A year after Pete Townsend is busted for childporn, the new Who tune

[RandomKoolzip]

is called "Real Good Lookin' Boy?!?!" Pete, what the fuck is up with you, man?

It's a great song, incidentally, but the timing.....the timing....

And the title could have been changed to something else, like "Me and my wife's sex toys" or "Feeling all destroyed" or "Feeling my hemorroids" or something. Jeez, Pete, it's as if you WANT us to feel weird about you.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

1. He's probably trying to make a ham-fisted allegorical point.

Or he just doesn't give a shit.

[RandomKoolzip]

7. Either way....I kinda feeel funny about him.

I mean, I WORSHIPPED the Who when I was younger, and Moon is still God, but Townsend has been trashing his own legacy for so long that I gave up on him around the time of the Who's seven hundredth "Farewell" tour or so (Either that or the "Iron Man" soundtrack; by the way, a copy of this album can be found in EVERY bargain/used bin in America...I would NOT call THAT a Bargain).


And then the kiddie porn thing......


I just wish he could have made his great comeback song all the sweeter by changing the fucking title so that it didn't make me go "wha-huh?"

[Fenris]

2. As if "Rough Boys" wasn't gay enough

;) (The new song is much better than I feared)

[RandomKoolzip]

4. It's great, isn't it?

I was VERY surprised to get any kicks out of Townsend (solo albums: ick) or the Who (last two studio albums: ick, last 295 "farewell" tours: ick) this late in the game, but "Real Good Lookin' Boy" will not leave my head after just ONE hearing of it. I don't know how he was able to tap into this well of inspiration at this point in time, unlike almost all of his contemporaries (Mick n Keith, McCartney) who are still at it and sucking wildly.

But that TITLE....oy vey.......

[Fenris]

6. I was fearing writing a la Townsend solo

Or, worse, Daltrey solo. But the two of them did very well. I was wary of hearing the song. And when they mentioned the title, I thought my fears had been confirmed. But, goddammit, it's a good song.

[Whitacre D_WI]

3. Tommy, can you feel me?

Seriously, the new tune is good? I may have to check it out.

[RandomKoolzip]

5. Well, *I* like it.

But that and six bucks will buy you a pastrami on sourdough in Nome, Alaska. Or whatever. In other words, I've made it abundantly clear that my taste in music is shared by roughly .000006% of the population.


I REALLY like it though, and suprised that I do. It reminded me of Ben Folds mixed with Cheap Trick, which is......exactly what I like!

[Whitacre D_WI]

8. Well, the only Ben Folds I'm familiar with...

...is that song they played on the radio a lot in '97-'98. I didn't like that song, though I may be okay with some of the others, but then again, you're a patchouli-stinkin' Dead Head and I'm not so sure of your musical taste since you prefer "The Flame" to "Surrender," anyway, and your pommes frites smell like the underside of a 30-year-old orang-outan's teats.

But I still wanna hear the song, if'n folks like you & Fen dig it.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

9. I caught the Five on the '97 tour. Extraordinary live show.

[RandomKoolzip]

10. Woah....

The first album I ever owned was the first Cheap Trick album. Cheap Trick's music is as close to being imprinted in my fucking DNA as is having brown eyes and brown hair. It's a part of me, like my pancreas. Everything by them after "One on One" BLOWS dead Egyptians though.

And if you only know Ben Folds through "Brick...." Aye yi yi. Folds is my favorite songwriter of the last ten years after Robert Pollard.

And my frites smell like your mama after a truck stop tryst in Tullahoma, Tennesse, daddy-o. Which is to say, not at all unlike your flatulence.


And yes, I like the Dead, but at least I have the decency to be ashamed about it.

[Whitacre D_WI]

11. I am my mama's preciousest fart!

And I prefer Franklin Bruno and Karl Hendricks to Bob P., on accounta he's way too inconsistent and for every "Exit Flagger" or "A Portrait Destroyed by Fire" there's one or two entire b-sides of "Mag Earwhig."

I love Cheap Trick, too, and I also like the band by that name. Although, I must admit, the first record I ever owned was "High Infidelity" by REO (I was eight, so I believe I deserve a little leeway).

Take it on the run, baby.

[RandomKoolzip]

13. Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue fame?

I always got them confused with Deep Blue Something, who did that "Breakfast at Tiffany's" song back in 96.


"And *I* say
What about Breakfast at Tifffany's....."

You know the one.


Actually, Bruno's whiny, mama's boy delivery always turned me off, although his songs were well-written. Have you heard Jenny Toomey's entire album of Frank Bruno tunes? Neither have I, but it is out there, extant.

[Whitacre D_WI]

15. Ack!

0PB is SO COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT from Deep Blue Something! Bruno's contribution to the "I Stayed Up All Night Listening to Records" comp is outstanding. Solo acoustic number called "Shooting Past Me," not whiny at all, or at least not by Franklin's standards.

Yeah, the dude doesn't have the best voice, but I really love "The Monte Carlo Method" and some of 0PB's singles.

And I'm gonna look for the Toomey album NOW.

[Whitacre D_WI]

17. Just bid on the Toomey sings Bruno disc on eBay.

Thanks for the heads-up, Kerrigan!

[Philostopher]

16. Okay, the Cheap Trick stuff explains why I open

every single music thread you post, RKZ, even when it's about somebody I never heard before. Not fond of the Dead, but I never smoked enough dope, and the liberals I hung out with in college were journalism students who liked Todd Rundgren and Zappa, instead.

Agree with you on Ben Folds, as well. I picked up on him when the single for "Where's Summer B.?" was getting airplay on a local college station -- I actually pulled over in my car and called the station to ask if the album had been recorded in Bearsville, because the piano sounded exactly like the piano on so much of the early stuff Todd did or produced. Bought the disc shortly thereafter.

Started to rant about the song 'Brick,' but instead I'll throw in a funny note -- in one interview I read with Ben Folds, he said the song was about a friend's dog. I remember when I was a kid, Barry Manilow used to say that about the song 'Mandy' -- I'm around the same age (I think I'm a year or two older than Ben) so I have to wonder if he didn't remember that, too, and think it would be a funny thing to say.

[RandomKoolzip]

18. Ben Folds is SOOOO underrated....

"Brick" is about an abortion. Ben had a weird habit of fucking with journalists....he used to tell interviewers incredible lies just to fuck with them. I'm sure the "friend's dog" story was just that.


When I lived in Nashville, Ben lived in my neighborhood and I'd often see him walking down the road and say hi to him. A real cool cat. Walked EVERYWHERE, didn't drive. I liked that.


I saw BFF on their first tour after the first album came out. They did "Video Killed the Radio Star" as an encore, rocked the house, and put on one of the best shows I ever saw by anybody.


And Cheap Trick.....Man, if they had maintained the focus they had on their first four records and quit genre-hopping and diffusing their sound with shitty mainstream producers and outside songwriters, they could have taken over the world. (BTW, the last CT single, "Scent of a Woman," was also pretty fucking incredible too....)

[Philostopher]

19. My favorite Ben song live

was 'Crosstown Traffic.' Man, they tore the house down on it.

I knew the story behind 'Brick' -- I just wondered if Ben wasn't playing a convoluted joke on somebody. He does have a tendency to do such things.

And as for Cheap Trick -- I like 'Eponymous 1997' but for the most part, I guess the Petersson-free years didn't do a lot for me, and there hasn't been an awful lot other than '97 that's caught my ear since. You're right it's a shame -- we saw them preview the material on the last album at Bayfest in Sarnia, Ontario last summer, and I elected not to buy it. The show made me sad, and it wasn't all because I'm getting old.

[woofless]

12. Pete did NOT get busted for child porn.

He was charged with NOTHING.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

14. I believe he informed the police of his research in the area.

That's what caused him all the trouble in the first place. All charges were of course dropped.