Word: punk
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...Those smashed guitars, battered amplifiers, twirled microphones, and general onstage uglinesses have done more for, say, Alice Cooper's stage show, than is generally thought. The vital difference, of course, is that The Who have something to translate (this is not l'art pour l'art), namely lower class punk arrogance and good old teenage hostility. Townshend has expended the bulk of his creative energy on his working class contemporaries, and succeeded primarily at proving that he's a punk at heart himself. He passes that adolescent arrogance on to his band, and they hand...
This is the core of Quadrophenia--punk arrogance, hostility, basic lower class frustration. Which is why these songs perform so well in concert. Because their autobiographical nature, really a secondary feature of the album, becomes dominant. The two-thirds of the opera that are performed is a strong two-thirds, even though two of the four themes are eliminated. Townshend programmed some sound effects for the stage and added two small banks of PA amps to the back of the hall, a real stroke of genius, because filling Boston Garden with sound is no picnic. They filled...
...plays crisp licks and lines and is a master of transitions. He alternates finger-picking, chording and single notes with intelligence and grace, particularly in "I'm One," and the opening of "5:15." He plays with power, though. Live versions of "Bell Boy" and "The Punk Meets the Godfather" were exercises in controlled violence--loud, vehement, essential--sinple progressions and lines manipulated through pure volume to extract peak effect. Bassist John Alec Entwhistle continues to anchor the band. Dour, rigid, dressed in black, surrounded by performers, he receives little attention. Yet often as not he's playing as much...
...depicting the gang wars of the '20s. It made an over-night star of Edward G. Robinson ("Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?") and did smashingly well at the box-office. In 1931, Public Enemy followed suit with James Cagney as Tom Powers, a punk kid who becomes a tough-guy criminal. These movies were stories about gangsters' lives. They professed to deter crime by warning the public about violence in the streets, but managed instead to glamourize the gangster as a rebel hero. It was because of the brilliant acting of the likes of Robinson...
...spot at the heart of this picture. But supplied with hard blue language by Writer Monash, and played by Mitchum as a man trying to walk-not run-to the nearest exit, he is an infinitely more appealing figure. Coyle is still hard enough to intimidate a reckless apprentice punk, canny enough to fight a good delaying action against the cop who keeps pressing for more and more information and strangely trusting of an old friend who is a much more clever ex-stoolie (and who finally undoes him). In all, Coyle emerges as a complex and multifaceted character. Self...