There’s been a lot of talk lately about the death of the long-player and the notion that people listen to music differently these days so therefore bands should release music differently these days. 99¢ songs on iTunes… one song a month from the band’s website…. There’s no more record/CD stores — so why bother recording a record/CD’s-worth of music? Blah-blah-blah.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, this whole week has been my own little musical protest against the notion that full-length records/CD’s are a thing of the past. Can you really imagine “Money” without the rest of Dark Side of the Moon? “Won’t Get Fooled Again” without the rest of Who’s Next? “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” without the rest of Pet Sounds? I can’t. I can’t imagine it any more than I can imagine being deprived the pleasure of hearing all the other songs recorded and arranged on Fanfarlo’s Reservoir, Jon Auer’s The Year of Our Demise or the debut album by The Airborne Toxic Event.
More importantly, if bands limited themselves to just releasing songs with “hit single” potential, we would never get wonderful collections of rarities, out-takes and b-sides like The Who’s Odds and Sods. I dusted this album off a few weeks ago to play for my friend, David, and I have yet to re-shelve it because I just can’t get it off my turntable. And now here’s the thing, this is unarguably an odd collection of tunes. Supposedly bassist John Entwistle assembled the collection —while the rest of the band were off working with Ken Russell on the film of Tommy — in an effort to stave off all the bootlegging that was being done with the band’s unreleased material. The thing I find particularly interesting is that these are all songs that were never released for one reason or another. Probably because they weren’t deemed hit-single material. Well guess what… there’s some incredible music on this record! In my opinion, the whole record is great, and a number of songs on it actually became crowd-pleasing staples of the The Who’s live show from the mid ’70’s onward. How does that work?
I particularly love the fact that you can hear the different phases of the band in each song and easily pinpoint when it should have been released and which album it would have been on. Certain songs were definitely recorded back in the day when the boys could really hit the high notes like on Who Sell Out… Others could easily slide in between any track on Who’s Next. Then there’s all the great tunes from Pete Townshend’s infamously aborted Lifehouse project; the rock “opera” that was supposed to succeed Tommy (because you can’t have too many rock operas, right?), but never got off the ground. Other tracks first appeared on Pete’s first solo album, Who Came First, but on Odds and Sods they get a full work-out by the band who is in such fine form you have to wonder why these songs could only get released on a Townshend solo effort. There’s also a song called “Glow Girl” which foreshadows the opening scene of Tommy where Mrs. Walker is told the sex of her newborn — except in this version “It’s a girl, Mrs. Walker, It’s a girl.” Needless to say, the liner notes for this album (and its accompanying second record which was eventually released when the whole collection got re-mastered) are a fascinating read with tidbits of musical history and trivia about The Who that any fan(atic) like myself just can’t do without, but would certainly be SOL if the band were forced to release this material as download files only.
So as much as I’d like to give the HMSOD honors to “Little Billy,” Pete’s hilarious masterpiece written and recorded for the American Cancer Society about the evils of smoking, or the anthem, “Long Live Rock,” that was frequently played as the fourth or fifth encore — long after “Won’t Get Fooled Again” had exhausted the crowd… I’m going with a different song (just to show how plentiful the choices truly are). The Happy Medium Song of the Day is “Naked Eye,” another track that didn’t make the final cut of Who’s Next yet still managed to become a huge favorite in concert. Long live rock, indeed! (Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.)
If you haven’t figured it out by now, this whole week has been my own little musical protest against the notion that full-length records/CD’s are a thing of the past. Can you really imagine “Money” without the rest of Dark Side of the Moon? “Won’t Get Fooled Again” without the rest of Who’s Next? “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” without the rest of Pet Sounds? I can’t. I can’t imagine it any more than I can imagine being deprived the pleasure of hearing all the other songs recorded and arranged on Fanfarlo’s Reservoir, Jon Auer’s The Year of Our Demise or the debut album by The Airborne Toxic Event.
More importantly, if bands limited themselves to just releasing songs with “hit single” potential, we would never get wonderful collections of rarities, out-takes and b-sides like The Who’s Odds and Sods. I dusted this album off a few weeks ago to play for my friend, David, and I have yet to re-shelve it because I just can’t get it off my turntable. And now here’s the thing, this is unarguably an odd collection of tunes. Supposedly bassist John Entwistle assembled the collection —while the rest of the band were off working with Ken Russell on the film of Tommy — in an effort to stave off all the bootlegging that was being done with the band’s unreleased material. The thing I find particularly interesting is that these are all songs that were never released for one reason or another. Probably because they weren’t deemed hit-single material. Well guess what… there’s some incredible music on this record! In my opinion, the whole record is great, and a number of songs on it actually became crowd-pleasing staples of the The Who’s live show from the mid ’70’s onward. How does that work?
I particularly love the fact that you can hear the different phases of the band in each song and easily pinpoint when it should have been released and which album it would have been on. Certain songs were definitely recorded back in the day when the boys could really hit the high notes like on Who Sell Out… Others could easily slide in between any track on Who’s Next. Then there’s all the great tunes from Pete Townshend’s infamously aborted Lifehouse project; the rock “opera” that was supposed to succeed Tommy (because you can’t have too many rock operas, right?), but never got off the ground. Other tracks first appeared on Pete’s first solo album, Who Came First, but on Odds and Sods they get a full work-out by the band who is in such fine form you have to wonder why these songs could only get released on a Townshend solo effort. There’s also a song called “Glow Girl” which foreshadows the opening scene of Tommy where Mrs. Walker is told the sex of her newborn — except in this version “It’s a girl, Mrs. Walker, It’s a girl.” Needless to say, the liner notes for this album (and its accompanying second record which was eventually released when the whole collection got re-mastered) are a fascinating read with tidbits of musical history and trivia about The Who that any fan(atic) like myself just can’t do without, but would certainly be SOL if the band were forced to release this material as download files only.
So as much as I’d like to give the HMSOD honors to “Little Billy,” Pete’s hilarious masterpiece written and recorded for the American Cancer Society about the evils of smoking, or the anthem, “Long Live Rock,” that was frequently played as the fourth or fifth encore — long after “Won’t Get Fooled Again” had exhausted the crowd… I’m going with a different song (just to show how plentiful the choices truly are). The Happy Medium Song of the Day is “Naked Eye,” another track that didn’t make the final cut of Who’s Next yet still managed to become a huge favorite in concert. Long live rock, indeed! (Please use the comments box to share your thoughts.)