By Dave Read, July 1, 2024 – Roger Daltry looked as fit June 22, 2024, if less hirsute, as he did in August 1970 when he made his Tanglewood debut, thanks to the great Wolfgang Bill Graham who brought The Who and many other first generation rock bands and musicians to Tanglewood.
You’ll do yourself a favor, especially if you’re a fan of The Who, by firing up their Tanglewood concert on Youtube. You’ll see how efficient bands were then, when they needed nothing but instruments, amps, and envelope-pushing music to entertain an audience.
I’ve seen/heard enough of them to know that contemporary musicians and songwriters are every bit as talented as their rock ancestors – but all the extra fluff and flashbang that encumbers their shows betrays an insecurity that did not inflict the pioneers of rock ‘n roll.
Under the rubric of pop music, or even classic rock, what today’s audience seems to crave as entertainment is franchise music – original music has gone the way of the greasy spoon, replaced by microwaveable eggamuffinz in gas stations coast to coast.
And speaking of coast to coast, forget about the San Francisco sound, or new tunes bubbling up from the Village, or the bayou, Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont.. . Vulture capitalism has melted them down into an alloy of tunes that won’t tarnish, nor startle, nor teach you to boogie, much less make you lose your mind the way kids did then, back in the day.