Tommy vs. Quadrophenia

Better? How is this to be defined? If I hear the climactic numbers Love Reign O'er Me and See Me Feel Me then I only say that each is an amazing classic of beautifully written, superbly performed music that touches deeply.

The Underture / Overture themes from Tommy (love 'em), the big hit Pinball Wizard the imagination and talent it took for the young Peter Townshend to put all this together, from vision to reality is clearly demonstration of an immense talent. The dedication of getting a "pop group" to put this complex piece into four man rock action in the studio and live is mind-boggling. They did not have too much of an example before. Except of course their own Sell Out album, possibly one of the three best from the UK at the time. Days Of Future Passed, Are You Experienced and Piper being the others. (IMHO Sgt Pepper only has one number close to that standard).

But Tommy has a scarcely credible story line but I don't really care. In opera there are much worse and less credible and frankly Tommy beats the pants off the last one I saw, some Rossini thing that was well performed and sung but far too long with a silly visual presentation.

Quadrophenia is wall to wall brilliance of rock songs woven to a cohesive whole. I love my Japanese LP replica, beautiful production and all the additions.

This notion of pitting one versus another as though that has some significance is I suppose one way of getting people to all get in line and choose imaginary sides. Or an ingenious way of getting prog heads to focus. Who knows.

But I need the option of choosing both. I'm a bit of a Who fan from My Generation to Who Are You. Oddly not much after that really gets to me. Just me I suppose. But the dozen years these guys put some of the most fun, interesting, witty, powerful, lyrical damned emotion raising music together demands a tad more respect when it xcomes to polls.

Tommy - get it. Quadrophenia - get it. Who's Next - what you do NOT have a copy?

There is a wealth of music here and if the academics get all snooty about "mere" rock music, and I know they do, that is their loss at least in the incidences of Quadrophenia, Tommy and Who's Next.

Now just to go off topic a bit and improv. Y'know the tech/ death metal growl? Of course you do. The reason I can not take this seriously ever -  is due solely to The Who in general and Entwistle in particular. So if I hear some death growl I think automatically of Boris The Spider and ache to hear some vocal going creepy, crawly, creepy creepy, crawly crawly (repeat). This will no doubt annoy the death fans who take all this seriously. But there we are, the problem is all mine not theirs or yours.

Does humour belong in music?

Right, back to Rush In Rio pour moi.


Edited by uduwudu - February 22 2016 at 03:54

Tommy OST for me.
love it

Quadrophenia is almost flawless, Tommy has some boring moments.

Quad is much more consistent and has a stronger concept - with some real highlights. A higher prog quotient too. Tommy has its moments though, so no disrespect to that one either.