who are you [music rambles]
12.26.03 @ 12:55 a.m.
Nothing interesting happened today. I got half a dozen mechanical pencils in my christmas stocking, a battery powered lantern (practical!) for emergencies, and a daily planner. And we watched Anne of Green Gables on PBS as a family, so my brain is kind of going "Canada -- Canada -- Canada." Slightly ridiculous, I will easily admit.
The purpose of this entry is a short burst of Who-related babbling. Yay!
I'm giving away my old copy of Live at Leeds, most likely to Martha, who said she'd take it if no one else wanted it. It's just a burned copy, but I figured giving it away was slightly less wasteful than just tossing it. And speaking of stupid packaging, all the prongs for one of the discs of my new copy are already broken. They were barely hanging on when I got it, and now they've just given up. Happens every damn time, I tell you.
But! Oh heavens. I did not know that the 1995 release of LaL was so edited. Specifically, they edited down the introduction to "A Quick One While He's Away." The old one pretty much just had a double entendre about how Keith Moon thought 'fornicate' was the name of a town and 'always got off at the wrong stop.' The new one has a long explanation of the plot of the song, including the boyfriend catching the girl guide in the act with Ivor. Ivor is, after all, an engine driver and 'doesn't come on time.' [rimshot] Oh. It's so, so funny. Though I am perhaps biased and giddified by the Townshend-love.
"Guitar and Pen" also makes me slightly giggly. And I've listened to "905" several times. I can see why everyone told me to make Who By Numbers a bigger priority than Who Are You, because the latter has Townshend a little too enamoured of synthesizer for my taste. And not even the good, transcendent synth of Who's Next, but kind of lousy, "who needs real instruments, we have this thing that beeps and kind of sounds like a horn if you've never heard one before" synth. It's the future of music! Um, yeah. "Guitar and Pen" seems like a nice little songwriters anthem of sorts. If it were maybe more anthemic. Like I said, it's the kind of song calculated to make me go "Tee hee, Roger." And the lyric "You can walk, you can talk, you can fight / But inside you've got something to write" applies to fiction writing, too. Because I say so, damnit.
All in all, I'm happy and just drowning in good music. I keep listening to Pet Sounds, too, alternating between the stereo and mono mixes. I can't decide which I like better. It's never made that much of a difference to me, and since Wilson's production style is almost pseudo-Spector, mono makes more sense as Spector always mixed down to mono. I think I keep going to the Beach Boys today because I feel slightly like I'm overloading on new Who stuff. There's only so much the circuit can take before something pops and there's smoke and flame coming out of something important. Figuratively. And it gets so I don't know what to listen to. So I listen to LaL all morning and yet as I'm putting away the condiments after Christmas dinner this afternoon, I'm humming "(White Man in) Hammersmith Palais" by the Clash (because even after looking them up, I can't remember all the lyrics). Well, I could just do my Joe Strummer impression and just kind of mumble and slur past it, but that gets ridiculous after a while and you can't really do it for a whole verse.
I think it's funny (not 'turning rebellion into money') (stupid "Hammersmith Palais" joke, sorry) that Martha is occasionally alarmed by certain people's celeb-love, especially the intensity of it--She told me how she didn't care for the intensity of one person's rock star love, and yet it seemed hardly more intense than her own apparent love of Joe Strummer. Deep down, I know the love/obsession with Pete Townshend I have is probably more intense, but I think I keep it under control nicely, at least in public. Except here, of course. What'd be the point?
That's about it, I think. Except that I was happy to find ukelele chords for the song "Blue, Red, and Grey," but when I told my dad, he told me his ukelele* (yes) goes out of tune very quickly. The tuning pegs don't really hold very well. Then again, I have a capo now. I can play the guitar equivalent.
*My dad bought a ukelele after we went to see Paul McCartney the October before last, when Sir Paul used one to pay tribute to George Harrison by playing "Something."
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
