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A musical birthday...
May. 19th, 2015 05:24 pmHappy Birthday to my friend Leslie!!
I must note that she shares a birthday with Pete Townshend, who turns 70 today. My mind boggles at this, at least until I remember that Roger Daltrey is already 71.
I first heard the Who in, of all places, junior high school music class. The teacher, a rather young woman (as I recall), realized that she wasn't getting through to kids by lecturing them on the types of classical music and the chord patterns of the blues. So, one afternoon, she surprised us by putting the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album on the turntable and asking us whether we thought that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was really about LSD. After debating that, we listened to a bunch of rock operas: Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Tommy. The last really grabbed my imagination.
(And, yes, this *was* a public school, but the teacher wanted us to understand that music could be used to tell a story. She was pretty subversive -- the junior high school chorus performed at least one Tom Lehrer song!)
Sadly, I didn't get to see them in person until 1982, when Keith Moon was already gone. My other Who concerts were in 1989, 1997, and 2012. I don't know if I will get to see them again. But they -- driven by Townshend's composition -- are and will always be very much a part of the soundtrack of my life.
I must note that she shares a birthday with Pete Townshend, who turns 70 today. My mind boggles at this, at least until I remember that Roger Daltrey is already 71.
I first heard the Who in, of all places, junior high school music class. The teacher, a rather young woman (as I recall), realized that she wasn't getting through to kids by lecturing them on the types of classical music and the chord patterns of the blues. So, one afternoon, she surprised us by putting the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album on the turntable and asking us whether we thought that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was really about LSD. After debating that, we listened to a bunch of rock operas: Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Tommy. The last really grabbed my imagination.
(And, yes, this *was* a public school, but the teacher wanted us to understand that music could be used to tell a story. She was pretty subversive -- the junior high school chorus performed at least one Tom Lehrer song!)
Sadly, I didn't get to see them in person until 1982, when Keith Moon was already gone. My other Who concerts were in 1989, 1997, and 2012. I don't know if I will get to see them again. But they -- driven by Townshend's composition -- are and will always be very much a part of the soundtrack of my life.
