Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Just made it

I know, I'm getting this in just under the midnight wire - not exactly the way I wanted to start this November challenge! I was going to write this morning, but decided that since I was up early I'd go for a run instead. (I've really allowed my running to slip over the last couple of months, to the point where I'm starting to feel I'm going slightly "soft." So I'm also making November the "month to get off my ass and back on my running route.") And I just didn't have a spare moment at work to put something coherent together. And then I had made plans to go visit my friend R. to watch the first Toronto Raptor game of the season (they lost). But I figured I'd be home in time to put something together - and you're reading that something. (This is already starting to sound like one of those tired columns from an idea-short columnist, one who should have been put out to pasture several columns ago. There was a Globe and Mail columnist who wrote for years in the Arts section that would spend the first part of his column writing about the act of writing the column - proof that he really was bereft of ideas. I'm hoping to avoid those type of posts.)

I was hoping to write about music today, specifically the new album from The Who. I'm sure many of you are out there are saying, "You mean The Who is actually still around?" Even I'll admit that the band certainly isn't what it used to be - how could it with only two surviving members? But I always considered myself more of a Pete Townshend fan than a genuine fan of The Who. In fact, Townshend was the first musical artist I discovered on my own, without the help of my two older and musically inclined brothers. It was easy to be influenced by their musical tastes, but neither of them exposed me to The Who during my formative years. Instead, I discovered a love of Townshend tunes all by my lonesome. There's something about Townshend himself that always appealed to me: for one, he always seemed a little honest (a naked honesty, really) for his own good. (That continues to this day. He foolishly decided to go on the Howard Stern show a couple of weeks ago where he was grilled about the whole child pornography stuff that cropped up a couple of years ago - charges that were eventually dropped. He ended up walking out of the Stern show, which of course made him look foolish.) I felt a real affinity for Pete, something that continues to this day.

So what do I think of the new album? Well, I've only given it one listen, and it was a very cursory one. And for reasons that I can't quite figure out, it didn't seem to transfer to my iPod after I imported it to iTunes (I'm not really a wiz with technology; just don't tell my place of employment that since I'm one of the webmasters...). Basically my evaluation of the album will provide me another subject for another future November post.

See, how hard is this going to be?

No comments: