THE WHO HAD THE LIVER BIRDS ROCKING TO QUADROPHENIA ON THE BANKS OF THE 'MERSEY MUD'!!!!!!

                                                On Saturday night came home to a very 'Ho-Hum' ROLLING STONES'Glastonbury gig ,but the following night we went to see the big boys do it properly. THE WHO  were in the fair city of LIVERPOOL. The ECHO ARENA was 'chokka' and the noise was deafening and we had seats only 20 rows back from ROGER DALTREY. The show was even better than last week at MANCHESTER.. QUADROPHEN'YA has evolved into a real live piece after years of trying to get it on the stage to be performed properly ,well they've 'cracked it!'.....The place went mad. 

Only problem is ,being a short arse i seem to attract all the concert knobheads who have to jump about wave arms, phones and holler and scream at every f**kin' word ,sung or said and insist in telling their mates 'how great this or that bit is'....I was stuck beside some girl who was annoyed as i hadn't given her enough room to dance, so in between dissappearing to the bar or the bogs she got her fellah ,this fat big getto have a word , ,i lost me temper and 'The dreaded Leatherbarrow finger came out'....As i politely explained to him how..."I'd paid 70 f**kin' quid to watch them ,not to argue over the 5 inches that i'd been pushed into 'his space' by the crowd , and would he F**K OFF!!!"It seemed to do the job and he shut his gob. But talking after ,everybody seemed to have their own pet knobhead to drive them nuts! 

But that aside the show was magnificent . PETE TOWNSHEND has connections with LIVERPOOL and seemed pleased to be there....He's the only cockney who can come to LIVERPOOL and call us all "BASTARDS!" and we loved him for it. They seemed pleased to be back in the 'MESEY MUD'. as he called it......You'll probably be pleased to know i'll leave the WHO alone for a while as we wont see them again ,'till who knows?

THE WHO: .....ROCKIN' LIKE BASTARDS !!!!......AND THATS ONLY THE SOUNDCHECK !!!!!!!

My olde Geordie mate ,the incredibly tall (going grey) SIMON MALIA.....This maniac is a maaaaaaaaddd, maaaaaaadddd, mad , psychotic WHO fan since before they formed ,i often think. Well his lovely missus in a  moment ofcrazed

 alcohol fuelled love and genorosity treated Simon to a V.I.P. ticket for the WHO's performance of QUADROPHENIA at the MANCHESTER ARENA last night. So this entitled the lanky ,jammy Geordie bastard to be allowed in early to sit through the soundcheck ,get 'nibbles' and a bag of pressies and swap phone numbers with those TOWNSHEND and DALTREY chappies.

When i asked how it went ,he was still stunned . He explained that he expected the soundcheck to be ;ROGER DALTREY doing a little singing; PETE TOWNSHEND  doing a little strumming on his guitar ; A few thumps of the drums; Tinkles from the keyboards; Parps n' toots from the brass, etc......."BUT NOOOOO!!.......THEY CAME OOT ROCKIN' LIKE BASTARDS!!!!!......DALTREY SCREAMING AND TOWNSHEND LETTING RIP LIKE A MANIAC ON THE GUITAR......THEY ROCKED LIKE ABSOLUTE F**KIN' BASTARDS!!!"....( his words ,translated from the original geordie to scouse for all you intellectuals out there.).....So ,Simon god bless his bry nylon socks, was blown out of said socks.

For the rest of us V.I.P.'s (very unimportant people) who had to fight through to our seats in the normal, standard hustling n' bustling pain in the arse way we finally got there in the corner alongside mr PETER TOWNSHEND,which was fine by me. I thought i would try my missus's (THE LOVELY LYNNE) old prescription glasses ,as my far distant vision isn't wonderful ,but these specs afforded this HD vision for the show which was quite revealing. I could count the bristles in Townshends beard , i couldnt believe it....I'm a little off a dog n' white stick, but surely my vision isn't that bad ,but surely its not meant to be that good!

Lynne ,the previous 2 nights had been playing with her ska band THE MANCHESTER SKA FOUNDATION, Friday in a boozer and Saturday we found ourselves in a tent in a bog of a feild at a festival in Stockport. I was given a posh laminated back stage pass to hang round my neck, as i was with the band....Felt dead important. I thought "I know i'll try and use this for the WHO tomorrow, but the bastards at the ARENA wouldn't let me.

But THE WHO were magnificent , fire and passion exploded forth and they 'let rip' and sounded great...Lynne was bouncing, singing and hammering hell out of my thigh...I have a MOD roundel of a bruise on my thigh today. The daughter ,ELARA was typically ashamed of her mum n' dad ,even though she loved the show. Lynne said that the TROMBONIST came in late a few times and she almost had to be physically restrained from running down to offer PETE TOWNSHEND ' Her services for free(?)'....I assume this was her tromboning abilities!

So if your bored with THE WHO , tough shit ,i'm not ,i'm still on cloud 9 and they are on next week in the fair city of LIVERPOOL and ,hopefully we'll see PETE'S little brother SIMON TOWNSHEND in town on the Monday

THE LOVELY LYNNE managed to get some quite good footage on her I-pad ,barring some womans 70's perm in front of us ,but one bit she did get, which if i can i shall put on ,is PETE TOWNSHEND  having guitar trouble after a series of vicious windmills during BABA O'REILLY and ripping the guitar off and slinging it way back stage to wrap around some poor technicians head...If i'd've managed to get back stage with my fancy laminated back stage pass, i could've had PETE TOWNSHEND'S guitar wrapped around my head....Oh the chances we miss in life, hey!

'ORRIBLE HARRY POTTER N' THE UN 'ORRIBLE 'OO!!!!

                                                                           WHAY HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.................Its a grotty wet cold Warrington morning, not that theres any other kind ,so i'm fairly used to it ,but what makes this grotty morning different from all the other grotty mornings is that for some reason i've managed to get an image on the fuckin' blog ,at long last!......Forgive the colourful language, but i've been totally screwed for weeks and ,although i haven't a clue what i've done .....I've done it!.....I did a couple of pure painted caricatures the other day ,not using pencil sketches or anything ,just slapping on the jolly old acrylic paint. The reason you have been exposed to yet another WHO image is twofold.....If you are sitting comfortably ...I shall explain.

The other week we were across the'pond' in the good ol' U.S.of A. We had a trip to Florida no less. The weather was nice and there wasn't that many people there so the 'parks' weren't full so 'yours truly' could go on the rides 'again n' again....I admit it ,i'm a middle aged ol' fart and i love 'the rides ,even the simulated ones ,like SPIDERMAN and THE SIMPSONS at UNIVERSAL....But the main reason for the park trip was because my daughter ELARA is an out n' out HARRY POTTER nut!.....Her mum THE LOVELY LYNNE is quite fond as well it should be said and has read the books a heap of times. The two of them have the ability to 'fly' through books ,Lynne can read an 8 inch thick tome in a day...It's a gift i'd love to have, but alas! Elara takes after her mam ,thankfully and zooms through books retaining the information ,yet another gift i don't possess. But anyhow the two of them were reading HARRY POTTERin the Florida sun and going on the HARRY POTTER RIDE again and again and yet a few more agains and again, but its all very clever and impressive and they loved it.

But HARRY POTTER was a big part of the trip ,but not all .....There was something else ,far more important due to take place!

THE WHO were playing in down town ORLANDO!!!!.....And we were going to see the boys. Anight or two before we went to see them ,they played their first QUADROPHENIA gig and after when they were ploughing through the hits when my best mate PETE TOWNSHEND with his much publicised hearing difficulties muttered something about the sound levels and walked off....Nothings ever simple when the 'ORRIBLE 'OO go on stage. Our tickets were for Petes side of the stage and we had visions of bare stage with tumbleweeds blowing across. But the boys were there on the night in fine fettle and let rip !!!!.Townshend leaping about like a madman, wonderful! And Daltrey sounding stunningly powerful after surgery on his throat a while back....Even ELARA conceeded "THEY WERE AWESOME!"......Praise indeed!

Across the road was a boozer where we met a few English lads who'd lived in the states for years, one had a proper Union Jack jacket as TOWNSHEND  and MOON used to wear i got a photo of me wearing it ,if i can work out the advanced technology in putting a photo on the blog i'll treat you . Lynne now knows what she can gether stylish hubbie, me for xmas, wether she'd let me out in it is another matter, although she'd not be above nicking it for one of her SKA GIGS ,as she's done to her daughters DOC MARTENS boots( what would the bank say?...) And you lot thought she was nice and respectable, well !Let me tell you!...............

The other reason for the WHO picture was purely because it was on the scanner from last week so PETE n' ROGER were my scanner guinea pigs..............

ROGER DALTREY...QUADROPHENIA...AND LIVERPOOL BOUNCERS THROWING PEOPLE OUT OF TOILETS AT A WHO CONCERT IN A TENT!

A certain famous cartoonist who goes by the name of HUNT EMERSON challenged me to draw the whole of the 'ORRIBLE 'OO'...THE WHO. So, eventually i did ,i managed to scribble ,scrape ,and splatter  a rough likeness of the man with the mighty leather lungs...ROGER DALTREY, from a few years ago. He truly did have and ,even now after a few problems ,still has an awsomely powerful voice. I always thought that PETE TOWNSHEND wrote songs in a spirit of spite to make Roger work . Fans only have to think of classics like 'WONT GET FOOLED AGAIN'..'LOVE REIGN OVER ME'...BABA O'REILLY' and on the list goes ,you dont often hear other people singing WHO songs, basically because i dont think they physically could. I met him once and It was a nice experiance to meet a personal hero and he was shorter than me, or the same height, but not taller. I definitly wouldnt like a smack off him, tho...He used to be a sheet metal worker and he's still got the stocky powerful build and shovel hands.

While i spoke to him i had a mobile and asked Roger if he could give my mate Simon a message .Simon meanwhile was in the process of getting thrown out of the toilets by one of Liverpools fine body of security men ,or BOUNCERS...When Simon asked him to give him a second as he was talking to ROGER DALTREY...The bouncer replied with the immortal line, "I dont care if its fuckin' ELVIS PRESLEY!!"....Roger laughed and told Simon to "BE LUCKY!"

He can be a bit bolchy ,but he says what he thinks ,when he did the WHO show in the LIVERPOOL SUMMER POPS he slagged of the LIVERPOOL CITY COUNCIL, all in there front row seats, much to the joy and pleasure of the crowd behind. The concert was in a massive marque and Roger commented how LIVERPOOL 'The home of rock n' roll' "And they put you in a fackin' tent!"This got a bit of grief  in the papers the following day. The following  night of the second show they laughed it off.   PETE TOWNSHEND said maybe next year they'd have a tin shed to play in.."..maybe thats all we fuckin' deserve!" Wonderful characters....Not friends ,brothers ,always fighting and arguing ,but there for each other if anyone piles in. 

PETE TOWNSHEND wrote QUADROPHENIA and had nothing but pain and trouble ,it was way ahead of its time and proved technically way to far ahead of its time that when they tried to perform it ,troubles erupted. TOWNSHEND, enraged would attack his sound engineer and wreck the sound equipment. Out of the smoke and carnage would be back to the old standards. It wasnt for nearly 30 years before they could contemplate playing the whole thing live.

But tonight across the U.S.A. on cinemas theres a special one off documentary about the making of the album...'THE REAL ME!'..With various concert footage etc, but we've got it on BBC4' tonight ,so we dont have to go out ,a nice take away and put the old SKY+ on. Lots of windmilling and leaping about the living room over the next few days ,methinks.

There is a possibility of THE WHO  doing a tour of QUADROPHENIA ,or "QUADRAFFEENNYA!" As those London chaps say. But up until a few months ago PETE TOWNSHENDS tinnitus and shagged out 'lug 'oles' are screwing up the chances of the faithful getting their WHO fix ,for a while . And i was told that DALTREY  and TOWNSHEND  were fighting over the lineup of the band, 50-odd years of totally disagreeing about everything ,i dont s'pose its going to change any day soon.

QUADROPHENIA; AND GOD! WHAT AN ODD MOD THIS OL' SOD MAKES !

Over the last few weeks yours truly has been a bit of a 'culture vulture', i may not be that cultured, but i've been reliably informed i've got the nose of a vulture. But the nose was mixed in with a bit of culture. While in London i was dragged in to see that X-factoring; Celebrity ice skating Scouser Ray Quinn, in Grease. Which was alright. A week, or so later i was shoved into the Echo Arena in Liverpool Docklands to watch the 'Walking with Dinosaurs' show, which was very impressive. Then in Liverpools good ol' Empire Theatre, as a birthday present from the Lovely Lynne i was taken to see the stage show of QUADRAPHEENYAH !!!

When i saw Grease i wasn't enthused to dress and act like a rocking 50's highschool 'jock'. When i saw the dinosaurs, i was informed i was already like a dinosaur as i was always hungry ,always bad-tempered and always roaring at my beloved little offspring, according to my beloved little offspring. But the PETE TOWNSHEND masterwork was different. It was very well done on the stage. The music and singing was really good and the whole thing was powerfully done, Mods n' rockers knocking 7 bells out of each other ,sex, dancing , pills and scooters, etc all very cleverly done. The energy was there. Whenever i was feeling pissed off i would always whack QUADRAPHENIA on the player, and by the end i was fairly charged up and able to face the world again. The Lovely Lynne would see the Quadrophenia box lying open and inquire, "Feeling better now?". The show had a little of that charge.

I left feeling like a mod. The 'Ace-Face', not just a 'number,'Walking the walk,leading with my chin and shoulders in front of my feet, With my 'Zoot-Suit, "white jacket with side vents 5 inches long"; Button down collars and the best Carnaby Street has to offer..Jump on the scooter with the mass of wing mirrors and with my parka with badges , nip down to Brighton to batter a few rockers. Get high on speed, uppers, downers, leapers and good ol' booze. Dance the night away and work on generating my attitude and cool. But there is a few differences from my imagination and life, as is. The clothes dont come from Carnaby Street, but St George, the Asda cheap range. Haven't got a scooter.But i've got a couple of wing mirrors from an old car in the shed. So, cant get to Brighton. The nearest bit of water is the sandbanks of the Mersey, or the nearest place with pier in the title is Wigan pier, even if there is no pier there. Don't pop pills, as i've got to take enough prescription f***'in' pills anyhow, so i'll chew on a packet of smarties,M&M's, or mint imperials. And i'll dance the evening away ,as long as i get my 10 hours beauty sleep in and the musics not too loud and not 'dance' music. I did have a parka, once, but that was designated a health hazard and dissappeared from my cool wardrobe along with a military combat jacket long ago. I s'pose maybe i've not got what it takes to be a mod, but I've got a few button-down collars and do tend to have the occasional drink(!!!!) , have a bad attitude and i'm cool, but that's 'cos the little'un's left the back door open, in fact i'm f***'in freezing.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT 'THE KIDS',BUT THE THE 'ORRIBLE 'OO! ARE MORE THAN ALRIGHT !

T'was the Sunday before christmas,or two! and all was still, especially on the motorway network, or what laughingly passes for it on the way from the 'grotty norf' to the' sunny sarf', and our beloved capital of London,what with all this travelling and possibly...No,without doubt the worst couple of cups of coffee i've ever tasted in my whole adventurous life. I used to be a connoussieur of fine n' awful coffee's n' teas in paper n' plastic cups from service stations, greasy spoons and station platforms from my days of travelling when i was on the caricaturing circuit(ahh those were the days, i can tell you!). But the stuff i was slurping at ,not for refreshment, but just to postpone going back out to the car again for a few more hours of the dark frosty journey, was without doubt on a level of disgustednous that cannot be imagined. In my time away and off 'the road',the whole driving experience, the roads, the driving ,the whole sheebang ,now including the coffee has turned to complete and utter shite!..I always used to stop for a jam dougnut at Keele services, i can only hope that the jam doughnuts haven't been swept down in this general shitedness that has swept the land. But it's a long time since i've travelled those highways n'byeways, so, maybe i'll never know, maybe it'll be a good thing living in jam doughnut ignorance. Keeping my jam doughnut dreams alive...

You may well be wondering as to why we went on this voyage of discovery and bad coffee.....And don't get me staeted on the Watford Gap Kentucky fried chicken!......Somebodies lost Colonel Saunders secret recipe, believe me!....But the reason we put ourselves through all this was because we were on a pilgramage. THE WHO! ..were back in town! My two favourite pensioners in the whole world were back home. Namely, a certain Mr Roger Daltrey and a Mr Peter Townshend, of the parish. I remember years ago working at what was laughingly Tony Blair's ,(whatever happened to him?) crowning achievment ,tthat bloody tent that made us the laughing stock of the world, The Millenium dome. Famous because JAMES BOND(Pierce Brosnan,really!) dropped out of a balloon onto it in the 'World is not enough.' And of course the bridge that was fine as long as people didn't walk on it together in step,they had to stop marching as pedestrians in the city do all the time.They had to break step or the bridge'd start swinging. Doctor Who should think on that next time the Cybermen are chasing him through the big city. But what was the dome is now something called the indigO2 arena, or something. Do you remember the days when places were given names and not named after advertising logo's?...Proper names like ,Empire,Lycium,Palace ,etc,etc....Liverpool , for instance has the Echo Arena, i wonder where they got that name from!

But the IndigO2 is to be fair quite impressive and on the night i didn't realise until the end that next door to us a little band called COLDPLAY had been banging out a few tunes to a few fans. Theres not much chance of coldplay being heard over theWHO, but i'd like to think that the Cold play crowd were banging on the walls trying to get their noisey neighbours in THE WHO to hold it down a bit. The 'ORRIBLE 'OO' were wonderful, Townshend was wild and even at his advanced state of immortality full of adrenaline,power,aggression and just immpossible not to watch. Daltrey was still able to keep up and the screams ,etc, were all there and his power is still there. They enjoyed themselves and the banter from the stage was genuinley funny. The only problem was, we were up on a balconey quite a way back and some fuckin' prick, apparently from Leeds as he started singing about it, as if he was at the match.This, in between shouting witty Yorkshire reposts to a distant Townshend on the stage. I lost it and went for him, the 'Leatherbarrow finger' was pointing at him as i made my feelings known. I mean to say we'd travelled all bloody day ,spent a packet on tickets, suffered the motorway coffee n' Kentucky's just to listen to this knob'ead yelling down my 'lug'oles'?...No, i think not!

Afterwards my adrenaline was up and i was hyper n' tinglig all over looking for a quite corner where i could go and practise my Pete Townshend air guitar moves. The following day coming down from the high of the previous night into the morass of mundanities of an everyday Monday, i did a 'Pete' leap and windmill to 5.15, off QUADRAPHENIA (a little technical info, for the fans!), and pulled my bloody shoulder, the damn things still not right. And the pain wasn't helped by haven't to freeze my knackers off at a carol concert in the little 'un's school playground that night. Ah, the rock n' roll lifestyle, eh ?