakers. The hair stood up on my arms when he did that.

The song choices are great in the Kilburn concert. Some of the standouts are My Wife, Dreaming from the Waist, Shakin All Over and a really rough keyboard-less version of Who Are You, which the band was just learning.

Despite the weird energy onstage, the band is seriously on fire. Yeah it's raw, but it's LIVE. Daltry's voice is still raging, and Entwistle does not disappoint either. I still found myself focusing on Moon. Even though he was not up to his prime, he is still unreal. And frankly, a pissed off Pete is a great Pete live.

These two concerts could not be more different from one another. In 1969, you have a young, hungry and broke band, still really trying to prove itself. In 1977, you have a bloated supergroup trying to prove it is still valid. It is fascinating to watch live footage from both of these periods.

Here is the trailer:

A Little Bit of This and That

What to report, what to report? A couple of small things:

It's all over the news but Jimmy Page broke a finger so the Led Zeppelin reunion show has been postponed to December 10. The most exciting thing for me on this front is that I found out my friend Al Toribio was able to get a ticket - his wife submitted their email (along with me and a million other people) and were one of the 20,000 selected to buy tickets. Talk about winning the lotto! So they are off to London next month and I hope to get some first hand scoop from Al to post here after he gets back.

Also, Dio in a recent interview with Komodo Rock dropped the news that the Heaven and Hell version of Sabbath will indeed record a new album next year, after some time off after the current kick ass tour that is about to wrap up. That is really good news, because I feel like that band is firing on all thrusters and it would be a shame if they stopped now.

I will leave you with something totally unrelated. A YouTube video of The Who playing Eminence Front at a sound check. This was the MTV video I used to drool over in 1982 and I have been looking for the audio of this for years but alas it remains unreleased as far as I can tell. Despite the tacky 80s garb, Pete's leads in the front of the song are tasty indeed and pretty flipping raw! This looks like the footage they used to make the video before it was edited, too.



And to contrast that with the good old Who I loved so much:



And flash forward to the recent past where they are still loud and obnoxious!

Townshend on the Lost Art of Recording

Fellow Blogger.com poster Pete Townshend (and he's in a little band called The Who) put up a very interesting post about old school recording.

The crux of it is that these days, producers and engineers try to separate sounds in the recording studio, using numerous microphones, soundproof baffles and other means of sound isolation.

Pete yearns for the good old days when the ROOM was the most important piece of the puzzle. Bands would set up in an acoustically killer room, the engineer would place a few mics and then the producer would capture the band actually performing.

For example, it is common these days to mic up a drum set by putting at least one mic on every drum, plus two or more mics suspended over the drums to capture the overall sound. Recording the drums alone might require 15 - 20 microphones!

Read the whole post, but Pete says:

So many wonderful recording rooms have been lost in the last twenty years, all around the world. Rooms that had either been 'found' to sound good, or 'helped' to sound good, or 'designed' to sound good are now serving duty as Loft-style apartments. Old deconsecrated churches and church halls were once commandeered to serve as recording rooms back in the late '50s. Now they are all gone...

The point I'm making is that still, the music, the performance and the space in which the music is made is what is most important. If an engineer is doing more than switching on the gear and pushing up a fader or turning a control knob, there may be too much interference with the performing process.

Backing up Pete's contention, consider that the HUGE drum sound in Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks" was achieved by sticking ONE microphone a number of feet in front of the entire drum set in an acoustically huge sounding room. Zep's Jimmy Page and other old schoolers also used to do things like put the drums at the bottom of a stairwell and place the microphone at the top of the stairwell, generating organic echo.

Stories abound of Keith Richards walking around a studio, snapping his fingers and listening to the way the sound bounced around the room. He would decide where the drums would be set up based on this low tech observation - just using his ear and experience. A lost art?

In the days of all this electronic gadgetry, it is nice to know that back in the day things were done more simply - and that those methods would still work today if allowed to. The golden age is not dead and gone.

In the meantime, listed to some old Zeppelin, Who, Stones or Beatles and try and figure out how the sounds were achieved. It's probably as simple as what the room looked like and where they stuck the mics!

The Who Lite - Concert Review

Saw The Who last night at the Rose Garden arena. As a life long Who fan (not kidding - by repeated listenings of Tommy, Quadrophenia and Who Are You as a child, these guys helped shape who I am today), I have a hard time writing this review. Because, the concert was a big snore.

For context, I saw "The Who Review" (30 piece band or whatever) three times in 1989 and thought the song selection was great but the backup singers and horn players needed to be killed. I saw Pete on his Psychoderelict tour and it was one of the best shows I have ever seen. I also saw this current Who lineup, except with Entwistle on bass, in the mid 90s when they did Quadrophenia live, and that show kicked major ass too. I also have the recent live DVDs and thought the band SLAYED at the 9/11 and Live 8 concerts, so I had some high expectations.

The band was in good spirits. Lots of laughing and playing around. It was guitar player Simon Townshend's (Pete's brother) birthday as well. They were tight and the extended jams they whipped out in Anyway Anyhow Anywhere, My Generation and Amazing Journey were pretty killer. So what was the problem?

Where do I start? In a classic case of 'be careful what you ask for - you just might get it,' they played a bunch of new songs from their forthcoming album as well as the recent song "Real Good Looking Boy" and I can say with all confidence that all of these songs suck. I have been bitching about The Who regurgitating the same 15 songs live for 20 years, and what do they do? They debut more new songs in one night than they have probably on any tour since 1973. Very ballsy indeed, but THEY ALL SUCKED.

As for the other songs in the set, most of it was standard fare - Behind Blue Eyes, Baba O'Reilly, You Better You Bet - blah blah blah. The only standouts were The Seeker, Who Are You, My Generation, which they jammed on and inserted bits of Cry If You Want into (very, very cool) and the Tommy laden encore. And even here, the only stuff that made my skin tingle was Amazing Journey and Sparks. The rest was just sort of flat. Been there, done that - and all better.

OK, then the little stuff that didn't help. The Rose Garden was about 110 degrees where I was sitting. The Who's light show sucked, unless you think having spotlights shine into your eyes all night is a good light show. Also, aside from some cool photos of the band in the 60s and 70s, the graphics and photos on the screens behind the band were pointless and added nothing. Daltry said zilch, although I must say his voice sounded great. Pete was by far the standout as usual. And I missed Entwistle so much more than I thought I would.

You know, I saw Paul McCartney last year in the Rose Garden and he had the place filled up to the 300 level (which was blocked off last night, by the way). But he made that place feel like my living room. The Who made it feel like - well, a big arena more suited for NBA than Rock N Roll.

What would have helped? Better songs. If they has played more gems, I would have overlooked all of this other crap. Where are songs like Slip Kid, Sea and Sand, Pure and Easy, Bargain, My Wife (would have been a nice tribute to Entwistle), Another Tricky Day, A Hand or A Face, New Song? They even ignored stuff they have been playing off and on over the years like Relay and Join Together. Even if they had played Kids Are Alright or Substitute, I might have enjoyed it more.

Jesus, even KISS knows how to dip into their extensive back catalog better than The Who.

So, you can pre-order DVDs of any Who show on this tour. They will arrive in the mail next year and you can re-live the show forever. You know what? I'm gonna pass.