You just never can tell. Sometimes the most inauspicious starting point doesn’t matter – great things happen anyway. I offer, as an example, one of my favorite Who albums: Quadrophenia. Strike one – rock opera. Strike two – joined at the hip to an attempt to market a conceptually valid, but technically unfeasible, package of hardware and content: quadraphonic sound. What should have been a gimmick turned out to be great stuff. Per Pete “Tear my nails off windmilling” Townshend:

Pete Townshend now looks back on the album with great praise. “The music is the best music that I’ve ever written, I think and it’s the best album that I will ever write.” *

Why post on The Who now? VH1 is going to show a Who documentary this Wednesday: Amazing Journey: the Story of The Who. Seeing the promo pictures got me thinking about them again – especially poor, self-destructive Keith (I looked at the photo credits, just in case).

One major quibble w/ the youngsters at VH1 – they describe a bit of Who iconography as, “classic The Who target”. Sorry, whippersnappers, my understanding is that the ‘target’ is more appropriately called an RAF roundel.

I ride a G S scooter with my hair cut neat,
Wear my wartime coat in the wind and sleet.

Like I said – World War II was still echoing loudly in 1960s Britain…