The Who Album-By-Album (& Single-By-Single) Thread

Would anyone be into this? I don't think there has been one.

I would be interested in covering the stand-alone singles ("Substitute," "I'm A Boy," "I Can See for Miles," etc.) as separate entities, and covering the solo albums through 1982, when the band split up.

 

I would be into it. I think it would make for a good read. However, I'm sure hardcore fans will want to go past 1982, The "Two", etc...

 

If someone else wanted to take over at 1983 and carry on, that would be fine with me. I don't own post-1982 albums such as Under a Raging Moon, Pete Townshend's Deep End Live, etc. Although maybe if this thread takes off I might get inspired to buy the post-'82 material.

 

Yes. Let's go.

"Can't Explain", anybody?

 

Well, I was thinking of starting with "I'm the Face"/"Zoot Suit" and then moving on to "Can't Explain." One thing I would like to avoid is rushing through an album or single a day, as so many of these threads do. When I did the R.E.M. album-by-album thread, we basically did an album a week. That's a pace I'd aspire to for this thread, although I personally don't have any problem with people going "off-topic" - i.e., if a discussion of band's early Mod period launches a side discussion of the Quadrophenia film and its portrayal of the Mod movement, that's cool with me.

If people are into this, I will launch discussion of "I'm the Face"/"Zoot Suit" on Thursday.

 

I'm sure you won't have a problem finding people who bought that stuff here. I'm actually surprised nobody did a Who thread before. Good idea.

 

I wouldn't have much to offer to it but I'd enjoy reading it.

 

I'm there in the Moon years and some beyond

 

This sounds like it will be a fun read and I'll add discussion when I can.

 

I would heartily welcome this thread!

 

I'll play too, but only if I can throw in some video clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de1Miicm3Bc

 

This will be a great thread, especially if you also cover all of the solo albums. I think I'll be more interested in reading comments on solo albums like All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes and Parting Should Be Painless than some of the Who's albums. I know what everybody thinks of "Bargain" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", but what about all the great (and seldom discussed) solo songs like "Apron Strings", "Giving It All Away", "Slit Skirts" and "Walking In My Sleep"? I can't be the only who loves those songs.

 

I'm in!

This thread would be good timing-the recent Stones/Who poll has got me listening to The Who more than I have in ages. I just watched Amazing Journey and The Kids Are Alright as well so I'm up for discussing The Who, although I'm no expert and would be into it for what I would learn especially.

I think the pace should not be rushed either like some of the other Album By Albums threads that have whizzed by. Albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia can't be discussed in a day or two.

 

I'm gonna watch Amazing Journey again tonight to get in the mood.

Like I said above, we're gonna take it one album (or single) per week.

 

I have come to believe that the Empty Glass/Face Dances/All the Best Cowboys trilogy may - I repeat may - represent Townshend's best work.

 

I've actually been listening to The Smithereens Tommy...seriously.

 

We're not going to discuss the Smithereens' Tommy.

 

Yes, I figured that.

 

If the Smithereens cover Quadrophenia in its entirety, that may be a different story.

 

To get us in the mood, two tributes to the greatest bass player - and one of the most underrated songwriters - in rock history:

Too Late the Hero

Back on the Road

 

I was actually planning to create/host a massive The Who Album By Album thread sometime next year. It was to include a comprehensive UK/US/German/Japanese Who-discography - albums & singles + ratings of each and every Who-song etc. Been working on it for quite some time, but why wait for something I might not even manage to finish? I'm all up for this - and especially excited that it's single by single as well.

 

I'm up for it, but I don't know how much I could contribute. I'd still like to read along, though.

 

Let's go ahead and start with "I Can't Explain," the Who's debut single, released in January 1965.

I listened to "Zoot Suit"/"I'm the Face" last night, and that's just not the Who. The Who's story begins with "I Can't Explain," I think.

Here's what the NME had to say about the Who's debut disc on January 15, 1965:

"I Can't Explain," with its short, sharp stabs of rhythm guitar, clearly owes a lot to the Kinks and "You Really Got Me." In Greil Marcus's Before I Get Old, Keith Moon is quoted as saying that the Kinks "[are] one of the major influences on us. There's a lot of the Kinks' style in the Who … the chords. We used to nick a lot of things from bands around, and when Pete wrote 'I Can't Explain,' there was a lot of Ray Davies in there." John Entwistle told Roy Carr that "Townshend wrote 'I Can't Explain' as an answer to 'You Really Got Me.'" Marcus quotes Townshend himself as admitting that "I Can't Explain" is kind of a lift from the feeling the Kinks had in 'You Really Got Me.'"

What separates "I Can't Explain" from "You Really Got Me" is the drumming of Keith Moon. The two snare triplets that Moon plays after Daltrey sings "I know what it means / But …" are the most amazing thing that any rock drummer had played to that point. I watched the Amazing Journey documentary last night, and there is an interesting feature on Keith's drumming on the second disc in which a contemporary drummer demonstrates the way that an "ordinary" rock drummer such as Mick Avory would have played "I Can't Explain," and then demonstrates the way that Keith played it. The way the Who play "I Can't Explain" seems to me to be a slightly simplified rock take on the way that the second Miles Davis Quintet played on albums such as Nefertiti - the traditional "lead" instrument, i.e. the guitar, or in the case of the Davis quintet, the horns, keeps the beat and restates a central riff or theme over and over, while the drums become the lead instrument and punctuate and comment on the beat kept by the guitar. John Entwistle doesn't really stand out here the way he does on "My Generation," but, he, too, would revolutionize the way his instrument was played in rock music, so that, in 1965 and 1966, the Who were the only band in rock where the bass and the drums took the lead role in the music. I can't think of another band prior to Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience for whom this was the case.

 

I Can't explain is too derivative of the Kinks for me to get excited about. The subject matter of teen inarticulation is prime Pete material, but that riff screams Dave Davies.

 

While the Who themselves admitted that "I Can't Explain" was heavily influenced by the Kinks, I have a pet theory that the band whom the Who the most resemble is actually the Beach Boys. The NME's original review noted the "surf-like counter harmonies" of "I Can't Explain," and Keith Moon was a noted Beach Boys fanatic who had played in a U.K. "surf" band called the Beachcombers prior to joining the Who, but I think the structural similarities between the Who and the Beach Boys go deeper than that.

First, the relationship between Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey closely parallels that of Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Both Townshend and Wilson were the poets of a national youth culture of the day - in Townshend's case, Mod; in Wilson's case, surfing - despite the fact that Townshend wasn't really a Mod, and Wilson didn't really surf. Both Townshend and Wilson were observers who chronicled a culture they weren't really a part of. In each band, the drummer - Dennis Wilson and Keith Moon - actually lived (and died) the rock and roll fantasy that his leader and songwriter wrote about. Just as U.K. teenagers such as Keith Moon latched onto the Beach Boys as the ultimate exemplars of a fantasy Southern California lifestyle that didn't exist in the U.K., a cult of U.S. teenagers latched onto the Who as the ultimate exemplars of a fantasy Mod/Swinging London lifestyle that didn't exist in the U.S. Both Townshend and Wilson were the children of a semi-professional musician of the big band/swing era. Both Townshend and Wilson suffered some sort of childhood abuse that colored their music for the rest of their lives. Both Townshend and Wilson were "artistic," both naturally sang in high-pitched, feminine voices, and both relied on a tougher, more masculine, more salt-of-the-earth frontman to put their message across. Roger Daltrey, like Mike Love, saw music as a ticket out of a lifetime of manual labor, not as a chance to make some pie-in-the-sky artistic statement; just as Love would question Brian Wilson's Smile, Daltrey would question Townshend's Lifehouse and other more out-there art school notions. Both Townshend and Wilson suffered nervous breakdowns that led to the collapse of their respective ultimate statements, Smile and Lifehouse.

Just throwing that out there - agree? Disagree?