Why you should be listening to "Who's Next" right now!

I think i've decided that this is my favorite album of all time... ALL time! it's not just how i feel today, or it's not just my favorite album from my dad's collection, or my favorite "classic rock album." it is my favorite one hands down. and for good reason. lots of good reasons. here's my 5 best reasons why you should join me in believing...5. The fact that these songs came out of the ashes of the complete failure of Pete's idea for "Lifehouse" (a futuristic rock opera, recorded live and involving the audience), reminds us all that as bad as you think failing might be, if you shoot high enough, you can still come out on top. I'll take this failure over most other people's master work.4. Apollo vs Dionysus"I sit looking 'roundI look at my face in the the mirrorI know I'm worth nothing without youIn life one and one don't make twoOne and one make oneAnd I'm looking for that free ride to meI'm looking for you"There's a really beautiful dichotomy in The Who's music, which becomes apparent as soon as Pete stops jumping around and comes to the mic to sing a line or two on songs like Bargain and Going Mobile. Daltry is so cocksure in so much of his delivery, and of course it fits what he's singing about, because the band is rocking, no doubt, and Daltry's singing contributes to this. But every time Pete sings on this album, it's such a contrast to Daltry. Sure, Townsend can rock too, "it's only teeeeeeenage wasteland," but his voice is almost too fragile to really sing, and it's that fragility that brings such a sweet and vulnerable sentiment. it seems so honest, that it pulls you inward and temporarily takes you out of that Daltrian, bad-ass world... but for only a second. it's so fucking emotionally jarring and meaningful, and it makes Daltry's rock that much more poignant as well. It's the kind of contrast that Lennon and McCartney occasionally got to in their best moments (like on "A Day In the Life" for instance), but to my ear, the sincerity was missing so many times. If it wasn't Lennon being snarfy, then McCartney was trying to be too cute. In some way, Pete and Roger's bouncing back and forth with the leads really achieves this perfect balance for the perfect rock record: a lot of balls, and just enough genuine, vulnerable heart.3. The greatest album cover ever. um, the band pissing on some monolith at a location that looks like Mars (really just some place off the motorway somewhere in England). A little bit of contemporary zeitgeist, as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyseey had just come out, a little bit a cheeky play on the album title, and just a great image; there's something strangely original about this as a cover. It makes the whole experience.2. The best use of synthesizers on a rock record without sounding kitchy or like a "keyboard band". Better stated, this is the best use of keyboards as just another part of multi-layered texture, that doesn't make the keyboards a feature or a gimmick. Ok, so this is a big one for me. For the last few months especially, i've put myself on special assignment to listen to any CD that might use some kind of old oscillating, envelope filtering, ADSR, monophonic synth in a particularly musical context, to REALLY see for myself what musicians have done with them. all this before i embark on my own odyseey of knob turning creativity. totally important to know your history and where you've come from right? well, it's not like i hadn't already loved Who's Next before i was converted into a young synth Jedi in training. it's been in the collection for a long time, with no idea about what the keyboard stuff was all about. but man, Who's Next came out in 1971, the same year that Bob Moog began production of the Minimoog, and only a few years after Walter (Wendy) Carlos took the whole world by storm with the hugely successful "Switched On Bach," "Who's Next" was by no means the first rock album to use any synthesizer. In fact that Monkee's album, "Capricorn, Honkey and Smith" or something to that effect even beat "Switched on Bach" by a few years, putting a moog synth all over their record in 1967. But still 1971 was the just the beginning of the period where synths weren't the size of small car and there just weren't a lot available to musicians. Not even Stevie Wonder started using them until 73 and 74. Point being, there wasn't a lot of precedent for these strange machines' use, especially in such a rocking band as The Who. But Townsend was always a visionary and frankly ahead of his time. He was such a musical being (still is, i suppose) that he was able to craft sounds out of machines that no one really knew how to work so well in the first place, and made memorable music as well as set the mood. The opening to Baba O'Riley is a perfect example. Who doesn't immediately recognize the opening, and if they don't, i imagine most people must perk up a bit when they hear it, cause it still gives me goosebumps still. amazingly you wouldn't even necessarily place it in the early 70s either. It's timeless and beautiful and, just as importantly, ballsy and hair-raising. It's still the most exciting beginning of any record i can think of. Honestly it's probably misleading to talk so much about only one of 4 or 5 instruments on a record that i just got through saying wasn't overly featured. yeah, i'm obsessed with the keys right now. Honestly though, you couldn't get a better band together, and Who's Next is The Who at their best. The most amazing bass lines from Entwistle, who seems to understand the dichotomous nature of the songs, with just the most beautiful moments (the beginning of "Gettin' In Tune") and the most bombastic crazy mother fucking shit everywhere else that was amazingly innovative. Moon couldn't possibly be more insane, but as Daltry has always said, Moon knew the songs so well, and really played TO the vocals. fills would happen more during the vocals (going right with them), rather than in between the vocals. you think he's just goin nuts back there, and he is, but i get the feeling that there was a great deal of musical intuition going on that drove the SONG where it needed to go. He wasn't wanking. He was giving it up to the muse. Townsend, who really is an amazing guitarist, keeps things so simple and powerful. listen to how little he plays in "Won't Get Fooled Again." He's more often playing one note ( a low A) than anything else. And you cannot discount Roger Daltry's complete mastery of his voice to bring these songs the real soul and passion they needed to bring the message across.1. "If we ever find the meaning of life, it will be a musical note." Ah, the message.... It's crazy to think that the key to understanding the whole textual meaning of this album is from a song that didn't even make it onto it (except for the first part of the first verse that ends up in "The Song is Over"). Pete has always regretted not getting "Pure and Easy" on the record, because in essence, as he has put it, "Pure and Easy" was the beginning of the whole Lifehouse story: "There's once was a note pure and easy, playing so free like a breath rippling by. The note is eternal, I hear it, it sees me, Forever we blend it, forever we die." It seems to me that this album is about music being the one pure thing that we can tangibly make that is true representation of our souls. Love is what really comes from our souls. It's what we need and what we seek out. Somehow music has been used for centuries to represent that that love, that soul. Souls, love, whatever. it's the same. Lennon was right when he said all we need is love, and you might thing i sound like a hippy, but it's fucking true, and the amazing thing is that Townsend understood this but also didn't say everything was gonna be alright. there's a lot of anger and aggression in Who's Next, but there's also a process of learning how to deal with that natural tendency towards conflict, and a beautiful message that takes us to the purity of music as an expression of your soul, of my soul, and of Pete's, John's, Keith's, and Roger's. we can all get lost in music it's true, words or no words. we can all feel something from it. people talk about music as a universal language, which is a little misleading in the truest of senses, but it's more or less true within anyone's culture. so much of the imagery that Townsend uses on this album has musical reference; the power of music to set us free; the power of music to take us away from where we are; the power of music to bring understanding and revolution; but there really is also a sense that music isn't the answer. that there is no answer. that all we can do is strive to make more of ourselves. There's a lot of talk of revolution in "Won't Get Fooled Again" and really a lot of the point is that the revolution, whatever it is, will not solve problems. "meet the new boss / same as the old boss." Townsend said there is nothing ironic about those kind of statements, because he didn't want to be the new leader of some revolution. he saw how the revolutionaries of the sixties really didn't change much and how so many of the real utopian and idealistic movements really didn't catch on. but what does catch on, and what we all strive for, is the process, the process of getting somewhere past where we came from. taking a piss and moving on. and if we ever do find the meaning of life, we'll find it in a musical note. so keep listening.