"Everything is as it should be."

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The Who - Hollywood Bowl: A Review

THE WHO - THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL - OCTOBER 13, 2019

I am currently in the midst of the home stretch of my year of living musically, as I am seeing my final three shows of the year in a ten day span. Last Sunday night I saw nouveau classic rockers Greta Van Fleet try and resuscitate the moribund rock genre, and this past Sunday night I trekked out to the Hollywood Bowl to catch the legendary rock act, The Who. My year long music odyssey will, barring any last minute concert opportunities, come to a close on Tuesday night with a walk down memory lane with The Waterboys.

The Who have been around for longer than I’ve been alive, and for the majority of my life I was indifferent to them. I never considered myself a fan and saw the band as sort of on the second level of elite classic rock bands….somewhere behind The Beatles and Stones but ahead of Queen.

When I came of age and became aware of their music, The Who were still major players but Keith Moon was dead, and they were turning out radio friendly, but seemingly vapid albums, especially compared to their earlier ground-breaking work (Tommy, Quadrophenia, Who’s Next). To be clear, I didn’t hate the band or its music, it is just when I started paying attention to them their music really wasn’t worth paying much attention to.

Then was around the time in 1979 when The Who made news due to a stampede at one of their concerts in Cincinnati that resulted in 11 people being killed. I was just a kid but this story was huge news and I think unconsciously created a negative association with the band. One thing I do remember clearly about the whole thing was a gloriously absurd “serious” episode of the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati that dealt with The Who tragedy in a painfully 1970’s sort of way.

With this sort of ambivalent attitude toward The Who from an early age it should come as no surprise that I have never seen them live. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that I really got into the band and started listening to their earlier, more seminal works. I had heard about the rock opera Tommy for decades but had never actually sat down and listened to the whole thing…and when I finally did I got what all the hype was about. The same was true of Quadrophenia, their much maligned other rock opera, which I absolutely love. And of course, I always thought Who’s Next was a great album, and upon reexamining it concluded it was even greater than I remembered.

It was in this frame of mind that I bought Who tickets for their Sunday night show at The Hollywood Bowl, a venue I had never been to before. The Sunday show is the middle of three shows the band is playing at the Bowl in October, and I got pretty decent tickets for a reasonable price…reasonable for big market concert tickets that is.

Half of the original The Who members are dead, with iconic crazy man drummer Keith Moon dying in 1978 and genius bass player John Entwhistle passing away in 2002. The remaining original members are lead singer Roger Daltry and lead guitarist and all-around creative master force and maestro Pete Townshend.

Having never been to the Hollywood Bowl, I asked around about advice on getting there and parking and all that and the resounding response I got was to not drive there. So my date, Lady Pumpernickle Dusseldorf and I bought park and ride tickets and took a special bus to the venue. I don’t know how much time the bus saved on the trip to the Bowl, but it certainly reduced the hassle and stress of the commute and I highly recommend it.

On the bus trip and on our entering the venue, one thing became very clear regarding Who fans…they are overwhelmingly geriatric. The masses of decrepit elderly, limping and foot dragging Who fans struggling to make their way into the show looked like an invasion of the walking dead.

The Hollywood Bowl is a gorgeous venue and the sight lines and acoustics are fantastic. Our seats were in Section K, which is a little less than mid way from the stage to the back of the seating. The one issue with the Hollywood Bowl is that the seating is comprised of long benches, so that means some disruptions whenever someone not near the end of the bench has to go to the bathroom…and with a large collection of geriatric rock fans with leaky bladders, that means a lot of bathroom breaks.

The opening act was Liam Gallagher, formerly of the 1990’s Britpop band Oasis. The show was scheduled to start at 7 pm and, like old people at a buffet, Gallagher hit the stage promptly at 6:59 and was greeted with a smattering of acknowledgment.

Gallagher played a series of new material, or material new to me, with a bad attitude and even worse pitch, to a decidedly disinterested crowd. The more irritated Gallagher became the more disinterested the masses got, with each feeding off the other.

Liam Gallagher was the picture of petulance and entitlement on Sunday night as he bitched and moaned that no one was getting aroused about his flaccid performance. The reality is that the audience of fossils Gallagher was trying to excite had no clue who he was since they were in their 40’s and 50’s when his band was moderately successful in the mid-90’s. These dinosaurs would rather have been watching the watermelon smashing comedian Gallagher, rather than the off-pitch former Oasis front man Gallagher.

And speaking of Oasis, they are a band that are a total mystery to me. When their big album What’s the Story (Morning Glory) hit the states, my reaction to the hype around it was…what the fuck? I felt like a rock and roll Rip Van Winkle that woke up after a twenty year nap to discover this milquetoast Britpop band was, out of nowhere, all the rage. Their previous album, Definitely Maybe, which had the allure of being “mysterious and cool” because it was British, was actually monotonous and shitty. Their mega-hit follow up was supposed to be a cornerstone of the Britpop movement, but it was more a vanguard of a shit-pop movement, as it was a bland stew of arena anthem rock wrapped in the pose of independent, edgy coolness. It struck me that Oasis, and the entire Britpop phenomenon, were a manufactured reaction to the organic explosion of American grunge rock. Oasis and their Britpop contemporaries were trying to cash in on the desire to be a part of a “new wave”, similar to grunge but a poor, disingenuous and entirely manufactured facsimile. The problem with Britpop being the next-big-thing or alternative/replacement to grunge though is that Britpop was generic crap, and was only appealing to those who were either late to the grunge bandwagon and/or were desperate to stay on the cutting edge of cool and alternative pop culture.

At the end of the day, Oasis’ real skill was not music, God knows, but rather in drawing attention to themselves through self-serving boasts about non-existent talent and staging headline feuds between Liam and his band mate brother Noel, the founding members of the oft-bickering band.

In this way Oasis and the Gallagher brothers are really performance artists and not rock musicians. Liam kept the performance up on Sunday night by being a middle-aged enfant-terrible thoughout his lackluster performance. He chastised the crowd when he introduced one song by saying, “here’s another one you don’t know”. And when he played the one hit from Oasis the audience by chance might know, Wonderwall, but they didn’t sing along, he chastised them further by spewing out “I guess you don’t know the words”. No Liam, people don’t know the words to your derivative Britpop drivel, and they don’t give a shit about you being a bad boy or whatever you think you are. You are a poseur and a clown who deserves a swift boot to the teeth. Now go fuck off, ya feckin twat.

Gallagher played a crisp 25 minute set that felt like 225 minutes. But then he left and we waited for The Who to arrive. The crowd swelled but we were blessed with two empty seats next to us so we never felt pinched in and we were right next to the aisle so we didn’t have to worry about being trapped by the masses.

The Who hit the stage at 8:04 pm, and were greeted with robust cheers. The band, which consisted of old staples Daltry and Townshend, also included Townshend’s younger brother Simon (guitar, vocals), Zak Starkey - Ringo’s son, on drums, Loren Gold (keyboards, vocals) and Jon Button (bass, vocals). The Who were also accompanied by an orchestra which was highlighted by sexy first violinist Katy Jacoby.

The band started the show with an abridged version of Tommy, their iconic rock opera. The show began with a rich orchestrated version of the opera’s Overture, then blasted off with 1921, Amazing Journey, Sparks, Pinball Wizard and finally We’re Not Gonna Take It all in quick succession without the band or the audience stopping to catch their breath.

At this juncture the band shifted gears from Tommy material and belted out Who Are You, a song which I never liked as a kid and which has further been eroded by becoming the theme to the CSI franchise. I actively dislike this song, but to give you an indication of how good The Who are live, I thought it was spectacular on Sunday night.

Who Are You was followed by an exquisitely cool version of the much under rated 80’s song Eminence Front and then Imagine a Man off of The Who by Numbers. To end this first section of the show the band played a song off of their new album which is due out in December. The song, titled Hero Ground Zero, was not very good, and the audience used it as an opportunity to relieve their aching bladders en masse.

The Who are a fascinating band as they have virtually been a greatest hits band for the last 35 years, as they’ve only put out one new album, 2006’s Endless Wire, since 1982. The new album, of which I will be receiving two “free” copies on account of having bought concert tickets, will be interesting to assess. As evidenced by the band’s stellar musicianship and performance on Sunday night, The Who can still play…the question remains though as to whether they can still create at an elite level. Hero Ground Zero was not a promising sign, but the second song off the new record that they played later in the evening, Ball and Chain, showed much more promise.

The band broke the show into thirds, with the first section accompanied by the orchestra and dominated by Tommy material. The second section was sans orchestra and showcased the songs Substitute, I Can See For Miles, a surprisingly scorching You Better You Bet and a powerful Won’t Get Fooled Again that featured just Daltry and Townshend on acoustic guitar. Won’t Get Fooled Again was utterly spectacular and was a testament to Townshend’s thriving guitar prowess.

The third section, which once again featured orchestral accompaniment, brought the night to a close with such gargantuan rock songs as 5:15, The Rock, Love Reign O’er Me and finished with the classic rock anthem Baba O-Reilly. The show was a brisk 2 hours and 10 minutes, all under a glorious full moon.

My impressions of The Who are that they have rightfully earned their spot on the Mount Rushmore of rock. Townshend and Daltry still put on a tremendous and energetic show for the ages. These guys are absolute masters of their craft and proved it on Sunday night.

Daltry has always been a power singer, belting out songs with a rarely matched dynamic vocal muscularity. Daltry is not the most nuanced singer in the world and has a limited vocal range, which is why Townshend is often recruited to handle the more delicate vocals, but to Daltry’s great credit he has always known who he is and never strayed too far from his strong points. At 75, it is truly remarkable that Daltry still sings with such a volcanic vocal vigor. Yes, his voice is weakened a bit from his 1960’s and 1970’s heyday, but not nearly enough for the songs or his performance to suffer. Daltry may not move like he used to, but he certainly commands the microphone and The Who catalogue with powerful aplomb.

Pete Townshend was, at one point in the late 60’s and early 70’s, the most ambitious guitarist and songwriter in rock music. His rock operas Tommy, Quadrophenia and Lifehouse - which morphed into the album Who’s Next when the Lifehouse idea fell through, were some of the most original and ambitious albums of that era. Interestingly enough, I think that Townshend’s ambition and arm wheeling showmanship often overshadowed his pure guitar virtuosity. Townshend is a supreme guitar player, and if Sunday night is any indication, he is still near the top of his game. Townshend still cranks his arm with magnetic abandon and occasionally musters some fancy footwork, but his showmanship has now taken a backseat to his virtuoso musicianship, and it is impressive to behold.

The backing band, particularly Zak Starkey on drums, are phenomenal. According to Townshend, Starkey was the only student Keith Moon ever had, no doubt having a dad who was the Beatles drummer helped convince Moon to take on this endeavor. Starkey’s Moon apprenticeship shows as he plays the drums with a controlled abandon and volatility very similar to his esteemed drumming mentor.

In conclusion, The Who put on a spectacular show on Sunday night filled with an energy that belied their advanced age. I am thrilled I finally got to catch them live and witness them play such a stellar set at such an historical venue as The Hollywood Bowl. The Who are immortal, and Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry are rock behemoths who still walk the earth. If you get a chance to see them perform live, I highly recommend you take it while you still can…you won’t be disappointed.

SETLIST

Overture

1921

Amazing Journey

Sparks

Pinball Wizard

We’re Not Gonna Take it

Who Are You

Eminence Front

Imagine a Man

Hero Ground Zero

Substitute

I Can See For Miles

You Better You Bet

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Behind Blue Eyes

Ball and Chain

The Real Me

I’m One

5:15

The Rock

Love, Reign O’er Me

Baba O’Riley

©2019

Muse - The Forum: A Review

MUSE - THE FORUM - MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2019

Last Monday night I ventured out among the hoi polloi to see the band Muse, whose Simulation Theory tour had rolled into town for a one night stand at the Los Angeles Forum.

Muse is a difficult band to accurately describe. The English power-trio made up of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboard), Chris Wolstenholme (bass, backing vocals) and Dominic Howard (drums) are sort of an amalgam of arena rock, prog rock, hard rock and electronica that over their twenty year career have consistently churned out a cavalcade of catchy alt-political anthems. If Roger Waters’ led Pink Floyd (Animals, Final Cut), Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust incarnation, Queen, Rush and The Who in their rock opera phase (in this case especially Tommy), were all thrown into a blender and mixed together, you’d get Muse. That is not to say that Muse is as good as any of those bands but just to give you an indication of their rock and roll DNA.

Muse have released eight studio albums, all of them in one form or another specifically themed “concept albums”, that have examined everything from alienation in space to physics to conspiratorial militarism to propaganda and nearly everywhere in between. The band’s latest, Simulation Theory, is a synth-driven, pop-rock psuedo-opera exploring a manufactured video-game/matrix reality and political dysfunction that taps heavily into science fiction and 80’s pop culture. The album cover is reminiscent of the poster for Spielberg’s 80’s nostalgia film from last year Ready Player One, and the album touches upon similar themes.

Muse can be a polarizing band, some think they are one of the best rock bands in the world while others think they are a derivative, cheesy embarrassment. I understand the conflict even if I don’t agree with it. Muse are undoubtedly full of bombast and artistic ambition…I mean what other modern rock band has the confidence, if not arrogance, to continually make concept albums and rock operas? But with that said, this is rock and roll and a certain level of bombast and artistic arrogance is helpful if not required.

I am not a Muse cultist, but after discovering them when their 2006 radio-friendly album Black Holes and Revelations was in heavy rotation, I certainly became a fan. That album, which featured the hits “Take a Bow”, “Starlight”, “Supermassive Black Hole” and “Knights of Cydonia”, was like a guitar-driven breath of fresh air for rock…or the genre’s last gasp…depending on your perspective.

Black Holes and Revelations then led me to their earlier albums, Absolution (2003) and Origin of Symmetry(2001), both of which energetically lay the groundwork for their later breakthrough success.

The Resistance (2009), and its infectious call to arms “Uprising”, kept the bands momentum going by admirably following up Black Holes and Revelations. 2nd Law (2012) and Drones (2015) came soon after and were solid albums but failed to capture as much of the cultural imagination as their earlier work. Simulation Theory came out last year and even though it is more pop-oriented than the preceding albums, it too failed to get much attention from our rock-allergic culture.

Which leads us to the Simulation Theory tour and Monday night at The Forum. I own the majority, but not all, of Muse’s albums but I have never seen them live. My friend, the music afficianado Fire Thorn, saw them on their last tour and highly recommended them to me, but I still hesitated to buy tickets. Then in a moment of weakness I recently noticed they hadn’t entirely sold out The Forum so I searched and found a good deal on some nice seats and I took the plunge.

The Forum is a terrific venue for music. My first experience there was thanks to a friend who is a big shot in the music industry who got me in to see Van Halen rehearse for their first reunion tour in 2007. Van Halen was one of my favorite bands when I was a kid, so getting to see a private show by the band at The Forum for me and 14 other people was a magical experience that emotionally attached me to the venue for life.

Getting to The Forum is pretty easy, but getting out of there after a show is a total traffic nightmare. My night got off to a good start though when I found a sneaky good place to park across the street from The Forum that only cost $5 more than the arena parking and helped us to escape quickly and unscathed after the show.

The opening act was the band Walk the Moon which I had never heard of, but then when they started to play I realized they had a song that my friends two year old daughter is crazy about titled, “Shut Up and Dance”. My first impressions of Walk the Moon were that I was not particularly impressed. As my date, the inimitable Lady Pumpernickle Dusseldorf noted, they are like if Flock of Seagulls and N’Sync had a baby….or as I added…had an abortion. To be fair, the band has talent, no doubt, but the songs were weak and it just wasn’t my thing. My one observation was that the lead singer has a decent voice but he is a little TOO good a dancer…and the general rule when it comes to lead singers is that they should move well (think Mick Jaggar or Jim Morrison) but not dance too well.

After Walk the Moon walked off the stage, which was followed by an interminably long wait that had John Carpenter music as its soundtrack, Muse hit the stage around 9 pm, and turned The Forum into ground zero in the war for rock and roll’s survival.

The band opened with the first song off of Simulation Theory, the mood setting Algorithm which brought the near capacity crowd to its feet. The audience was jumping and singing along from the get go and the energy ran high as they stayed on their feet for the entire two hour show.

Rock is dead is a refrain I hear often, mostly because I am the one saying it, but I can attest that on Monday, March 11th, at The Forum, rock was alive and well and kicking…hard. Muse put on an astonishing show, one of the very best I have ever seen. That is the thing about Muse, they don’t just play music and play it exceedingly well, they put on a SHOW. The stage set, the costumes, the “dancers”…it was all a fantastic spectacle.

Any band that puts out concept album after concept album like Muse does is an artistically ambitious one, and that ambition was on full display at The Forum. Lead singer and guitarist Matt Bellamy, who at different times wore electronic goggles, an electronic suit, or both, was often accompanied by “dancers” that looked like a Kubrickian marching band of demonic robots. These dancers would sometimes hang from the ceiling in front of giant video screens, or bang large drums, or wear video face masks displaying an upside down American flag (the sign for distress), or would wield glowing light weapons.

In some ways the show that Muse put on could be interpreted as a parody of a rock show, with all the bells and whistles being a sign of decadence, but the one thing that stops that from happening is the impressive and impeccable musicianship of the band.

Bellamy is a powerful singer whose voice maintains its strength and clarity even when he hits his falsetto, which is often. His guitar playing is spectacular as well, both muscular and precise, and rattles you to your bones. Bellamy is not the most charismatic stage presence on the planet, so he is greatly aided by the Greek chorus of techno-dancers from hell that amplify the story of each song.

Bassist Chris Wolstenholme is the hidden gem in the band. His bass playing is superb but it is his backing vocals that are even more impressive. Wolstenholme’s vocals perfectly bolster and mix with Bellamy’s, and give the band a rich vocal texture that elevates the material.

Drummer Dominic Howard is the heavy-handed beast who lays the foundation from which Bellamy’s voice and volcanic guitar blast off. Although the band is a power trio, they do have an added musician on tour, a keyboard/secondary guitar player, who is tucked next to Howard during the show and who adds to the gigantic tsunami of sound the band produces.

The band played for two hours and not once did the energy in the building even remotely dissipate. Even though Simulation Theory has not sold very well, the audience absolutely loved the new material and much to my surprise knew the words to all of the new songs. My date Lady Dusseldorf had never heard Simulation Theory at all and even she got swept away by the tribal love for the new songs. In total, Muse played eight songs off of Simulation Theory and every single one of them was instantaneously met with rapturous cries of approval from the faithful.

The highlights of the show are almost too numerous to count as the whole thing was a supernova of highlights. But if I have to choose the best parts I would say Pressure and Uprising were the best songs in the first quarter of the show, with Mercy and the ferocious rebel anthem Time is Running Out being mid-show highlights. The climax of the show, from “Take a Bow” to the infectious “Starlight” to the ludicrously phenomenal encore medley to the closer, “Knights of Cydonia”, was deliriously and deliciously intoxicating.

Muse may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but if you like hard arena rock music wrapped in a captivating rock and roll spectacle, then I urge you to go see Muse live, I promise that you’ll be impressed…I sure as hell was. Rock may be dying, but last Monday night at The Forum Muse proved that they won’t let it go down without a nasty fight.

SET LIST

Algorithm

Pressure

Psycko

Break it to Me

Uprising

Propaganda

Plug In Baby

The Dark Side

Super Massive Black Hole

Thought Contagion

Interlude

Hysteria

The 2nd Law: Unsustainable

Dig Down

Madness

Mercy

Time is Running Out

Houston Jam

Take a Bow

Prelude

Starlight

ENCORE

Algorithm

Stockholm Syndrome/Assassin/Reapers/The Handler/New Born

Knights of Cydonia

©2019