Word: music
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Magnificent lines are almost casually dropped every so often and one of the great pleasures of listening to the Who is that, as with Dylan and only a few others, one can enjoy listening to the words themselves and not just to the music...
...last Tuesday's concert in Boston the Who introduced a Mose Allison song, 'Young Man Blues' saying that it was one of the things they used to do when they were first formed in 1964 and it had led them to music they were now making. Daltrey mimicked his master's voice singing each line with the rest of the group quiet--for Moon, Townshend and Entwistle to erupt, between lines, into inspired instrumental dashes. Towards the end of the song Townshend took over and played lovely near-classic blues spiced as it was with the ever-present Who twist...
There is another element that Peter Townshend--who, it should by now be apparent, is a giant among giants with the Who--introduces in their music, that of electronic manipulation. All electric instruments come with a sizable Noise (as distinct from Music) potential. The challenge is to attempt to fuse Noise and Music so that they go together--such music it seems is known as Musique Concrete. Writing in the Aug. 10 issue of Rolling Stone, Edmund O. Ward calls Townshend "one of the foremost pioneers and practitioners of this art" and goes on to rave about the instrumental break...
...first thing to realize is that many of the Who's songs are complete stories with something well-identified happening in the course of the song. Putting a story to music does not automatically make an opera. Only if the music has been molded to the story in such a way as to clothe its meanings and its actions in sound does one have an opera. The key concept here is that of giving each musical sound a sense as well. The Who have written several exploratory operettas in which their deliberate purpose has been to attempt to convey meaning...
This total effect, the fusion of music to meaning crops up in all of their past work. In 'Pictures of Lily' Townshend tells the story of a small boy, probably himself, who is given a picture by his father to 'help him sleep at night'. Gradually the boy falls in love with the picture and one day goes to his father to ask about the girl Lily only to be told that she has been dead for years. There are several visionary musical breakthroughs in the song. It is a medium fast song but in the middle the drums suddenly...