Face Dances pt 3

Feeling depressed and futile for reasons I’d just rather not go into on a blog – yes I know that violates the entire idea of blogging where you treat your every emotion twitch and brain wave as something you have to share with the universe but a) I don’t like writing about how depressed and futile I’m feeling and b) the reasons I am feeling depressed and futile are pretty boring.

It’s always a pretty good indicator that my mood is down when I start listening to Pete Townsend’s solo work – especially All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes – if memory serves he wrote these songs as the Who were breaking up under the impact of Keith’s Death, he was in the process of divorcing his wife and sinking into a long spell of drugs and booze abuse and his health was poor. Pete was always unshy about using his emotions as the spring board for his art and the results here are pretty bleak – but not without grace and style – Face Dances Part 2 is a pretty love song even with the bridge “I can only stare, she makes me feel like I don’t care” showing all is not well between these two people.

I feel ambivalent about Pete and The Who these days – he seems to become something of a Tory jerk and has belittled folks who didn’t think “Who are you” should be used to advertise SUV’s by saying something to the effect “they’re my damn songs I can do what I want with them” still he and the Who where a huge presence in my life – and their influence has seeped into my bones. Maybe I’m older maybe I’m just not as down all the time as I was maybe I’m not as lost so much but they were there, along with the Ramones and Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter when I was like that.

I suspect that is what got at the Who from time to time. They knew that when they took the stage the stakes were enormous – I mean a band like say Yes or Styx could have an off day without causing a crisis but the Who were always more than music, their fans were the ones who were at the shows because they had nothing else in their life that made any damn sense and they needed to somehow express that frustration, yearning, anger, and the desire to some how some way rise above the muck of everyday existence to something better. I mean shit all they wanted to be was a rock n’ roll band. I wouldn’t wish that pressure on my worst enemy.

The other reason I’m not so stoked about the Who these days is that well, with Keith Moon and Jon gone – it isn’t quite the same band – I never got to see Keith play but without Jon’s darkly cynical presence to leven the mass of Pete’s earnestness and Roger’s rock godisms live they are missing something important.

Or it could be I’m getting old. There is that.

Random Neural firings:

The office is quiet as a tomb again – I’ve got a bad feeling about my own job security all of a sudden. No real reason it’s just there.

The Special Iraq group has come out with “things aren’t working.” And after a pause to file that under ‘duh’ it has urged W to get more involved with talking with Iran and Syria. Like that’s going to happen. There are also statements to the effect that we have to get our troops out. Again file under “duh”. What this says, without coming right out and saying it, is that Iraq is a failure. A complete bust. Again file under “Duh”.

A couple of border guards in I think Sweden – no time to look this up – are in trouble cause they took pictures of the ‘good looking’ women whose papers they were processing. I think, with the new x-ray machine for airport screening here, they look qualified to work here in our airports.

Pic if from germany - it's a warning not to speak rudely to women, they could hit you. Only the germans.

Later.

Peace out.