Anyone else think that "Tommy" is overrated?

omri wrote:   Ivan, I can appreciate everything you said (my personal unliking of the music do not contradict the points you mentioned) except the funny argument they are still selling. Well, Madonna is still selling huge amounts of albums and I think all of it is dated before it even released. If selling was our way to judge anything than most of the music we all love is neglible.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - April 13 2009 at 11:42

I love Tommy and I don't think it's overrated at all, I think the only Who album better than that one is Who's next.

I've been listening to it a lot lately, and I still think it is a seminal piece of work, which, along with Sgt Pepper opened up the commercial prospects of long pieces to wider audiences.

I never could stand the film - Ollie Reed singing? The live version on the extended Live At Leeds is THE version.

It would also be worth remembering that Tommy at long last enabled Daltrey to feel as if he were part of the band, and not just a pretty frontman.

Not at all.Tommy is actually a masterpiece if ever there was one.If you mean overrated refering to the music itself,I guess it's just a matter of personal taste,I'm personally very fond of it.If you're talking about historic relevance,it's one of the most important albums in rock music.It's actually pretty safe to say the ONLY prog album that is as important as Tommy is Dark Side,everything else is a secret,well kept by us prog fanatics nowadays.

But seriously,this is the main reason why about one third of the bands inclueded here as 'proto-prog' shouldn't be on the site.There's simply too much room for people to consider The Beatles overated(as I agree in some level....),or Tommy...

No offense,though.All I'm saying is the increasing scope of this site is not necessarily a good thing,instead there should be improvements over what we can properly call prog rock,for instance lyrics or whatever...

Tommy is ok

Tommy the movie is better (partially because Jack Nicholson and Elton John are there )

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: omri wrote:   Ivan, I can appreciate everything you said (my personal unliking of the music do not contradict the points you mentioned) except the funny argument they are still selling. Well, Madonna is still selling huge amounts of albums and I think all of it is dated before it even released. If selling was our way to judge anything than most of the music we all love is neglible.   OMRI; the central point is not that they are selling, the central point is that they passed the test of time, I never cared for sales, if that was the truth, I would had bought Tina Charles I Love to Love instead of Going for the One in the late 70's, and that's not remotely what i think or said.   Selling copies after 40 years, is something most of the artists today would never dream, but it's only one of many consequence of not being outdated.   While many ephemerous albums were popular of their day and 6 months later were forgotten, TOMMY has 40 YEARS and still is remembered and people buy it.   The test of time is what makes the difference between a timeless masterpiece and a hit single.   BTW: The best known artists we listen, have also passed the test of time, 30 + years after their release, still have a pretty decent audience among certain circles.   Iván

Finally, the drummer was Keith Moon, a figure as legendary in its own rights as JFK or Martin Luther King and therefore not really worth writing a lot about. The only issue I'd like to address is that some people seem to seriously believe that the only thing Keith Moon could ever do was bash, thrash, and crash. Well, that's true. And John Coltrane could only blow. And Hemingway could only write. The art of bashing and thrashing can be as much an art as anything else - and the bashing and thrashing of Keith Moon had a clever and unique bashing and crashing technique all its own. In fact, I'd like to see some of his bashing and thrashing converted to guitar music one day, just to let the dissenters see what he really was trying to achieve with his style. (Note: I am primarily referring to stuff Keith did in the studio here, not in a live setting - his approaches were quite different onstage and offstage).

Edited by moshkito - April 16 2009 at 14:59

moshkito wrote:   If Tommy were to be done today, by a small band in the northwest that no one knows, every one of us in this board would say a lot of sh*t about it ... and how uneven, and all over the place and how much strange stuff and how pretentious the story was ... and to me, this is the test of how we are to respond to something.   But it was done in 1968 by The Who, probably if a band today made Abbey Road, nobody would give a damn, looking at it as a mediocre and outsdated album.   But music is important in the context in which was released.     Will you sit through a rendition of Tommy in your evening dress 20 years from now (for example), as you would today Yo Yo Ma?   Probably not in tuxedo, but surely in jeans I would.   If you go to a Yo Yo Ma concert, you do it in evening dress, if you go to a Rock concert,. you go in jeans, every style has it's place and own rules.   Iván

ghost_of_morphy wrote: p0mt3 wrote: Yes, yes, I know . . . along with Sgt. Pepper and Days of Future Passed, "Tommy" served as one of the first concepts albums, and I completely understand and appreciate the importance of the piece musically, BUT . . .     I don't care for it much. I think The Who went on to write far, FAR superior work, like "Who's Next", "Quadrophenia" and "Who Are You". I just don't get all the mystique that surrounds "Tommy", other than the fact that it was major step towards Prog, which I absolutely get, but musically it gets a bit draining, at least for me, and the next four albums that followed it left it in the dust.   Is this only my opinion? If you judge Tommy only as a collection of songs, you are probably correct.  If you stack it up against later concept projects, you are probably correct.  But if you judge it in it's time and for what it is, Tommy has earned it's accolades.

I suppose I can agree with that, but simultaniousely, how can we deny that as a band, The Who themselves became this iconic ideal in many listeners minds, so anything they did wil be reveered on som level.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: omri wrote: Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: omri wrote:   Ivan, I can appreciate everything you said (my personal unliking of the music do not contradict the points you mentioned) except the funny argument they are still selling. Well, Madonna is still selling huge amounts of albums and I think all of it is dated before it even released. If selling was our way to judge anything than most of the music we all love is neglible.   OMRI; the central point is not that they are selling, the central point is that they passed the test of time, I never cared for sales, if that was the truth, I would had bought Tina Charles I Love to Love instead of Going for the One in the late 70's, and that's not remotely what i think or said.   Selling copies after 40 years, is something most of the artists today would never dream, but it's only one of many consequence of not being outdated.   While many ephemerous albums were popular of their day and 6 months later were forgotten, TOMMY has 40 YEARS and still is remembered and people buy it.   The test of time is what makes the difference between a timeless masterpiece and a hit single.   BTW: The best known artists we listen, have also passed the test of time, 30 + years after their release, still have a pretty decent audience among certain circles.   Iván   I think that nowadays with the ability to get almost everything, 40 years is not enough time to state that The who (or any other band / artist) passed the test of time. I think that should be tested in about 50 years from now. Given the fact you and me are nearly the same age we both probably not live to make that test.   Please OMRI, 40 years is a lot of tuime in an ephemerous scenario as the ever changing Rock, yess you can get almost anything, but TOMMY is stioll requested by the fans, and I'm not talking about a sector, Rockers, Proggres and even POP listeners get Tommy.   The remaining members of The Who keep touring and playiong tracks from Tommy for the audience that fills any place they go.   A few years ago, they made a full presentation of Tommy on stahge, it was in 96 if I'm not wrong, th 1996 and filled the Madison Square Garden two consecutive days, I was there and probably was above the average age, most people were very young, so it had attractive for new audiences.   If you check Amazon that sells 70% of the total net musical salessand  3.5% of the music worldwide (More than enough for a good survey), you will find:    Tommy is in place Nº 960 (Remastered) and Nº 1072 original recording on CD, this means that after 40 years and millions of albums, Tommy is still in the top 1,000.   Also is considered   #30 in  Music > Rock > Progressive > Progressive Rock #36 in  Music > Classic Rock > Supergroups   Two categories in top 50   On the other hand, you check Thriller, which was released almost 14 years later and hit the top all around the world: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,024 and Nº 6,452 in the Deluxe 25 years edition.   But not only Pop artists, check Band of Gypsys, one of the most influential albums for every genre: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #554,099   Lets go to a coetaneous album like Machine Head, a total classic: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,953 or if you want Made in Japan: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,341   This doesn't mean that Tommy is better than Made in Japan (ecven when I like Tommy more), is simply that has aged better, so it passed the test of time.   I bet that only (Just mentioning albums released in the 60's) The Beatles, some Elvis albums and a couple of Stones albums are better positioned than Tommy.   So tell me....Isn't that passing the test of time?   My two cents.   Iván   BTW: Maybe you won't be alive, I plan to be here at least 60 years more.

Edited by mr.cub - April 19 2009 at 12:42