Tag: music

In 1969, the seminal Tommy was released by The Who.  Track Records, The Who’s own brand, in collaboration with Polydoor was the UK record company, and in the United States Decca was.  I have a mint Decca one.  It was billed as the first rock opera, but it actually was not.  There had been at least a couple before Tommy came to us.

Not counting the composition effort (by far the bulk of it by Pete Townshend), it took the better part of year to record, edit, and redub the work.  This was Kit Lambert, their producer, at his finest, and also extremely fine efforts by all of the band and the production and engineering staff.  It is truly a masterpiece.

I am assuming that tomorrow will not be the end of the world, as the Camping followers believe, so did not write about The Who for the last time tonight.  This piece proves the point that I do not always write about things that I really like.  This was not really a bad band, but in my opinion were not that important creatively.  Some, perhaps many, will beg to differ me, and that is fine.  I do not really dislike them, but they would not make it into my “stranded on a desert isle” box of music.

They actually had quite a few hits that charted well, a TeeVee show, and of course laid the groundwork for the later solo career of Kenny Rogers.  He moved towards country and out of rock later, and this post only includes treatment of The First Edition material.

First of all, this is really a very poorly titled record album.  It had nothing to do about being on tour.  It is actually their first compilation album on Decca, their American label.  When this came out in 1968, the way that songs were released was a bit different than later, but it looks like, in the digital age, we are sort of returning to the older ways.

Back then, the single ruled (actually, they were doubles, 45 RPM vinyl pressings with an “A” side (the “good” song) and a “B” side (the ugly cousin)).  That ceased to be the norm after around 1969 or so, when the album started to dominate and singles were released in accordance with how well specific tracks on the album got airtime.

In any event, this is a compilation from many singles the The Who had released over several years.  It had a companion in the UK, and we shall discuss that presently.

For those of you who read my pieces (here, and my other two regular series, Pique the Geek and My Little Town), you know that I appreciate multitalented individuals.  This artist certainly fulfills that criterion.  Not only a talented musician himself, he is also a studio wizard, outstanding technician, and excellent music producer.

I am not his biggest fan, but I do appreciate his talent and like very much several of his original works.  Please do not take this statement as holding him in some sort of dislike:  I like him very much but there are others that I like better.  This is not to detract from his contributions, but rather to describe my musical tastes.

He has been around for a long, long time with no apparent sign of quitting.  Please come with us to examine the career and some of the better (in my opinion) work of this creative genius.

The Who Sell Out, the third album by The Who, was their finest to date and in my opinion is still one of their best works.  To be sure, it fell short hither and thither, but I think that it was great.  There are a number of reasons why it is so good, one of them being Kit Lambert once again producing.  As you recall from the previous installment, he was so much better than the hack Shel Talmy that there is really no comparison.

Another reason that it was so good was that it has a lot of energy for a studio album.  The third reason that I shall cite is that it was one of the very first concept albums, in that there was a unifying theme throughout the record.  Since it was on vinyl, it only runs around 37 minutes, so lots of material got scrapped when the final edit was done.  I shall include some of that material late in the piece.

Many of you will remember eight track tapes, once very popular for automobile and boating use.  Many more of you youngsters will not remember them, they became pretty much obsolete around 1980.  However, for almost two decades they were the medium of choice for automotive applications.

The eight track tape did not just “happen”, but was developed from other inventions.  It turns out that demand was increasing for high fidelity sound in cars in the late 1950s.  FM radio was just getting started (the FCC had only approved FM stereo in 1951), and lots of folks wanted better (and more to their own taste) quality music.  Thus, the eight track tape was developed.

Happy Jack was the second album released by The Who and their second studio album. It was released in the UK with the title A Quick One.  That was a little suggestive for Decca Records, the US label and the single Happy Jack has charted in the US, so that title was used.  The song lineup is a little different betwixt the two records as well, Happy Jack not being on the UK version.

Released in the UK 19661209, it was delayed in the US for almost six months, finally being released in 196705 (I am not sure of the exact day).  This record was truly transformative, and is one of my personal favorites.  It was this album where Townshend really showed that the was a writing force with which to be reckoned, and he took some risks that he would not have taken previously for a large reason:  the brilliant Kit Lambert had replaced the hack Shel Talmy as the producer of the band.

Last week a commentator put the bug in my ear that I do not ALWAYS have to write about subjects that I like very much.  I have done it before, but usually in connexion with other topics.  This installment is different.

This one is concerned with Pat Boone, one of the most insipid and untalented “artists” ever to plague us with his presence.  He was a creation of his time, and although he could sing, sort of, was and still is, in my opinion, more of a curious relic of desegregation.

Please come with us on a very curious journey that still does not very well explain how a relatively talentless individual has continued to be in the spotlight since before I was born, and I am not that young.  Please enter here.

This is the first part of a comprehensive treatment of the albums released by The Who.  This promises to be an extremely long series, but I shall intersperse it with other topics from time to time, to keep it from being too monotonous.

I know, but still can not understand why, some folks are not fans of The Who.  LOL!  This was their first album, and was quite good in some respects, and weak in others.  They had already had some hit singles, but nothing astounding as of yet.  Note that I am using the U.S. discography by default, since I am in the United States.  Where possible, I shall cross reference it to the U.K. one.  Note that we shall take the studio albums first, then the live ones, and then attempt the very long list of compilations.

I have written about The Who many times before, but have never started at the beginning of their album career to cover it from then to now.  I hope that you like the effort, and some of the excellent music that I shall embed.

I love to be able to fuse two topics into one!  Since almost the beginning of TeeVee, there has been theme music for its programs.  Many of you will remember lots of them, but there were some programs without music, the very first TeeVee image being one of them, although it got a theme later.  Does that pique your interest?

TeeVee became widely available in the late 1940s, in large part because of the revolutionary improvements in electronics because of the necessity of the war effort.  However, there is a backstory to that as well:  after the war was over, there was a flood of components that were military surplus, available for cents on the dollar, to be had by manufacturers.

TeeVee had been invented long before World War II, but the components were rare and expensive.  Because of the glut of surplus components, TeeVee became widely available, but that is more of a Pique the Geek piece.