Recording

Pete has a new blog post up about Recording:

Here's a quote:

What is the thesis? It is that the quality of the equipment used in the old days, and the limited scope for modification of sound, placed the focus entirely on the music itself, and of course on the sound of the room in which the recording was made. 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.

I've been thinking about this a lot listening to modern rock 'n' roll recording. My big problem with it is that it all sounds so flat, like the instrument has no resonance in the air around it; just the flat sound of the instrument. "Room sound" is very important to the quality of what is known as "classic rock" and accounts for one of the important reasons why music of that era sounded so good.

My friend and fellow Who historian Joe McMichael lived in Los Angeles the day they tore down Gold Star Studio, where The Who recorded their vocals for "I Can See For Miles" and "Magic Bus". Here's Pete from 1971 on Gold Star:

The real production masterpiece in the Who/Lambert coalition was, of course, "I Can See For Miles." The version here is not the mono, which is a pity because the mono makes the stereo sound like the Carpenters. We cut the track in London at CBS studios and brought the tapes to Gold Star studios in Hollywood to mix and master them. Gold Star has the nicest sounding echo in the world. And there is just a little of that on the mono. Plus, a touch of home-made compressor in Gold Star's cutting room. I swoon when I hear the sound.

Anyway, Joe got to Gold Star just as they were demolishing it. After a quick word with the construction foreman, he was allowed to step into the studio before they brought it down. He looked around in the darkness and clapped his hands, listening to the reverberating beats that brought artists from around the world. He was the last human to hear it.

Pete Townshend (who he?) - Ch. 19-20

So Jimpy was the guy who inspired the first half of "Real Good-Looking Boy." Wonder who Jimpy was and if he comes up later in some part of the Pete/Who story?

Talking about Pete's childhood friends brings up a point from this era that I've always wondered about: were Pete and John childhood "friends"? John makes his entrance in Ch. 20 with the extremely understated

We called the group ‘The Confederates’. In the spring of 1958 when we began I was still only twelve years old. They were all teenagers at thirteen. I had already met John Entwistle and greatly enjoyed his sense of humour.

Did you have "working" friends when you were 12 or 13? Pete seems to have had them. Although they will be together so much over the next few years (John is present when Pete trashes his first amp in his bedroom), I don't get the sense that they would ever have hung out together just to have fun. It's nothing like the Lennon/McCartney teen dynamic. Wonder why that is? I hope Pete goes into that relationship more.

Also John's afterschool band "The Confederates" was so dubbed because the main Acton afterschool band was "The Union."

I thought I read in one of his old interviews that Pete claimed to have marched in the CND protest march. Perhaps this story is meant to correct that. Anti-nuclear proliferation will come up later of course in the justification for "My Generation"'s infamous line "Hope I die before I get old" (Pete thought he'd die in a fireball anyway), the CHINESE EYES and IT'S HARD albums and the current Pete obsession with terrorists getting the bomb.

While on the subject, DO DO DO get the new DVD of Peter Watkins' 1965 masterpiece THE WAR GAME. Made for the BBC, the film recreates in horrifying, stunning detail a nuclear attack on the English city of Kent. It will immediately put you back into that mindframe of the 1960's when annihilation seemed just around the corner.

Excerpt from new Ian Rankin mystery

From NPR

Excerpt: 'The Naming of the Dead'

Chapter 1

In place of a closing hymn, there was music. The Who, "Love Reign o'er Me." Rebus recognized it the moment it started, thunderclaps and teeming rain filling the chapel...

...The song was only a little more than halfway through. It was the closing track on Quadrophenia. Michael had been the big Who fan, Rebus himself preferring the Stones. Had to admit, though, albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia did things the Stones never could. Daltrey was whooping now that he could use a drink. Rebus had to agree, but there was the drive back to Edinburgh to consider...

A "criminal" investigation

I'll get to Pete's new chapters soon but first I really have to get this off my chest:

Operation Ore flawed by fraud

New evidence I have gathered for my work as an expert witness in defence cases shows that thousands of cases under Operation Ore have been built on the shakiest of foundations - the use of credit card details to sign up for pornography websites. In many cases, the card details were stolen; the sites contained nothing or legal material only; and the people who allegedly signed up to visit the sites never went there...

...In all, 7,272 British residents were on its target lists, more than 2,000 of whom have never been investigated; and 39 men have killed themselves under the pressure of the investigations.

I've been hearing this for years and the article doesn't even cover the fact that the list of names barely made it to the U.K. before someone in Scotland Yard gave (sold?) it to The Times. Pete may have been the most famous victim but he certainly wasn't the most damaged as you can see above. A criminal investigation designed to help innocent victims was turned by the British police into an investigation that was criminal and created more innocent victims. Disgusting.

And don't give me that crap about "Pete admitted he went there so that doesn't count." He only had to come forward because the press was just about to tell everyone it was him, his story checked out completely, he never downloaded any porn to his computers and now his reputation has been tainted in the eyes of many people. Had a private investigation been properly handled, no one would have ever known his name was on the list. Bastards!

In Memorium: Sue Bundrick

A moment's silence for Sue Bundrick. The wife of John "Rabbit" Bundrick, keyboardist for The Who since 1977, has succumbed after a long battle with cancer. Thoughts and prayers go out to John and his family.

Return of the Rock Opera

The Scotsman on Sunday reports that:

Former Blur frontman Damon Albarn is working on an opera, and rock band Kasabian announced last week they would produce a rock opera.

Meanwhile in Rochester, NY, The Democratic & Chronicle reports on a new work:

The title of Bartlett's piano quartet, Teratography, translates as "Writing About Monstrosities," which gives you some idea of its offbeat flavor. So should the two British rock songs that the Philadelphia composer quotes in her work: The Who's Pinball Wizard and King Crimson's FraKctured.

Could this finally mark the end of the 30-year reign of the punk orthodoxy?

Okay, back in the mid-Seventies, it was a challenge when punk appeared with its championing of three-chord rock and instrumentalists who could thrash out a tune without filigree. I got no problem with that and it led to some truly great music.

However, it settled into the music critic establishment and became the "new boss, same as the old boss." Anyone who ventured beyond the punk template was shot down immediately and branded with that most heinous of epithets, "pretentious."

But there is only so much you can do with three chords. Three decades after punk, you can turn on to hear the latest great (almost always white) hope and, unless you're very young, your immediate response is: been there, done that, heard it before.

Finally rock may be shaking off those restrictions. How long until music critics notice that they are being left in the dust of history?

Zimmers "My Generation" to be single release

The Daily Mail has an article today about The Zimmer's hit YouTube video of "My Generation":

Brought together for a TV documentary, they have attracted a cult following after recording a version of The Who's My Generation and are destined for chart stardom.

The group, who are 40 in number and call themselves The Zimmers, pulled in an audience of 20,000 within a couple days of posting their video on the websites YouTube and MySpace.

They now plan a round of personal appearances, the release of the single in May then perhaps an album, which if the current interest is anything to go by, should be a chart-topper.

The group, which is fronted by bingo devotee Alfie Carretta, 90, were handpicked by BBC documentary-maker Tim Samuels who was shooting a hard-hitting series on the isolation of the elderly in Britain.

As the programme evolved, Samuels decided as a finale to gather his elderly subjects to make a memorable musical statement about their situation.
The project snowballed. U2's producer Mike Hedges and Band Aid video director Geoff Wonfor became involved, and recording time was secured at the famous Abbey Road recording studios.

They were given training by Fame Academy's voice coaches. They were then coached from around the country to the North London studios, where the single was painstakingly recorded between band members having to sit out sections due to treatment for various medical problems. One fainted in over-excitement before she even reached the studios.

Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwhistle they were not - in fact fans postings on MySpace talk of the band 'making The Rolling Stones look like teenagers'.

But with Alfie snarling 'Hope I die before I get old' and kicking over a drumkit, Winifred Warburton, 99, thrashing at the keyboard and Buster Martin, 100, the oldest working man in Britain, flicking a middle-finger at the cameras, they were a force to behold.

Indeed, they smashed up their instruments with just as much gusto as The Who used to do in the 1960s.

The Zimmers even recruited their own elderly marketing expert as a band member. Peter Oakley, 79, is an Internet star in his own right, with his own YouTube link, where he keeps a video diary. Producers linked the My Generation video to his already popular YouTube site, immediately attracting thousands of hits.
Profits from the single will go to Age Concern. Samuels told the Daily Mail: 'The series is all about finding those middle Englanders who suffer in silence. We are doing three programmes where those who have been disfranchised fight back with a bit of guerilla action and chutzpah.

'We collected a group of old people and take them through a rock and roll journey to bring them back to life a bit.

'We decided to get them recording a single to highlight the way they are mistreated in this country by challenging the misconceptions we have about them. And as it turns out, it has really taken off. We are negotiating a personal appearance at a nightclub in Haymarket, London, banking on plenty of radio play, and the single is out in May.'

He added: 'They are all enjoying the rock and roll ride in a very understated way. Some of them might not be able to stand for too long as their knees might give them a bit of gyp, but they are all sprightly enough.' The documentary, part three of BBC2's Power To The People series, goes out in May.

Lisztomania II ?

Madman Ken Russell is at it again, this time in book form

The famously provocative and controversial British filmmaker, who evidently enjoys airing the dirty laundry of legendary artistic icons, has published new books exploring the seedier sides of Brahms, Beethoven, Elgar and (the syphilitic) Delius..."Read my books under the covers, flashlight at the ready. But if they're not just about the sex lives of these beloved composers, don't say I didn't warn you."

I've got to admit I'm a guilty fan of Lisztomania and think it's way overdue for a DVD release, but I am tickled by this final quote from the article:

His notorious staging of Madama Butterfly at the 1983 Spoleto Festival U.S.A. protrayed Cio-Cio-San as a prostitute in a sleazy brothel under the control of Goro, a pimp. Donal Henahan, reviewing the production for The New York Times, wrote that "Perhaps because he lacked Ken Russell's feverish imagination, Puccini never wrote an opera called The Best Little Whorehouse in Nagasaki."

The one and only Bobby Pridden

While I wait (and wait) for Scott to get the servers turned back on so I can get this month's The Who This Month back up, I applaud Pete's recent blog celebrating the wonderful Bobby Pridden.

Pete Townshend (who he?)

What a delight it is, while boogie-ing to the beat during a Who show, to glance over at Bobby behind his mixing board boogie-ing along as well to what must be the 4 millionth time he's heard that song.

In celebration, here's some photos of Bobby (sure would like to see the one Pete talks about!).