Boobie Tassels For Buddha

I love The Who.

If I was forced at gunpoint to put my favorite bands of all time into some sort of numerical list they would be in the top 10. Possibly top 5.

Some of their songs hit me in such a personal way it's difficult to talk about it. I discovered them when everyone should discover them...while I was in high school. Their songs are timeless and will appeal to disillusioned and disenfranchised youth forever. Even as they got into their 30's and 40's and were still writing songs, they were writing them to the same lost teenagers that they always wrote...speaking to them...speaking to the ones that no one really listens to. Kindred.

The Real Me is a song I just want to scream at the top of my lungs whenever I hear it. Behind Blue Eyes speaks to the darkness and loneliness inside me. See Me, feel me, touch me, heal me.

I love them and their music.

I saw them perform at the Super Bowl last night.

It made me kind of sad.

Not the performance. Despite their age they can still perform and sounded alright. Yeah, Daltry's voice isn't as powerful and Townshend can't quite hit those high notes and occasionally misses that windmill strum, but the music was as powerful as always.

No, the kid drumming was no Keith Moon, he simply played the songs how he had heard them a thousand times before. There was no manic energy bursting from the drum kit, and none of the improv Moon would bring with drum fills that would almost echo the vocals.

No, the guy playing bass is not John Entwistle. He doesn't have fingers of steel. He didn't fill in all the holes when Townshend went off on a tangent. He didn't create that huge booming backbone that held such an offbeat band together.

Still, the songs were the songs. I was sad though. I think it's just the sense that they've lost who they've always been speaking to. The kids they speak to weren't watching that. They weren't hearing the words we sometimes all desperately need to hear. To know that someone is actually listening and feels the same way we do. All I could see was sponsors and schilling for CBS who uses all their songs for their stupid CSI shows. Yes, stupid CSI shows...forensics officers are not gun toting cowboys with cool shades and bad lines.

It felt like they disenfranchised themselves from the disenfranchised. Even if it was for one night, it kinda hurt.

Who are you? I really wanna know. Did you lose sight of the teenage wasteland? Did you really hope to die before you get old?

Too late.

Fortunately the screams of yesterday still echo today, and the shadows behind you can carry the weight of every g-g-generation.