Lots of pipe-cleaning to do on the blogging front, so let's toss it back to a special evening at Mohegan Sun, as the E Streeters took their rock-and-roll 2017 tour to see one of Britain's greatest exports, The Who, still rocking it out half a century later, albeit with a different band composition than when they first burst on the scene.
(A little behind the scenes of blogging? Currently streaming Tommy, one of my desert island albums in the background even as we type. It's a little tale you may have heard about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy.)
This outing would mark the first time seeing the epic band for at three of the road travelers, and the band would not disappoint this evening.
Before we got to the rocking and rolling, though, we needed to make a couple of pitstops to stimulate the local economy. Speaking of stimulation, luckily Tommy - the E Streeter, not the Who operatic messiah - wasn't with us to pay "homage" to his one-gloved wonder idol, MJ himself.
From there, we were off to be Pinball Wizards in our own right. Or at least Game of Thrones slot wizards.
In a scene straight out of Tommy's Holiday Camp, we put in our earplugs, put on our eyeshades, we knew where to put the cork, and started winning big bucks
Andrew, however, was slightly skeptical of John's slot skills
Dracarys!
Me - I was looking for a little face hugger action. Watch out for them Alien eggs!
Finally, it was showtime, and our seats were primo, about eight rows from the stage. We were getting a tad over-excited with anticipation, but luckily, the signs were there to help us.
Stepping into the WayBack machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman, a little bit of E Streeter Who history for you eager readers.
Back in 1979, my brother Jimmy took me to one my earliest live concert experiences, seeing the Who at the Boston Garden on December 16.
Unfortunately, this was one of the first shows the band did after a tragedy in Cincinnati, Ohio, when 11 fans were killed and 26 others injured during a crowd rush for general seating at the Riverfront Coliseum. And yes, with heightened security in place, this was the legendary carving knife event - the likes of which I Can't Explain within the confines of this blog.
Also at the Boston show, some inane fan threw a cherry bomb firework onto the stage during the first few songs, prompting Who frontman Pete Townshend to stop the show dead and wait until security dragged the idiot out (after challenging him to come up on stage so Townshend could first kick his ass.)
Jimmy, famously, had also been at the March 9, 1976 Who show at the Garden when drummer extraordinaire Keith Moon famously stood up at his drum kit and proceeded to pass out, forcing the band to outright cancel the show, sending the 15,000 fans in attendance into a frenzy as they scrambled around the Garden floor to find the ticket stubs they had already discarded.
The band wrote Moon's collapse off as "the flu." History would later peel back the curtain a bit more on the sordid backstage antics of the demented drummer. Let's just say rumors of elephant tranquilizers abounded in the years to follow.
At the Mohegan show, Andrew was singing right along with Roger Daltrey and Townshend for most of the show. He Drowned in euphoria right along with the rest of the arena, especially for the Quadrophenia cuts
Back to some Who History 101: It was September, 1978, and I had just started my freshman year at St. Joseph's Regional High School. In that first month, I would meet a series of friends that, incredibly, I remain friends with today, nearly 40 years later.
But it was also in that first week of high school that Keith Moon passed away, his surreal and self-destructive personal life finally catching up with him.
The death, however, would become a talking point between myself and one of the new faces I encountered that September, another fan of British Rock (although admittedly, he tipped a bit more to the Kinks music coming from the other side of the Pond), Tom Beaupre.
The Who would become the band that first unified Tom and I on common ground and laid the seeds for a friendship that still reverberates 39 years later, even though separated by a couple of states here and there. We can still see for Miles and Miles and Miles and Miles.
The 1979 rockumentary The Kids are Alright, still to this day, holds the distinction of being the movie I saw repeatedly in the theater than any other flick in history, climbing into double digit viewings. Tom and I, along with others, would, on little more than a case of boredom, trek in to Boston to watch it on the big screen on a weekend just to bask in the Who's backstory and of course, their music. And yes, we had all of the lines of that flick memorized as well. My favorite takeaway from that movie was the greatness that was the mini opera A Quick One While He's Away from the Rolling Stones rock and roll circus show.
So yes, Tom and I were indeed, card-carrying members of this here club, in the video within this link:
In the ensuing decades, I saw the Who a few more times, but was especially eager to experience them again in 2017 with Andrew in tow. Now it wasn't just people talking about MY Generation, but the next generation of music aficionados as well.
The Who was a band that also provided common ground for Martin Brewer and I in the 1990s and 2000s as well, as our favourite Brit was also a huge fan and had seen them quite a few times more than I. The Who proved to be one of dozens of music groups that Martin and the rest of us E Streeters could Join Together over.
And what kind of a Who concert would it be if we didn't get Daltrey's microphone flailing and of course, Townshend's trademark windmill strum? The Sparks still fly on stage when these two bring their A Games.
Along with Pink Floyd's the Wall, the Who's Tommy was one of those albums that literally shaped my interest in music throughout my oh-so formative teenage years.
I listened to it ad nauseum, memorizing every one of the songs, front to back.
The 1975 squirmingly uncomfortable Ken Russell flick of Tommy was literally the first movie I ever saw more than one time in the theaters, catching it on the small screen up at Hampton Beach with Eddie Jakutis, who lived across the street from our beach house on N Street.
The story of the messianic savior whose coming of age via pinball and his internal rebirth was the source of a term paper I wrote in Mr. Waugh's religion class in 1979, earning me an A+, and a glowing review from said teacher.
See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me
Decades later, the music, along with the Quadrophenia cuts, bring the memories of that impressionable teen exploring his music tastes rushing back.
For your enjoyment, courtesy of my Vimeo account, here's a couple of other quick clips from the Mohegan show:
1 comment:
Thanks for the walk down memory lane! Always great to be reminded of how lucky I've been and continue to be.
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