One day in 1996 I was driving up to a bridge in Corvallis Oregon. Pinball Wizard came on the radio. It was a hit when I was a kid so I'd heard it a hundred times, but somehow this time it was different. I was riveted by the drumming. I'd never really heard it before. The scene remains permanently impressed on my mind, everything I was seeing and hearing at the time, just like when I heard tell of the Kennedy assassination. Later I made this vid in honor of the occasion. It's a remix with boosted trap drums. I like the randomness of the cymbal crashes.
Roger Daltry said Keith once attacked him with the sharp edges of a tambourine. Roger was a sheet metal worker and used his strength to teach skinny Keith a lesson. "He deserved it," quoth Roger. Daltry also said he formed the band. He first saw John Entwistle walking down a sidewalk with a bass. Roger made the connection right then and there. There was so much tension the band once tried to go it without him but flopped so badly they never tried it again.
During another Corvallis drive there came via radio a violin concerto with the v so good I pulled over and parked to hear the whole thing undistracted and so I could find out who it was. Afterward they announced it was Sarah Chang. I found out later that USA violinists were jealous of her success, saying she relied too much on her history as a cute prodigy and later glamor. Well, she passed my blindfold test with flying colors, thank you very much.
I recently attended a recital by violinist Hilary Hahn, who these days might win a Best In The World poll. Very subdued. Huge disappointment. Maybe as a new mother she's abjured passion, giving up on being a "mother" in the jazz musician argot sense. But I imagine she'll be back some day. Maybe the kid will turn bratty and piss her off. That'd put some fire back in there.
I for the longest time couldn't figure what the big deal was about John Entwistle's ebass playing. It turns out he was very restrained in the studio but let loose on stage. In his late career he suffered from high-frequency hearing loss but insisted on adjusting his tone so that it sounded right to himself. Ouch. His nickname was The Ox, presumably because he was big, strong, and quiet.
I like the
earlier poppier Who records, though I later found out that they secretly hired a group to do the background vocals. That explains why they couldn't duplicate those tunes on stage, a big disadvantage. I also don't believe that Pete played the guitar solo on Can't Explain. It's much more chaotic than anything else he ever did. I thought it was Jimmy Page, that paragon of chaos. Sure enough, Daltry recently (2018) confirmed this. Ha! Can't fool me. Surely it's JP on the Kinks' You Really Got Me too. Dave Davies never sounded like that.
